Living in Lincoln Park Blog

I, along with I’m sure many of you, am very frustrated with the current economy and lending issues. In Chicago, real estate taxes have gone up to keep the city building & growing. The sales tax was increased, again to keep the city building and growing. The city transfer tax on the puschase of real estate was increased to fund the CTA pensions, who is paying this last increase is yet to be determined. How far can a dollar stretch?

Now, with the failing of Bear Stearns (which has been wrestling with this problem for some time), we as a society are bailing them out. Are they failing due to greed?, bad judgement?, bad timing?, or poor management? I’m sure their failure would have a substantial domino affect on many other companies in many industries, but isn’t that the risk/reward of free enterprise?  It seems that financial institutions are able to do business in a no risk envirnoment!

The Fed is trying to help by cutting the rates, but so far it has helped the banks make investment purchases to help shore up their bottm line - important in the scheme of things. Eventually, I suppose, those lower interest rates will trickle over to the consumer that is on the verge of a short sale or foreclosure on their home.

I am hopeful that our government will come up with some plans that will actually help those individual homeowners in their time of need. There are real estate investors and second home owners that have found that their decisions may not have been so sound. As difficult as it may be, I hope the consumer bailout will be able to weed out the investor/second home owner and focus on those whose primary dwelling is at risk.

I suppose my hopes are a little too idealistic, but isn’t that where it starts…?