Friday, March 14, 2008

Ran Prieur

Ran Prieur: "March 13. Slow week. In case any of you missed it, there's a lot of buzz about people in Florida squatting in mansions by buying them and then not paying mortgages, and there's such a backlog on foreclosures that the banks leave them alone for two years or more. Joe comments:
If this sort of thing gets to be more common, folks that can pay their mortgages or rent just won't, and there will be nothing anyone can do about it. There would be a forced jubilee just because there aren't enough foreclosure courts and sheriffs to enforce the laws! I predicted this three years ago in The Slow Crash, except I was wrong about the mechanism... Interest rates will rise and pop the housing bubble, and so many people will default on their mortgages that it will be impossible to evict them all, or to keep squatters out of all the vacant bank-'owned' houses. The elite will try to repress squatters enough to preserve their property/power, but not so much that it fuels a movement for land reform."

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