I’ve been buyin’, shortin’, speculatin’ a-plenty in this volatile market. I’ve heard lots of people blaming others but not one person taking any responsibility for it.
Sen. Obama just said of the crisis and coming bailout: “When taxpayers are asked to take such an extraordinary step because of the irresponsibility of a relative few, it is not a cause for celebration.”
Clearly he wants to side with “the little guy” on the “Main Street” that we’ve been hearing so much about lately. But I’m one of those little guys, and I take some of the responsibility for this mess. Why? Because over the past 4 years I have benefitted greatly from low loan rates on houses and 0 – 5% down-payment arrangements as well as the increased interests rates that were earning me 5% risk-free in my online bank account (that number is now down to 3% with the drop in rates in the past year or so).
I am one of the millions of American citizens who have benefitted from the housing and tax incentives, whose houses have not been foreclosed upon, and who have even benefitted from the stock market volatility.
I don’t know how to exactly dole out the blame on the financial mess we are in, and certainly many CEOs and big-money people, banks, and corporations take a share in the blame–the people Sen. Obama was referring to when he mentioned “a relative few”–but so does Main Street, which you won’t hear Sen. Obama (nor Sen. McCain most likely) say.
I took out a good loan on a good house that was undervalued in a good housing market in Austin with, thanks be to God, a good job to pay for the mortgage, but many others took out bad loans with adjustable (read “increasable”) interest rates on overvalued houses in overvalued markets and then got burned when the other shoe dropped.
The government already has bailed out millions of individual people who made bad or unfortunate decisions, which shouldn’t be forgotten as they bail out the big corporations now, and many others didn’t get bailed out and are in hard times. Then everyone else also takes the hit as the market goes down, their house value goes down, and their job security decreases.
No one is the big winner here, but there is plenty of blame to go around without pointing fingers at our favorite scape-goats.
Appropriately vague lyrics from Collective Soul’s Blame:
“When your willing to render
To the guilt you concede
When truth is your reason
Then lay that blame on me.”
Here’s an interesting video about the mortgage crisis. Don’t know much about it myself but found this interesting. http://justinespired.blogspot.com/2008/09/confused-by-news-these-days.html
PS. Good luck with foster parenting. I pray it is a wonderful experience for you.
Ooh, I just watched that video on Justine’s blog, Anne, and it is so interesting. I have much to learn about political economics; this is actually an area in which I have great interest and hope to study just this, among other things, in grad school.