Car repos now surpass the 2008 “financial crisis”. Fed Chairman Powell’s rate cut won’t be a quick fix.

Photo above - hoax AI generated picture of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell riding a bicycle to work. Although Powell has claimed that he bikes to work, no photos exist. If he did, he would probably wear a helmet, right?

Stop smirking that your neighbor’s 1-year-old, $80,000 BMW got towed. Sure, he never should have bought it. He’s a renter and only makes $80,000 a year. He’s an idiot. But he had nothing to do with the highest interest rates in a generation, and car prices surging to astronomical levels during the Chinese covid virus crisis. Both of those are on the federal government. (shutdowns, supply chain interruptions, tariffs, the Federal Reserve hammer that sees the whole world as a nail . . . ) See link at bottom.

Jake the bartender and sometime uber driver bought his BMW because some girl balked at riding in his decrepit 2014 Jeep Wrangler with the chalky plastic fenders and a dashboard full of idiot lights on all the time. Besides, Jake realized he was never going to be able to buy a home of his own on his salary. The max you can borrow on a home is 2 and half times your salary, if you have 20% down. Jake doesn’t have 20% down and there’s nothing decent available for $200,000 anyway, except mobile homes needing demo and reno. So Jake's car got repo’d when he couldn’t keep up with the 8.99% interest rate. It’s summer in Florida, and tourism is down. So are bar tips and uber calls. Jake should have known better. But so should Trump, Powell, Biden, and “Gravity Lending” which put him that BMW despite Jake's hilariously bad FICO score.

It could be worse. Jake could have bought a $200,000 mobile home at 8.99% with zero down, and lost THAT too.

Nobody asked the hard questions of Fed Chairman Powell when he began jacking up interest rates. Things like:

1 – how many additional people will thrown out of work? That's how "taming inflation" works, right?

2 – what effect will high interest rates have on new home and apartment construction?

3 – how much additional interest payments on the $37 trillion national debt will taxpayers be on the hook for?

We don’t ask these questions – as voters and citizens – because we have jobs to go to and families to put food on the table for. It’s the job of the media and our elected politicians to insist on answers. But evidently they are irresponsible idiots focused on advertising revenue and getting re-elected.

The Federal Reserve will certainly cut interest rates this week. Either 25 or 50 basis points. Which probably isn’t going to send balky tourists back to Florida, lead to discounts on new cars, or stem the layoffs at Amazon, Intel, Alphabet, and ASAP food delivery. Oops . . . too late for ASAP Delivery anyway. They filed chapter 7 bankruptcy. Everyone there is gone. Probably applying for jobs at Uber and DoorDash®. Watch out for new drivers willing to undercut your rates, Jake . . .

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Americans Crushed By Auto Loans As Defaults And Repossessions Surge