This whole financial disaster is just a crock! Hop in the way back machine and travel with me to an age of kool-aid and greed.

Back in 05′ I was just a wee grass hopper, only twenty four years of age. And the world was a hustling and a bustling. Everywhere, people were going a million miles a minute, especially in Bend Oregon.

If you were to ask the people around you what they were running around so much for, the would have answered, “Well, I’m building wealth of course”. And as I have mentioned before on this blog, everyone was chiming the same freaking lines. The most basic of which was “BUY REAL ESTATE”.

“But why?” I would ask.

“Kid, haven’t you heard? Real estate only goes up.” they would all say.

So what does a guy like me do? I research the crap out of the housing market, which leads me to try and understand economics and markets in general (stock, emerging, etc). I realise that things “are not adding up” and soon conclude that we have a serious bubble on our hands. And it will not end well.

Also, I ended up warning my friends (or trying to). But did any of my friends listen to me? Nope. I even went so far as to write a program to scrape housing data from the county website to prove my stupid point. And what do most of my friends face today? Either foreclosures, short sales, or high mortgage payments.

And so I sit with my little munchkin in my arms and wonder. If little ol’ Jared could see what was happening, why couldn’t Ben Bernanke? And I’ll tell you why, because Ben Bernanke is a frickin joke.