Hey all,

I know very little about economics (etc.), so I've been trying to read these articles.  Perhaps I'll figure it out sooner or later.  =P

In other news, this article reminds me of a presentation I saw on Wednesday night after Mass.  Some people from my chapel invited me over to their place where I first fed a rather random dinner (spaghetti, potato chips, bagels, pepsi, and finally cheesecake), then shown a business presentation.

The original portion of the presentation seemed to be about buying new properties (etc.), but, as it went a little further on, I came to understand that they were suggesting that we (people in general) change our mortgages: paying the whole bill over 30-40 years intead of 15 years or less.  The idea is then to keep paying the same amount that you normally did at the 15 years: 1/2 to the bank, 1/2 to another fund (where the money can collect interest).  They theorised that a constantly uprising market (which I was a bit suspicious about) would permit the latter fund to go up and above the debt created by the longer mortgage period.  Although I didn't necessarily like this idea, I can see why they'd want to do this.  Supposedly, in the end, you can use the money (and interest) from the latter fund to pay off the debt from the mortgage and to buy more houses, which can be used for the same purpose.  Over and over again, you'll make a bit extra money.

I hope that explanation was somewhat clear.  As I said, I'm not well-versed at all in economics, so perhaps you can ask for more clarification later if you need it.  Beyond this whole scheme to earn lots of interest and basically use the banks to make money for you, they wanted everyone (at the presentation) to join up with their outfit and to become loan officers, teaching people about this system.  Then, we were also to go out and recruit people.  Can anyone say, "pyramid scheme?!"

*Sigh.*  Unless I'm completely wrong, this is the kind of foolishness that ChantCD and others here have been warning about.  Those giving the presentations did insist that the saved money (and the extra earned from interest in the latter fund) is to be used only to continue the purchasing of houses, etc.  They insisted also that one can't go out and buy sportscars, etc.  So, in the end, they are learning about discipline, but I think they have the wrong economic setup. Am I right on this?  I mean, it seems wrong to me to not pay off one's mortgage, which they said is a bad idea because then all of your money is tied up paying off the loans instead of earning more money in the longrun.

Those are just some thoughts.  I hope they applied to this topic, but feel free to critique and comment on them so that I can learn more!

Thanks everyone,

Pinoy Monk