Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Did Pres. Hinckley prophesy the housing crisis?

A gentleman I know posted this on a board I am on. I asked if I could share it, he agreed. He actually said "share it with EVERYONE".


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President Hinckley prophesied the Mortgage Crisis?

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Okay gang, bear with me here. I was preparing a lesson for church last weekend on Helaman 6-12, which is known to many as a lesson on the Pride Cycle. It was very timely in light of it being the same week that wall street almost crashed, and we know this is in large part due to the sub-prime mortgage crisis we are still feeling the effects of. People either bought homes way beyond their price range, or people who had no right buying homes in the first place (based on income) got into mortgages they shouldn't have been granted.

So anyhow, I'm thinking about all of this, and the words from President Hinckley came to mind "buy a modest home and pay it off as quickly as you can" (paraphrased). I knew I'd heard him talk about it a few times in the past, so out of curousity I went to lds.org to see when he spoke of this.

I searched for talks containing the phrase "modest home" by President Hinckley. I got hits in the following years: May 1998, 2000, and 2001. So a little more than 10 years ago Pres. Hinckley started talking about the importance of buying a "modest home".

So then I wondered when the housing boom began. If I could find a graph showing the historical inflation-adjusted median home price in the US, I could see quite easily exactly when people started the frenzy of buying homes they couldn't afford. I finally found such a chart, and I was floored at the data. Take alook and see if you get the chills that I felt:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqrguz/...ited_states.png


Aren't you glad we have a living Prophet on the Earth? I am! If more had listened to his words, I doubt we would be bailing out all the banks.

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