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82 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Takers Take on What's Wrong and Why HE Shouldn't Have to Stop Taking, But Everyone Else Should, June 13, 2009
This review is from: Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown (Hardcover)
This tale, well-known from its much-hyped "New York Times Magazine" excerpting, is based on the idea that it "if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone."
Well, not so much.
Andrews, the author, is a "New York Times" financial reporter who gets in deep with the mortgage credit crisis that, in a wider view, destablized the U.S. economy. Definitely a story many can relate to and quite timely. (Timely enough to save Mr. Andrews house, due to book revenues, one gathers from recent interviews.)
But what Mr. Andrews misses in his "it can happen to anyone" premise is that most of the people in deep are, we hope, not like him.
Andrews, by his own admission, is highly paid ($120k/year) but is deeply upset that, after 20-plus years of marriage and three kids, he is required to pay his ex-wife alimony and child support that total a large chunk of his take home pay--something he repeatedly deems unfair. (Seriously, a HUGE part of this book is how unfair life is to Mr. Andrews, who apparently defines "unfair" as anything that includes him living up to his financial obligations.)
Mr. Andrews also deftly skims over the fact that he is, in truth, a deadbeat dad. (Though he repeatedly claims that many of his excesses--the fancy house, vacations, clothes, dinners out, etc.--are "for the children.") He admits his wages are actually GARNISHED for these cursed child support/alimony payments, something that doesn't happen without a court-order, which can't come without a serious history of abuse by the payee. Mr. Andrews also never once mentions the fact that this large sum of money he pays to his ex (whom I ended up feeling deep sympathy for, and whom I hope takes him back to court for a cut of the book profits) is tax deductible, by him, and taxed, for his ex-wife, therefore leaving her FAR less (in actual cash) than the amount he repeats ad nauseum, and him with a likely hefty tax refund at year's end. (And while he, again and again, stresses that "half his income" is just not enough for himself alone to live on, he feels it is presumably way more than his ex-wife WITH CUSTODY OF HIS THREE CHILDREN needs. A concept so selfish and dense it is almost laughable.)
Then there's the new wife. A wife with basically no job history and four kids of her own to support. (Though she does have a much-documented history of bankruptcy, apparently.) She's not well portrayed in Mr. Andrews story, though based on interviews given jointly to promote the book, apparently they're still together. Mr. Andrews dwells on how unhappy and miserable his first marriage was--something I'm sure his kids are thrilled to read about--and how in love he is with his new wife, only to trash her throughly in print as greedy, lazy and a demanding spendthrift. (Gee, wonder why Mr. Andrews marriages don't work out?)
So, Mr. Andrews and his new bride buy a house that Mr. Andrews, from minute one, knows he can't possibly afford. And, guess what? They then can't afford it! (Shocking, I know. Hope no one thinks I'm spoiling the ending.)
In "Busted," Mr. Andrews, again and again, strongly contends that it is the people around him--his new wife, his ex-wife, his mortgage broker (who gets him refinanced multiple times, in ever-stranger loans to continue this lifestyle Mr. Andrews freely admits they can't afford but he's unwilling to forego), the banks, the economy (which he insists cost his new wife two different jobs), Alan Greenspan (whom Andrews actually personally confronts and blames in a cringe-worthy scene of massive self-delusion), the system-at-large, even his own kids--who are responsible for what happened. In short, it's everyone's fault but Mr. Andrews.
And, in that sense--a complete and total lack of personal responsibility, combined with an impossibly smug sense of entitlement--perhaps Mr. Andrews really has hit on the key reason why the U.S. economy is in it's current state. It's not the economy, it's the people like Mr. Andrews who abuse it.
Though he apparently intended "Busted" as a sob story, or at least wrote it as such, about what was wrong with the economy, it's a far more accurate look at what is wrong with society (namely, people like Mr. Andrews and his wife, who take and take and take) that is truly highlighted in this tale of woe penned by an out-of-touch, middle-aged, wealthy white man who just can't imagine that he doesn't deserve to live better than "the little people" that surround him.
The endless justifications and explanations of why he is so very different than all the other morons in his same situation are mind-numbing, boring and just plain annoying to read. It's like talking to a very self-centered friend for 300-odd pages about why they deserve so much better than they have. Do yourself a favor and skip it!
EDITED TO NOTE: I just wanted to add, to all those who say I'm not understanding or being holier than thou, or something else along those lines ... If an average citizen had written this book, yes, I'd still think they were irresponsible BUT I don't think I'd feel the same level of vitriol I do about Andrews' story. Mr. Andrews is NOT just an ordinary guy. He's the chief Washington D.C. FINANCIAL REPORTER for the "New York Times." He's (very well) paid to educate the public on finances, and he's been doing it for decades now. I don't buy for one second that he didn't know better than just about everyone in the U.S., save a handful of Wall Street execs, EXACTLY what he was getting into and what was going on. Truthfully, we all should have known better, but the fact is Mr. Andrews DID, and still jumped in with both feet and now wants us to feel sorry for him for doing so. Galling doesn't even begin to cover it.
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46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Never mind the wife, June 5, 2009
This review is from: Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown (Hardcover)
The most basic rule to know when purchasing real estate is that you can afford a house that costs about three times your gross salary. I would certainly expect someone with "lots of financial savvy" to be aware of this old chestnut, one which so many people have disregarded over the last decade, ultimately resulting in our current disaster. He admitted in his NYT article that his effective gross pay after alimony was about $40,000 a year. He then takes out a mortgage on a $460,000 house? *Eleven* times income! That was all sorts of stupid, the root of it really, and he says nothing about it other than that a mortgage broker was willing to abet the act. The spendthrift wife is really just frosting on the stupid house purchase cake, resulting in a book full of "OMG! I can't pay my bills!" Wise up, NYT - your readers deserve better than a clueless moron who can write well.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Classic example of "have your cake and eat it too" thinking, February 6, 2010
This review is from: Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown (Hardcover)
It would be tempting to believe that so many people who have gotten caught in the mortgage crisis were duped into their bad decisions - lead down the primrose path by greedy bankers and people with no scruples who were just looking to enrich themselves. That's the principle of this book, anyway. Unfortunately - as it usually is - the truth is inconvenient, and the truth is that no one was holding a gun to Andrews' head when he took out a massive "liar's loan" to buy a house he couldn't afford for himself and wife number 2 in 2004.
First, let me just say that Andrews might be a really fine person and tons of fun at parties, but throughout the entire book it's pretty apparent that he wasn't thinking with his "big head" when he was making tons of bad financial decisions. He ditches his wife of 21 years - apparently not realizing that there's a reason why people say after 20 years of marriage, "it's cheaper to keep her." He initiated the divorce, he has three kids, and his first wife apparently didn't work - that's basically a recipe for getting socked with huge alimony and child support payments, yet he seems incredulous and petulant that he would have to support his former family even after he's moved on to his magical new beginning. He ends up with a "captivating" woman he knew in high school - a homemaker with 4 kids and apparently not much in the way of common sense, financial savvy, or ambition. Now, I don't know if this is true everywhere, but "homemaker" where I come from means "woman with no job." Patty, his new wife, hasn't worked in over 20 years, yet throughout the book, Andrews talks about expecting her to get a job making at least $40,000 a year to supplement the family's income. Generally, 50+ year-old women with no recent work experience are lucky to get jobs in convenience stores, much less a job earning that much. Andrews takes himself to task for having "unreasonable expectations" about his wife's ability to get a job (or, apparently, keep one) but she must have been agreeing to his requests or feeding into it in some way. It was very obvious, to me, that Andrews was no different than any other older man in the throes of a midlife crisis looking to recapture his youth by bonking someone who isn't his wife. The only thing that didn't surprise me is that the woman wasn't 20-30 years younger than him, as that's how it usually goes. Patty comes across as both weak and a bit of a hysteric through the whole thing, not to mention more than a little wifty.
That leads me to my next point. Two people bringing home $6,000 a month (take-home, not gross, as he states) should be able to live relatively comfortably - I don't care who you are, or where you live. That is a very respectable amount of money. However, when you do something incredibly boneheaded - like buy an overpriced house you can't afford, with a mortgage you don't understand and also can't pay for, no matter how much money you make, you're going to end up in difficulties. Added to those difficulties was the minor issue that the family just couldn't stop spending. My husband was laid off this year, and when he lost his job, we locked down our spending - no more cable, we downgraded our cell phone plans, we stopped shopping unless it was for food. In the face of unbelievable financial shortfalls, the Andrews' didn't change their standard of living one iota. Buying new clothes at J. Crew. A thousand dollars (A THOUSAND DOLLARS - I guess they've never heard of coupons or sales) on groceries every month. Keeping the phone/cable/internet (tip: if you have a cell phone, you don't need a home landline phone). Hysteria McDrama (his second wife) can't keep a job, yet keeps spending like there's no tomorrow. He bemoans not being able to fix his house or furniture and yet they're still going out to eat. This is when you wish you could tie someone to the railroad tracks to ensure they will be hit by the clue train. When you don't have any money, you have to live like you don't have any money. Not like things are still great. They didn't, and that's how they ran up their credit cards.
And then there's that whole issue. Andrews says at one point he threatens Patty with taking away the cards, and I am amazed he didn't. The controversy over Patty's bankruptcies is well-documented elsewhere, and I have to believe Andrews knew she had racked up FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS of credit card debt in her previous marriage, that had to be discharged via bankruptcy. Again, this is "little head" thinking. I'm frankly amazed they didn't end up worse off than they did.
Back in 2006, when the real estate market in our area was hot, we toyed with the idea of selling our house (in which we had about $130,000 in equity due to the inflated housing market) and buying a new one. We found a great house that was just slightly out of our price range, but we really loved it and could totally see making a home there. We had quite a bit of cash we could put towards the sale, in additon to the equity we could put in once our house sold. Our realtor had us contact a mortgage broker he knew, who came up with all kinds of crazy ways we could pay for the house, including a scheme where we could pay NOTHING down and finance 100 percent of the price of the house and still only have a $1200 a month mortgage payment. When we told him we were only interested in one type of mortgage - a traditional, documented 15 or 30-year fixed - the options got more limited and we quickly realized we would end up with a payment we could afford, but not comfortably. I didn't want to spend nights lying awake worrying about how we would pay the mortgage if my husband lost his job, so we walked away from the deal. It was a great house in a great area. It's worth close to $125,000 less than what the sellers were asking in 2006. We dodged a major bullet on that one.
And that's really the takeaway from this book. Yes, there were predatory lending practices. Yes, there was a huge amount of deception and irresponsibility in the mortgage industry, and the financial industry in general. It shouldn't have been allowed to happen, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen again. But no one was forcing people to buy more house than they could afford. No one was forcing people to take out "liar's loans," or mortgages without a down payment, or ARM mortgages where the interest rate would leap to 11 percent in 3 years. Andrews could have had his wonderful "new beginning" with his new wife in an affordable apartment, but I imagine that wasn't as romantic or even acceptable to Mrs. Princess (who I would bet money was goading Andrews into a lot of this, including buying the house and running up the credit cards). The Andrews emphasized superficial trappings of success over happiness, which is certainly a mistake a lot of people make. They could have rented an apartment, kept Mrs. Princess at home where she obviously wanted to be, and been a lot happier and more stable (well, until she maxed out the credit cards at Saks, but that's a different issue). If Andrews is a "typical American" who got taken by scheming bankers, we're all in trouble, because that means the typical American doesn't have the intelligence or common sense to get out of the path of an oncoming speeding semi that's about to make them into road pizza. If Andrews hadn't been letting his johnson make the decisions, he would have been able to see all this coming ten miles away. Anyone with half a brain would look at woman who had already filed for bankruptcy once, hadn't worked in 20 years, and hadn't protested making an incredibly dumb decision like buying an unaffordable house, and think to themselves, "here comes trouble."
I'm curious to know if Andrews and his second wife are still married or if she's ditched him and moved on to a prospect more likely to keep her in Saks clothes and expensive houses. If that hasn't happened yet - brace yourself, Andrews, because it's probably coming. Andrews got taken, but not by the mortgage industry. He got taken by his wife, and there's really no excuse for a man of his intelligence and background not knowing better.
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