Big Leather Couch

UPDATE: Check out this report I just found from ABC News:

I was reading an article by AP Business Reporter Anne D'Innocenzio entitled "Americans Unload Prized Possessions To Make Ends Meet".

This is where we are today. Our next door neighbors are going online and posting ads on Craigs List and eBay for the heirloom china so the food, gas and utility bills can be paid for a few months.

The article introduces us to families who have used these services or the 'old-fashioned' flea markets. Even before the flea market was the pawn shop. That dark place that always had a heavy gate covering the windows. I used to think of what wonders lurked behind those doors. The stories the many objects held. Broken love, lost lives, shattered dreams.

On TV and in the movies, the pawn shop was always connected with some nefarious crime figure. The pawn shop is where stolen items went, no questions asked, for $0.30 on the dollar being received. Well, you know it is stolen (you stole it) and the dark, creepy, proprietor of the shop knows it is hot, you take what you can get and go.

Or the newer pawn shop is where drugs are sold. Bullet-proof glass throughout. The owner safe from some foolish soul who thinks he can make a quick score. All transactions made through a turnstile also made of bullet-proof glass.

When eBay began it was more about collectibles being bought and sold between collectors. Then businesses got involved in an easy way to unload last years models. Today it is about a woman in Alabama who uses the service and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

The woman's husband has been disabled since 2006 and rising utility, food, gas and medical costs has forced these people to offer up their possessions to strangers.

And with this need generated by a failing economy, new sites appear on the internet. For example, AuctionPal.com, began last September. The site which assists beginners selling things online, for-sale listings rose 66 percent from February to March. A huge increase from the 25 percent to 30 percent average monthly pace since the company was formed.

Then you say to yourself, or at least I did, 'someone is buying these items, so people must have money.' But the bottom line is, people are selling their clothes to live and that in itself is insane!

Online sites talk about people being more desperate to sell. Some sites even offer the money upfront, before an item is sold. At the same time the prices of second-hand items are falling, selling for up to 25% less than a year ago. The market is saturated. How many people are really in the market for Dooney & Bourke handbags, Hermes leather jackets, Versace jeans and silk shirts, even if you can get them for $0.50 on the dollar.

Will this spiral stop in January, no matter who stands out in the cold on the steps of The U.S. Capitol?

I am a victim of a failing housing market and know first-hand the way those friendly faces at the bank become masks of indifferent disgust when times are tough. No matter the circumstances.

When Countrywide Mortgage CEO Angelo Mozilo has a compensation of $132 Million in 2007 and then has the gall to spout off last August as he did when calling for the Fed to cut the discount rate, you have to wonder when the insanity is going to stop.

There is a "very serious situation going on" in the U.S. housing market, Mozilo said. "This environment is certainly not getting better."

Asked if there would be a recession, Mozilo said: "I think so ... I know I've been proven wrong so far, but I can't believe that when you're having a level of delinquencies, foreclosures - equity has disappeared, equity is gone, the tide has gone out - that this doesn't have a material effect, A, on the psyches of the American people, and eventually on their wallet."

This company is more than responsible for the glut of mortgage money being doled out like government cheese was in Harlem in the 60's. If you had $10 in your pocket the mortgage companies were throwing tens of thousands of dollars at you. The economy took a huge tumble thanks to the fumble by the American public allowing the focus to be drawn away from internal warnings of trouble.

DO I have any solutions? Think twice, hell think 10 times about every single candidate on the ballot this year and consider where their priorities fall.

I want the men and women continuing to fight a war that is just draining our youth and economy to come home. I want an administration that will put aside the friendships of a lifetime and find new and environmentally safe (read NO BIOFUELS!) alternatives to help reduce our dependency on a part of the world that has been a cinder box for 5,000 years.

Are these pie in the sky hopes? I don't think anyone thought Edison could light a house without fire or that Al Gore would invent the Internet - OK...that was a joke folks!

What legacy are we leaving our grand children? That is the question I keep asking myself. Maybe it is a question more people should ask. Or is it just me who think so?

This did not start off the way it appears in front of you...but call it a result of my sparks of insanity.

Tomorrow, we present another Tuneage Tutelage. It will appear in two formats. Written and video and you will have the weekend to watch.

Tonight, continuing to feature artists appearing at the Beale Street Music Festival this weekend, we give you the Queen Of Soul...appearing Sunday evening, not sure we will be getting to see her but it is still in debate.

This cut appears on Duane Allman Anthology 2, it was originally released on Aretha's album This Girl's in Love with You in 1969. Aretha Franklin with Duane Allman on guitar and slide.

"It Ain't Fair"


ENJOY...