Letters to the Editor

Re: 'No new housing initiative in Bush's $150 billion stimulus plan' (Jan. 18)

Dear Editor:

To paraphrase William Shakespeare, "a rose by any other name is still a rose" never seemed more appropriate than today. Bailout, stimulus package, rebate -- call it what you will. The bottom line is that we are in an economic mess.

Election-year politics again rears its ugly head.

The biggest concern of most American voters is not the Iraq war or immigration reform. The biggest issue concerning Americans is the economy.

I'm not an economist, but I certainly know with the number of people facing rate adjustments last year and through 2008 that we have yet to see the effects and the ripples through all segments of the economy. It is not just housing that is in trouble, but manufacturing and the auto industry, and stocks are tanking. It is an across-the-board decline that needs action ASAP. People are wondering whether they are on stable economic footing.

The Riverside-San Bernardino County area of Southern California has literally hundreds of homes under the FHA limits now, and the buyers are still waiting until they feel prices have bottomed. I'm not really confident that raising the conforming limit is going to be the "cure-all."

Some of the economic reports coming from NAR are so far off the mark, such as the statement that oil will stay around $70/ barrel. (It has gone over $100/barrel!)

I'm reminded of a current television commercial that says, "Stop talking and start doing!" Truer words were never spoken.

Michael Espiritu
Broker
Copeland Wealth Management
Redlands, Calif.

Dear Editor:

My opinion to resolve some of this financial disaster is to have credit-card companies lower their interest rates across the board, which will boost consumer spending and allow average to below-income average people to pay their bills, use their cards -- and the Federal Reserve will not have to loan banks and other credit-card companies money that should be used for the American people.

This is the same situation as insurance companies when hurricanes or other catastrophes hit; they saw an opportunity to hit the homeowners with increases instead of reserving monies every few years in case this would happen.

The credit-card companies are no different. Each day three or four credit-card offers arrive in the mail, and as soon as a person inquires, his or her credit score is decreased. Where in the world are these people's minds? Instead of working with people our government continues to aid them. What about us? If banks give 4.75 percent on savings then why should credit-card companies be allowed to commit usury in many states because the credit card is issued from another state?

Lowering the housing interest rate is not the answer here. We need affordable living and affordable insurances (life, health, car, etc.), and we need to bring back industries to the United States instead of selling off these farm lands to developers for big money.

We are not what Americans are supposed to be. We need to help our own as well as others, but all we are doing is self-destructing and quickly, and when people are depending on their 401Ks and IRAs to live, that means the stock market will take a dive, people and corporations will take their monies out, and then the enemy wins.

Instead of charging 29.99 percent on cash advances why shouldn't it be across the board what they pay on purchases or any other transactions? It has gotten to the point that fine print has gotten finer these days and actually is invisible because each day the rules change. When American Express High End users are having difficult paying their bills, how does the average person do it? We do not need to be rocket scientists to understand that people can't even afford to go back and forth to work with gas as high as it is. Someone needs to wake up and let us know we all just had a couple years of bad nightmares.

Isabelle M. Schillo
Realtor
Licensed mortgage broker

***

What's your opinion? Send your Letter to the Editor to opinion@inman.com.

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.