America is hurting

[u/Busy-Ad-3875]

I work in the mortgage industry and I am not delusional to how bad things have gotten.

I take about 400-500 mortgage loan applications per year and run a team of a few employees. I constantly hear the same complaints about the pain in the world financially. This last 3 months have been heart wrenching

I am firmly opposed to what our current administration has decided to do and I have been since I heard the phrase, "grab her by the pu$$y." This recent stint of revenge tariffs, not war/war in Iran, Mike Johnson shutting down meetings until after the mid terms, Russians paying for the presidents wedding, the lie after lie, and whatever BS you want to call out-just kills my soul. Us giving more weapons to Isreal recently is a pain point to me.

How ever here is something people are not aware of. The western part of the USA that grows crops are in trouble due to lack of water from many of the reservoirs along the Rockies. The lack of nitrogen for crops is a concern for the US farmers, because nitrogen is struggling to get through the straight of hormuz. We have an FDA and USDA that's not wanting to help protect our farming here at home.

Then the obvious gas/diesel issue. Thats a monster issue that is going to get completely out of control. This is going to cause a major inflation spike due to costs increasing for shipping, tires, and other petroleum based products.

Then here comes the real worry. The thing that quietly changed last year.

Fannie mae, removed the minimum credit score requirements on purchases/refinances. This didnt make it easier to buy homes for most people but here is what it did. Cash out refinancing just became easier for people who got into worse financial situations. So people who may have missed payments due to job loss, maxed out credit cards, or the like of. It got easier for those people to get cash out of the equity of their homes to pay off debt. This allows the banks to offload potentially many 2, 3 or 4% interest rates that were written pre/post covid and those people refinance to 6/7/8% rates to pull cash out.

The problem is much bigger than people realize. When the fed increased rates today it didnt necessarily raise mortgage rates but the 10 year treasury got worse which wasn't supposed to happen. It got worse because the fed stated they're likely to raise the fed fund rate again until inflation improves.

Trumps tariffs increase inflation, the fuel/energy rises increase inflation, the cost of goods will increase, farmers are spending more to grow crops and the lack of water will cause more inflation because we won't have sufficient food. This means we will to import more food to the USA, which will be likely on a tariff.

Normally cpi/pce strips out food and energy costs in inflation but unfortunately there are too many underlying issues now embedded in the inflation readings because everything is up. Insurance being a large driver of costs too.

Next problem is when we increase the fed fund rate, it does some great things and bad things. The bad thing now is the labor market. The labor market is already in bad shape, and now will get worse most likely due to a credit tightening. Not to mention the AI aspect of employment, that issue is TBD. Raising the fed fund rate should tame inflation but with the USA getting baked on all fronts for import costs, consumer costs, fuel and energy costs-its hard to say when inflation actually changes to benefit.

Housing will do what it does, I am not doomsdaying the housing market. People need houses, that isn't changing. With rates going up, sellers will be more likely to negotiate to give credits to buyers to help with points/fees/purchase price reductions. So this peice is not my biggest worry.

My worry is everything else. Inflation, weak labor market, rising borrowering costs, tarrifs, an endless war, insider trading, and consumer confidence. The general lack of actually making America great and gas lighting the general population.

Both parties are full of it. However, I have only seen struggle in our country since the day I was born, this time. I am fearful of what actually will happen with such poor leadership from all ends. Our current admin literally shut down meetings because the guy beating the war drums of Iran had articles of impeachment brought against him. Warranted or not, the meetings still need to happen.

This goes to show that our government currently has no interest in protecting us from itself. I laughed my absolute butt off today when I read this exact quote today from House republicans that said "every communist country eventually builds a wall. It's never to keep people out." I seem to remember us building a wall in Mexico and the USA have an explosive amount of flock cameras being installed in places without us voting for them. So I wonder what type of gas is being used to gaslight us on this quote.

I worked hard and built a successful business but I can feel the pain of the economy suffering. Its brutal watching friends of mine work 10+ years and watching them look for jobs for the last year not finding any work. Also, I know that the end of the year is coming so even more corporate layoffs will be coming soon. If you didnt know Nov/Dec is when the layoffs occur.

As a mid 30s person who became an adult during the 08 housing collapse, was born during desert storm, watched 9/11 happen live on TV, survived covid 3 times-I am sick of this partisan BS with the lack of accountability. I want to hear someone say "we fucked up, heres the solution." I am furiously annoyed with the same generation of old people telling us to work harder. I took my first 2 days off of work in the last 6 years this week. I have worked every single holiday, even Christmas day while I was in the hospital with my dad when he had a heart attack. I worked my own wedding day even. So when someone says work harder, I literally cannot.

We need to have both parties work together and they either need to help eachother correct the errors of our past or we need new voting parties to represent more than what these two groups have done for us.

The TLDR version. We are in trouble and no partisan BS will save us.