Mortgage Ballad Blues

This morning I came across a ballad about real estate speculation and the financial crisis created by over leveraging. Fred E. Foldvary, senior editor of the Progress Report suggests you sing this to the tune of "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan.;

Once upon a time
you were a man who bought
a lot of land!

Speculators like you were buying real estate
with no money down!
It was easy to have a bash.
Banks said please, take the cash!

Now you’ve gotten repossessed.
You feel obsessed and repressed.
You can’t make your mortgage
any m-o-o-o-o-o-o-r-e!
You’re bankrupt now, landless!
Like an unsold house.

There's a lot more to it. This is a very small excerpt. You might want to pop over to Foldvary's blog to see the rest. It makes me think we'll be hearing lots of housing woe lyrics coming out of the Country & Western field, too. "Lost my girl, lost my job, lost the three houses I was sure would go up top…"

Does any body not want more than they have? Maybe there's just a line between those who'll add value to something in order to get a greater return and those who expect outside forces to do all the value adding while they still collect the returns…