For most folks, there’s nothing like moving into a new house.
It’s something they only do but a couple of periods over their lives, and even if they are simply renting it.
A house just occupies that mythical place in the American imagination.
In Europe, owning a house would be a bit of a luxury, however in America owning one seems completely normal – so much so that not to even live in one would feel downright anti-social!
Certainly, this is exactly why even renters will likely pull out the wine bottles from off their wine racks and celebrate move-in day, toasting an event that is at once ordinary and extraordinary.
For a house in America really should be a home, an area for settling down and taking roots, and even if one is just renting it’s at least that much closer to gratifying the American Dream.
Or so things look: enter the great housing bubble of fin-de-siecle America.
One can only imagine how many bottles were pulled from how many wine racks over the country in event of finally owning a home.
As outlined by some economists, excessive capital had to find an outlet, leading to easy credit lines that made a house offered to virtually anybody who called for it.
No money down?
No credit?
Not an issue!
Or so proclaimed the adverts.
In newspapers, on lamp poles, over radio and television.
Even bad credit was no hindrance.
All things considered, the government itself was officially pushing home ownership as a societal good.
However the bill’s due.
The large Ponzi Scheme of restructured bad debt from subprime mortgages has folded away, dragging the world economy with it.
Seems like the good times were simply just a big financial bacchanal supported by wine and wine racks, as it were.
For many, the American Dream remains just that, a dream, while for some, who have tasted it, it has now become a veritable nightmare of debt, falling property values, and foreclosure.