For some folks, there is nothing like moving into a new house.
It’s something they only do but a couple of times over their lives, and even if they are just renting it.
A house just occupies that mythical place in the American imagination.
In Europe, owning a house would be a bit of a luxury, however in America owning one seems completely normal – so much so that not to even live in one would feel downright anti-social!
Certainly, this is exactly why even renters will probably pull out the wine bottles from off their wine racks and celebrate move-in day, toasting an occurrence that is at once ordinary and extraordinary.
For a house in America is supposed to be a home, a spot for settling down and taking roots, and even if one is only renting it’s at least that much closer to fulfilling the American Dream.
Or so things appear: enter the great housing bubble of fin-de-siecle America.
One can only imagine how many bottles were pulled from how many wine racks over the country in festivity of finally owning a home.
Based on some economists, excessive capital had to find an outlet, causing easy credit lines that made a house offered to virtually anybody who requested it.
No money down?
No credit?
No worries!
Or so proclaimed the adverts.
In newspapers, on lamp poles, over radio and television.
Even bad credit was no hindrance.
After all, the government itself was officially pushing home ownership as a societal good.
Nevertheless the bill’s due.
The massive Ponzi Scheme of restructured bad debt from subprime mortgages has flattened, dragging the world economy with it.
Looks like the good times were simply just a big financial bacchanal fueled by wine and wine racks, as it were.
For many, the American Dream remains just that, a dream, while for other people, who have felt it, it has now become a veritable nightmare of debt, falling property values, and foreclosure.