Americans Have Completely Lost it Or?

Just read this article in Marketwatch and am severely disappointed at what I read, hence the title of this post.

Now remember those recent debt stories like this one also in Marketwatch, or this one in the NY Times about the exploding sub-prime auto loans?  Well Americans are not stupid, they have just lost their minds.  When they are gonna get a sub-prime loan, might as damn well get the fattest vehicle on the lot!!  Hell yea, "we don't deny anybody" ads are everywhere.  If you not gonna pay anyway, might as well ride in style for 2-3 months!! 

Now the last SUV boom went from early 90's to about 2007-8 when subprime loans hit the fan the first time and gas in the US hit $4/gallon (really gallons?  WTF or where in the world is anyone still using gallons?).  That was when reality hit the debt laden Americans.  It was not just the SUV (truck charade as a passenger vehicle with a fancy new acronym and commercials of vehicles on driving on unpaved roads into the sunset, in a nation with more paved roads per-capata then anywhere else on the planet) monthly $500 for five years, but the $1,000 it takes to change the tyres or the estimated $9,000 a year cost of owning the vehicle on top of the monthly payment (including depreciation, gas and maintenance according to AAA), that really set the average debt laden American to think twice about continuing to buy them, free money or not.  Lets also not forget the crash of the debt bubble which cost millions of American jobs in the course of a few months.

Either way, I was ecstatic.  Whatever it took to make the idiot Americans who just spent some $2 Trillion dollars on two pointless wars wake the F&%^ up was just fine with me.  The SUV craze, and the most stupid thing that ever happened to the American Consumer landscape was finally over.

Unfortunately it took till 2012 for nearly every auto maker to have a decent "small car" on offer.  People actually bought them.  Unfortunately according to the articles I just read, those sales peaked just last year.  When I was back in the US visiting this spring the only small car on the TV I can remember being marketed hard was the Mini.  Every other ad I can remember was for Trucks / SUV's again, climbing mountains with no paved roads, bringing families to camping sites or the beach with their Truck/SUV filled with Chinese plastic BS, not carousing suburban mall parking lots where 99% of them end up.  It's working.  Now the Truck/SUV is topping sales again!  What is up with that?  Gas gas prices are only $.50 from their all time high, averaging $3.50 / gallon nationwide?  

It is the Sub-Prime Loan.  Cheap easy money going to those who are MOST affected by the millions in marketing dollars poured into mass media also happen to be those most likely to max out what they can spend, giving into the unscrupulous and money driven dealers and sales people who know how lucrative it is to make that high interest loan and fat paycheck when those loans are sold to the Wall Street Vultures who will repack them and strip them and sell derivatives on or against them... You know the drill.

Have Americans completely lost it?  Damn right they have! There are like three active wars in the Mid east now not to mention the complete destabilization of Libya and Egypt and most of N. Africa is in some kind of conflict with rebels.  Ukraine is at war with very large implications.  Anything could spark a major oil price hike.  Are the US people completely ignorant of these things?  Absolutely.  That gas could be $5-$6 in the next 2 years?   Yes. That the US fund to build roads / highways / etc. is bankrupt and has to be bailed out right now by legislation / budget items?  Damn right!  That several states are being forced to increase their gas taxes and the Fed might do it as well?  Yes, Yes Yes...  It's better than an orgasm, it's a perfect storm brewing.  Americans are prone to mass suicide in more ways then any culture / experimental nation in the course of history. 

I hated SUV (living room trucks) since the day the first one was made.  I hoped they were going to be a footnote one day.  Guess I am wrong on that one.  There is a saying about markets:  "Markets can remain irrational longer than one can remain solvent." or something to that effect.  Well it seems Americans can remain Completely Insane much longer than any rational person would think they could get their S%&^ back together again.

I guess all the hormones and chemicals and GMO fat and sugar laden nutrient deficient food has managed to not only double their body size, but their ignorance as well.