See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Joanna DelBuono
Brooklyn Daily
Will the insanity ever end?
I read a piece on CNN detailing the life of a couple, Maria Lopez Reeves and husband David Reeves and their struggles.
She admits that their credit is not good, they both live on disability, and they have wiped out most of their savings before they turned 60 just trying to survive.
The piece outlined Maria’s political views. She’s disappointed in Obama, not sure about Romney, has been a Democrat all of her life, but is considering jumping party lines.
Okay, I feel for them. I’m in my 50s and I can relate.
We also learn of Maria’s search to find a good doctor that takes medicare, of which she does, one in posh-spa like setting near Disney in Orlando, who speaks Spanish (why she needs that is beyond me, she’s been in the country since she was three weeks old) anyway and bread at the Publix instead of Walmart, (it’s too expensive at $3.95 a loaf, no kidding), how she is undecided to vote for Romney because of running mate Ryan’s proposed cuts to medicare.
Then Maria advises the reader that “she gives herself one whole year to get their credit on track and get a better place to live.” Huh? You’re going to do that on $19,000 a year? And how?
I have to admit up to that point I was ready to dip into my wallet and send these two a check. But then Maria tells us about the bank-overdraft story where the fee is waived and they are given a first-time home buyer guide, with the banker hinting that they should buy a home.
That was when my blood pressure skyrocketed through the roof of my own mortgaged house.
David notices a flash of color on the banker’s dark wood desk. Beneath her computer monitor is a business card holder with a bright orange beach scene that says “Puerto Rico.”
“I like that,” David tells her.
The banker helps them set up a new savings account for overdraft protection, waives the $35 fee and hands Maria a brochure for first-time home buyers.
“Someday you want to buy a house,” it says. “Right now you have a million questions.”
Really? Buy a house. You have got to be joking.
This is the problem. Banks giving mortgages to people that can’t afford them.
Why would the banker even go there?
In their late fifties and in poor health, the Reeves can’t manage on $19,000 a year but you want them to own a home?
Not for Nuthin’, Albert Einstein once said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Old Albert must have had banks in mind.
Joanna DelBuono writes about national affairs (and things she reads about on the internet) every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com.