On debt-related stress and America's new-found frugality...

There are times when I feel peeved, even unsettled, after reading news of what's happening around us. Lately, one of the latest topics is debt-related stress "suffered" by Americans.

I double-quoted the word "suffered" because alot of those cases sound more like whining to me, longing for the good 'ole days when bank credits were free-flowing, and everyone - literally everyone, even your dogs - could get huge loans and live large. Some has made it sound like it's a birth right that all Americans should have. The thinking goes like this: If my neighbor can afford to live in a big mansion, why can't I? Why shouldn't I? The banks are stupid enough to lend me the money afterall. Now that the property market has crashed, and prices has stopped rising (in most cases, it's still falling, albeit at slower clip), these same people complain that they can't repay the loans, or that the government does not step in to help them out. Stories after stories like this abound, when people are almost bragging about going into foreclosure, and let the stupid banks suffered, until the banks come begging these free-riders to just stay in the goddamned properties, for free.

That's the point when it makes my blood boil. When the times were good, no one was complaining about banks stuffing loans to their hands, as if they were free money. No one was complaining about government (like George W. Bush's push for the notion of ownership nation). No one was complaining about too much fineprints in the contracts that the borrowers did not bother to read, because they were always counting on the next guy to prop up the property market, and they just kaching their property (with no money down) like a personal piggybank or private ATM.

Alot of people compare the current recession (dubbed the Great Recession) with the Great Depression in 1929. But there's simply no comparison, of the generations that grew up under the Great Depression, their frugal ways of living, and steeliness towards life and any hardship that might ensue. Our generation now only complains about not getting help when they don't get to sustain the good way of living, shifting blame wherever they can find, even to the farfetched corners of currency valuation of Chinese Yuan. This is just so very pathetic, totally.