I feel the need to intercede and say while these are problems, there are solutions. Have companies who do certain amounts of business in the USA operate according to USA wage cap laws for American employees, make companies provide full incorporation papers and deny any with endless circles of ownership. It's difficult, but doable.

Funny that I bought my house in nov of last year in the midst of the fall.

I was under the impression that if we made a salary cap it would be to pin down the jackals who do exactly this sort of thing. My understanding is that most laws are made to ease people's financial crises and then the more wealthy use them to their advantage by twisting numbers and loopholes, whereas this is trying to cut the loopholes as well as a 'roof' of financial gain.

After all when making these salary caps, we're talking specifically about these very same guys.

I'll tackle the two issues in this thread separately.

1) 12% of all homes in forclosure!!!??? Yikes! On the one hand, I'm concerned for good, hardworking people who are being driven from their homes. For those who have only themselves to blame (poor financial management): I could care less. For those who are being hit by the ripples of the economy: Punch the next banker you see in the face. They've earned it.*

*I should specify, I really only have a problem with large banks because of all the stupid stuff they do. I bank exclusively with credit unions, however, and from what I can tell they've largely avoided this crisis by not being stupid.

2) On the flip side, I'm ok with this. Check out the graphs of the left of this article. Jeebus! 12% year over year price increase of a house (see the "National Housing Price Index" graph). I'm calling it right now: Bull. Shit. Real estate has value, and land won't necessarily always be cheap, especially with population increases. But the serious spike in price increases (check out the other graph that shows localized costs...upwards of 30% increases per year!) indicates that houses were being priced way out of what the market was willing to bear. Lenders/banks really should have known this and adjusted their lending practices accordingly. I'm down with some price deflation so we can get back to sensible costs.

EDIT: The other issue, the idea of wage caps. I dunno. The liberatarian in me says that if people can figure out a way to get the market to bear their stupid salary, let them. Few people would say, for example, that Andrew Carnegie didn't earn his salary. But then, what I really am thinking is that we don't live in a free market, and I wouldn't want to. I want to live in a sensibly regulated market. There are other creative ways of capping salaries. For example: No one can make more than 50 times the lowest wage in a given company. This is also what progressive taxes are for. Instead of regulating salaries, I'd much rather logically regulate what a company can do. Thats a tough proposition, I agree. But it seems to be the fair thing to do. No sense keeping down the next Carnegie because he doesn't feel like he'd be sufficiently rewarded for reinventing our country's industrial system.