Talking about the "housing crisis" and how people need to live within their means or they should lose their houses. You are about to read my opinion, I don't actually have a disclaimer for this, like on a talk show or television program, other than you may not like it-but I do hope you read and think about it.
In this complex situation, where greedy people raised in a society that allows them to bend the rules if money is "made" and the goal is always-always-to better one's own situation; here the people doing the lending were greedy and the money made was at the expense of the borrowers. Certainly some of the people who borrowed the money were greedy and looking to improve their situation, but the burden lies on a broader swath of the population than just "those stupid, grabby poor people." The investment banks played their part, the lending institutions had a say, the brokers could have stopped it, and the actual, everyday people-who have lost the most-certainly wouldn't have signed up if they could have believed they were going to lose the place they live and a substantial amount of their time and capital. It's absurd to believe that anyone would have wanted to become homeless or bankrupt, or that they should be further punished for it! What about the brokers who pushed for the larger loans, who assured the people putting their lives and credit (because as much as financial institutions would like it, those are still two separate things) on the line that "it'll be okay"? Why blame the borrower who has been kept in the dark about the entire lending cycle, and in most cases poorly educated about money matters in general? Can you really say that these people, who were merely trusting the so-called 'experts' about what they should buy, were to blame? What happened is another example of capitalism gone wild: unregulated and self-perpetuating. This is something that could only happened in a country that does not put its citizens first, which values commodities over lives. This is a terrible and preventable catastrophe, much like the effects of Hurricane Katrina in the South U.S. That we continue to be bombarded by such terrors indicates that we are not valued beyond our ability to provide more for those who already have too much. Such has been the case for too long; despite all our advances, we are still subjects or serfs being forced to bow down to some self-proclaimed master. Just because we can change jobs makes us no less indentured, we are still kept insecure (and often desperate) within a system that is not designed to benefit the majority.
Posts
