Death of an American Economy

In 2006 I met the man of my dreams at 21 years old, shortly thereafter in January of 2007 we were married and had our beautiful baby girl later that year. Being young and careless it was time to crack down on life at this point, I had wonderful job experience in management, he was a roofer for some years, and I held the good credit. I bought a new sports car and a new s.u.v. for our new family with my good credit. I also got some loans, mainly to pay over 10,000 dollars in medical bills from simply giving birth in a hospital, many countries there is free medical, however, since America charges you for such a thing and will refuse you insurance if you are already pregnant you do what you can.

Nevertheless we start our lives. We never had an issue paying our debts monthly, and there was food on the table. Then we start to see changes in our decent sized city, the news spoke more and more about lay-offs and business's closing. There seemed to be a high rate of unemployment, and homeless people were on the rise. The majority of America, well the ones who do not face these problems head on, tends to only know the little bits they see on their television. To watch good hard working families with their nice homes and nice cars and lovely children become homeless, selling their five year olds birthday bike to feed themselves, can only really wake you up if you see it first hand, or worse experience it.

We kept living our lives, not rich but still getting by with always making each payment, always feeding our faces. Then my husband's company has a large layoff, he was the bread winner as well, so we pack our things and move two hours away from my home town to a small town where I know no one, but he found a better job out here so it is what we had to do. After working out here never thinking anything would affect us this way, his job doesn't lay him off, but instead begins to give him barley any hours. We are living in the middle of nowhere, so not much we can do with an empty bank account and no work available in this place.

Well I wasn't worried too much, I had good credit, and my creditors must love me after being a never late, loyal customer for over 7 years on some of them. So I decide to get a large loan to help us out and consolidate some other stuff. Every bank refused us due to the economy problems, not only that, they raised our interest rates and minimum payments only because of our debt to income ratio. We were never late or defaulted, as well as these contracts were 'fixed', meaning I thought they could not raise the interest, boy was I wrong. One of them said it was a new contract so they could do that because the old bank went out of business and sold my loans, the other just said they actually can raise interest. I asked them to explain to me how we are supposed to pay all these high rates and payments if we have less money now, and we were able to pay the original. This didn't make sense to me, why raise the payments on someone who made all their payments to something they can't pay? Doesn't that hurt both parties? I was furious but tried to move on from there. The economy was getting worse and worse not only for us but for all other non-rich Americans all over the Nation,as spoke about in "The Crash of the U.S Economy has Begun" by Richard Cook as well.

Never even thinking I would have to apply for food stamps in my life I sucked it up and sat in the long line and waited my three hours to only then be told I have to wait a month after that. Now at this point scared to lose all our things and have our credit ruined to never be able to even get a home loan, I thought my situation was bad till I turned on the television. I saw that three men were arrested, they looked familiar.

Let us assume they are old co-workers of mine from a while back, middle aged, very educated church going men with beautiful wives, children and houses. They were arrested for stealing art and other such things late at night. Apparently their jobs were lost, even with their degrees they couldn't get new ones, and the government wasn't helping them really at all, they had lost everything. Later rumor had it they found out the men had arrangements to trade the art for some children's clothing and lots of food. 30,000 dollars worth of art stolen from men so desperate to feed their families they resorted to this, no one listened to them before so they felt it was their only option. They were wrong, but now they are heard. Welcome to 2009 America, more thefts, murders and homeless people dying of starvation than ever before, well let's at least hope not. According to signed bills of the white House, plans to reconstruct and help our economy, the people not the big banks, is not even going to take place till 2010, and that is if the bill is even passed. Correct me if I'm wrong but, wasn't this a "time for change" or was that all a crock.

Source: self and http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964