Today's Monopoly Money IN Prospective "WHAT RECESSION"?

This is an e-mail I wrote to a long time friend I hadn’t seen in ages.  He was “conned” by his new wife to refinance 2 homes he owned before his “new” marriage to finance her daughters wedding to “her” standards.  An absurd amount of money for anyone, but for him it was disastrous, $80,000, now he says with the economy he will have to work another 10 years more than he planned to to service and repay this debt.  I sent him this message, I thought it interest to some.  This was over a year ago, so the absurdity now is probably much worse:

Gracias senor for your time and keeping me in your life.  I really enjoyed our time together, always have.  So strange to talk about old days and how we are today.  Garbage in garbage out, and yet here we are.
Just got home last night, haven’t even checked e-mails and came across a couple of tid bits we were discussing the other night.  2008 lost 20+ billionaires and gained a couple.  Total loss of the nearly 800 known world billionaires was $2.2 TRILLON dollars  That’s a lot of coin for only 800 individuals and they have at least that much more still!  Only 25% of the billionaires were self made.  I guess money begets money once you make more than you can spend.
Rolls Royce profit went UP 28% in 2008, they are ahead of last years pace thus far in 2009 says their CEO and are rolling out their next cheapie model and hopes to triple sales.  Their existing models go for $400,000 and their new model will ONLY be $250,000.
Vanisha Bhatia, 27 year old daughter of Indian Steel billionaire, spent $60,000,000 on her 5 day wedding.  That’s about .0017% of the percentage you spent on your daughter“s wedding.  Makes it seem like an eloping exercise, eh?  That’s 600 times more for one stinking wedding, or 300 $200,000 homes cashed out.  And YOUR amount spent was incredible, probably in the top 99% at least.  
I bring this up only to support my attitude of what % of the wealth belongs to what % of the population, and what does that mean in terms of the whole mess we as human beings find ourselves in.  As I said, “what is the VALUE of anything”?  We give it a “dollar” value and that dollar has NO stable connotation to anything any more. So what is the “value” of ’A’ house or an egg?  I mean how can “A” house be “valued” in 2006 at let’s say $500,000, and egg’s are $1.00 a dozen.  500,000 dozen eggs(DE)=”A” house.  Now in 2009, that same “A” house=250,000 DE, where did the other 250,000 DE go?  Somebody’s wherehouse?  Yeah, called a bank or Rolls Royce’s, etc. (The DE all went to someone who doesn’t even need the DE). Now these people who bought the “A” house has to pay 3-4,000 DE per month to stay in the “A” house and owes 400,000 DE still, when the guy next door who just bought the same=equal “A” house paid only 1/2 or 50,000 (DE) to get in and only has to pay 1.5-2,000 DE per month to remain in the same=equal  ”A” house.  They both have the same=equal job. Do we have a LONG term problem here?  That’s a lot of work to pay for the eggs to pay for the house that isn’t worth the eggs. And that’s just in the US of A.  Multiply the 250,000 DOZEN’S of eggs that have REAL VALUE (you can sustain life) times the 100′s of thousands of “faked” value those “A” homes represented and you see that there are ZILLION’S of something of VALUE in very FEW people’s ”wherehouses”.  And a tremendous quantity of households are also paying 2x or more every month for years than the true “VALUE” of what it’s worth,, or +-50% more going into a very few coffers for redistribution on an equal plane.  $60 M for a wedding?  $400 K for an automobile, and sales are up?  Sure you don’t want pud?  Small fee.
I am only talking about the “housing (shelter) market”, how about the other 2 necessities of life, food and security?
I just get this strange feeling over and over we are not, as US citizens, earthmates, etc, getting the picture of what we have become and where we are going.  No comprende, NADA!  800 INDIVIDUALS=$3 TRILLION and growing.  That’s the wealth of continents, not households.  You could gather them all in Vacaville’s gymnasium. How much can they eat? How many could they feed?  Why is there starvation on this planet?  When is accumulation for a rainy day enough?   A billion dollars without interest could sustain a family of 4spending $50 each per day for 13,700 years!  Not to knock Bill Gates what-so-ever, but as the worlds richest PERSON (1), he could support a family of 4 at $50 each a day for nearly 550,000 years without another penny made. I mean, what is the cut off point where someone could lose 1/2 their worth and still live 1000+ times more than their existing life style commands?  Can someone who lives on $100,000 a year afford to have that cut in half and still live even close to their existing life style?  What percentage?  I bet very few.  How about $500,000 a year cut to $250,000, what life style changes would the large percentage of these people have to make?  How many Zero changes?  Now I am getting closer to what makes the difference between a  ”Have” and a illusioned “want-to-be”.  Therefore, only a very small percentage of earth’s population can comfortably survive a minor/major down turn for even a short period of time without having an impact on what was believed to be “normal”. That there is the crux of our problem I feel, we are very, very, very, very top heavy.  Darwinism is alive and well.  What percentage of people have not felt the economic down turn one iota?  5.46 billion people reside on this planet, and how few with soooooooo much of what’s needed to survive.

Sorry, the absurdity of the ways things are astonish me.  Thinking out of the box to someone else puts a little perspective on my plate.
David