This diary is about the housing crisis that we are now facing.  A lot of virtual ink has been spilled on the topic by bloggers and economists who understand the problem better than I do.  However, I have seen no reporting on an experience that I had, and which is quite relevant to how the crisis unfolded.

My wife and I bought our home well before the current crisis.  The housing market was "hot" at the time, and interest rates were headed down.  In the years that followed, we refinanced our house several times.  In all cases, we scrupulously avoided pulling any money out of the house, and in all cases, we refinanced when we could get a better interest rate.

And what is unusual about this, you may ask ?

Well, it was simply this:

(a) we refinanced whenever we could get an interest rate that was even marginally (i.e., 1/8th of a percent) lower than the rate that we had.

(b) refinancing never cost us a penny.  The net out of pocket cost to us was...Zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Zed.

(c) refinancing was a relatively painless exercise.  The only things I had to do was email my broker with copies of our latest pay-stubs, show an appraiser around, and spend 30 mins with a notary public that would come to our house with a stack of documents.

Our broker took care of it all.

There's more...

The public outcry when Obama decided to forgo public financing was deafening, I assume. I didn't hear many people caring, but I kept being told everyone cared, so I just figured the first collective gasp was so loud it blew out my eardrums.

Of course, while members of the media reported on fretting by various other members of the media over what this meant for Obama's message of change, we were also treated to McCain's camp pulling out one of those labels that the media has given him: "campaign finance reformer".

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The true power of the left is the truth of our economic situation. Read the facts below and cease wondering whether Americans should be exercising their collective power to achieve a more just and equitable society.

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