Guess Who
The advertisement comes on the radio the same time every morning, right during our drive to work in the morning, right after we turn on to Bailey Road, if we are on schedule.
“Mortgages should be illegal.”
Apparently, and this was news to some, when you take out a mortgage to buy a house, the bank (note: BANK is a four letter word) will charge you interest on the use of their money. Thus, it will cost you more for the house you are purchasing if you borrow the money used to buy the house than if you paid with the cash in your wallet. And according to the angry voice on the radio, this is so unfair that it should be illegal. A crime. And I suppose you should really be angry with the bank.
The advertisement suggests you call the number and find out how this guy will get you out of debt, now that the banks have you by the short hairs. Or so he says. Ya see, he is a tiny bit vague on how they’re a-gonna do this, which might be deliberate. But since some folks are growing weary of being in debt these days, there must be some appeal in this uh, appeal.
Later in our short drive another advertisement often comes along. This one is aimed at those folks who are up to their ears in credit card debt. It warns you about all those other outfits that claim they will help you get out from under your credit card debt. Ya see, some of those folks actually want you to work with the banks to pay down your debt. And…”They are making lots of money for the credit card companies!!!” So you should hire this company instead. Presumably so that you don’t actually have to pay the money you owe to the credit card companies. Wow, wouldn’t that be cool! And so convenient.
Now we have people camped out in the cities. Early in the course of this seemingly interminable nonsense, where gaggles of marxists, anarchists, and disenchanted young folks, of which we always seem to have more than we need, plopped down in the streets near the seats of power and commerce, hoping to convince the world that they were disenchanted marxist anarchists, cause we didn’t know it already, I guess. (Worst sentence I ever wrote, but they deserve it) And since this was a little weird, and the only other newsworthy stuff going on was the republican debates, which scared them to death because ANY of these guys is better than the incumbent, and the HUNT FOR GADDAFI, The Media was all over it.
That largest group of The Media, the supporters of the president, hoped this collection of discontented was the vanguard of a populist revolution in support of Obamagenda, and they played it up as just that. Meanwhile, the loyal opposition looked upon the pathetic rabble, and then walked among them with a microphone trying to get some notion of why they were there. And they got several versions. From each and every person in the group. All different. And all disjointed and mostly irrelevant.
But there was one position that at least three people in the group seemed to rally around. And that was the notion that we should simply cancel out all debt. Wipe it off the books, completely. Every one. Cause that would be fair to the People, and hurt the bank. That four letter word, again. Discharge every debt and what? Start all over again? Nobody seemed to know, but they sure liked the idea of magically being out of debt.
One lady told the story of how she had gotten her college degree in women’s studies, and accumulated $120,000 in student loan debt in the process, and she couldn’t find a job paying $100,000 a year in women’s studies to pay down that loan. And boy, was that unfair. Somebody told her the government would loan her the money to get her degree in women’s studies, and so the government made her education possible, and opened up her future cause that’s what government should do to grease the skids and make everyone’s life lovely, but now they wanted to get paid back, and WTF was that? (That’s code for, uh, nevermind. But that’s what the protesters were texting on their $500 smart phones while they complained about being broke. That’s onnacount of they bought those smart phones on their credit cards, and the damn bank wanted to be paid back for that, too.)
Credit. Seems that’s all we talk about anymore. We once were a nation that manufactured widgets, and other stuff. We were the class of the earth in manufacturing widgets. Widgets powered the economy. Ya got out of high school and landed a job at the widget factory, and ya put in your time and took your pension and that was your life. The union got you a better deal and that meant you could afford a house instead of an apartment, and a nice car, bought on credit of course. But you had the American dream. And then we stopped making widgets. And the only thing left to power the economy was credit.
Since our nation didn’t make anything anymore, we certainly couldn’t make more of nothing to expand the economy, so to make money, we turned to credit, which expanded the money in the world without actually making anything. And then we found out what that gets you. Fake nothing.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Round and round we go, which shell is hiding the pea? Don’t know if we can blame the unions or the corporations, but we stopped making widgets, and instead we expanded the economy with credit, because that’s all that’s left, until it became a bubble. The old shell game became our reality. The Wizards of Oz became our leaders. We have absolutely no reason to expect that we would end up with anything other than what we are living now.
And one president deregulated the savings and loan folks, and we saw what happened when we said that breaking the old laws designed to protect folks from thieves meant that the thieves could do whatever they want. And then another president deregulated the folks who limited the mortgage markets to some semblance of reason, and the crooks took advantage of that. The banks were the bad guys here, but all those folks who applied for those mortgages knowing full well they couldn’t pay for them don’t go without blame.
Our prisons should be full of people who abused this deal, but for the usual reasons that didn’t happen. It seems you don’t throw your buddies in jail unless somebody makes you. And all those people who borrowed money and then had no possible way to pay it back are just as easy to blame.
Got a mortgage you can’t afford? Whose fault is that? Bought too many flat screens and smart phones on your credit cards and you can’t pay it back? Well cry somewhere else. Gathering in the streets and blaming other people doesn’t cut it. It’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s our fault. Live with it. And then fix it. Yourself.
Or just concede that we can’t have an American way of life anymore, and buy into the European socialistic ideal, and spend your life collecting government checks and living crammed in a high rise apartment instead of your own family home, and the notion of owning your own home becomes only the province of the rich. And try on the ant suit, cause that’s what you will be.
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