Just as bad as American "job creators".

Joh. A. Benckiser SE (JAB) is a German holding company owned by 4 German billionaires—the heirs to a 189-year- old chemicals empire that their father helped transform into one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world.

One monthly report that was released this week that we regularly review is the Mortgage Monitor for November from LPS (pdf) which includes quite thorough and detailed graphics covering the spectrum of information on US mortgages.  As per usual, we'll be focusing on mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, which are the crisis aspects of his report.

“Three or four million heads of households don’t turn into tramps and cheats overnight, nor do they lose the habits and standards of a lifetime. They don’t drink any more than the rest of us, they don’t lie any more, and they’re no lazier than the rest of us. An eighth or a tenth of the earning population does not change its character which has been generations in the molding, or, if such a change actually occurs, we can scarcely charge it up to personal sin.” ~ Harry Hopkins, Federal relief administrator under Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

That was then, and this is now:

Josephine County Oregon, is the backwoods.  The county has an unemployment rate of 9.8%, a 20% poverty rate and a median income well below the state.  The county was also hit hard when timber payments were stopped.  Counties with large federal forests cannot develop on those lands or collect property taxes on them.  Property taxes is the prime way counties pay for services like the county sheriff, jail, health care and courts.