March 27, 2008 - I woke up feeling better than yesterday, which was good because I had to meet a coworker at a future jobsite first thing in the morning. We were there til after 11 AM, at which point my sickness started kicking in again. I picked up Five Guys burgers for lunch. I had heard that this place was really good, and I was not disappointed. Actually I was disappointed. Since I was sick I wasn't able to eat most of my french fries, and they tasted so good I wished I could have eaten more of them. The burgers are expensive. I think mine was $4.39 and the fries were $2.29. However, it is a HUGE burger and a huge french fry. This meal could easily be split between two people. Five Guys lets you pick from a long list of toppings for the burger, from the standard lettuce and tomato type stuff to sauteed mushrooms and jalapenos. What a great burger. I left work early again today to go home and sleep. Once I reach a point of blowing my nose and coughing so much that I'm anti-productive for the people around me, it's time to go home. So I do a lot of reading about financial markets. I'm also a cynic, so I approach the things I read with a good amount of apprehension. Henry Paulson, secretary of the Treasury for the United States, comes out and says that the mortgage crisis isn't as bad as everyone is making it out to be, in fact, "only 2% of homeowners are currently in foreclosure". Wait, what? Did he really just spin that as a good thing? First, let's look at some facts. As of a census done in 2001, there are about 83 million "homeowners" in the United States. Of these, about 40% don't have a payment on their house because it is already theirs, paid in full. That means that there are only about 51 million households with mortgages to pay. So let's go back to the original number 2%. If 2% of all households are in foreclosure, that means that 1.7 million HOUSEHOLDS are in foreclosure. Given that multiple people on average live in these homes, we're talking about 3-4 million Americans that are currently being affected by foreclosure. So, a more true number is that 3.3% of homeowners with mortgages are in foreclosure, since there are 40% of the homes out there that can't possibly go into foreclosure, since they don't have a mortgage. Plus, let's not also overlook that Paulson callously yet purposefully chooses to use the word "currently". What about how many people have already had their homes foreclosed on in the past year? What about the number of people who are several months late on their payments? That's where this simple 2% starts adding up to a serious number. It was irresponsible for the secretary of Treasury to spin his statement in such a way that it brushes off 3-4 million Americans as a minor blip on the radar.