remodeling craze

According to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Americans spend $400 billion per year on remodeling their homes. That includes both do-it-yourself and professional remodeling. Entire industries have grown up around this wasteful and destructive craze.

Says David Crook: "Magazines and television programs entice homeowners to spend tens of thousands of dollars for new kitchens with custom-built cabinets, granite countertops and designer appliances."

Magazines, TV shows, talk shows, architects, builders, Home-Depot, and everyone else wanted a piece of the action. This was large scale environmental rape.

Unfortunately for those very same Americans, they also "paid" for it with money they did not have. Money that came from second mortgages and home equity loans. Loans that pushed many of them, some of whom were almost done paying off their original mortgage, into foreclosure. Now we are supposed to feel sorry for them too.

Those oversized mansions, stuffed to the gills with useless stainless steel and granite, are now standing empty, wasting away in the sun. 

Fortunately, the crisis put an end to all that nonsense. Nothing like a depression to save the planet.