Greed Has Led Us Here

We need a serious self-examination when dealing with financial crisis at hand. The whole problem is not necessarily a result of capitalism run amok, though there is certainly that factor. Any economic plan seems to be the perfect economic plan, until the human factor is worked into the equation.

Search around the web, and you'll find endless articles about how this current crisis is the fault of the Clinton Administration. At that time, lenders were given incentive to offer sub-prime loans to those with poor credit, little resources at hand, and income that could be measured with welfare or unemployment checks. On the surface, this seemed like a humane move. Let us get these people their own homes! But there is something implicit behind the scenes.

The lenders were eager to offer these loans, both to avoid litigation and to earn a potential profit. And that could happen, as long as the housing market continued to rise. Anyone risking foreclosure could simply sell their house for more than they bought it. They would not suffer too much, and the lenders would still earn money off the loan. It seemed like a win-win situation.

Mark Shea takes umbrage at those who would blame the poor, and that is understandable, because we have a duty to help the poor. But that doesn't mean that the poor are completely free of blame in this, either.

Greed is the factor driving us into this financial crisis, no doubt about it. The lenders took insane risks to earn greater profits, buoyed by the hope that the government would bail them out if things turned sour. But there was greed at the lower levels, too.

Perhaps we don't notice it, because we're so used to it. We see car commercials that talk about $3000 cash back, and we're ready to jump to our feet and buy the car for that screaming deal offered us. We see all kinds of junk that we did not know existed 10 seconds before, but offered to us at a discount of 80% if we only call in the next twenty minutes. We see the Big Mac back on sale for $2, and Arby's regular roast beef on special at 4 for $5. We're now seeing regularly advertising for people who will magically dig us out of debt.

We've been trained to want everything, to want everything now, and to want everything cheap. Greed is everywhere, rampant in our society. The instant gratification generation is now.

How does this relate back to the poor? In part we're deluded. We think every family must have their own house. The poor in particular see homeowners, and the message that we send the poor is that it is all right to covet, all right to be greedy, because somehow you're entitled to the same things those homeowners have. And so when a deal comes along too good to be true, do they look at it with skepticism, or do they buy into heart and soul?

True, we've inundated them (and everyone else) with the message of have now, forget the cost. But they, too, are responsible for living within their means, responsible for paying attention to what is reasonable and what is just fantasy, and in that regard they, too, failed.

But the greed goes deeper. It comes from the generations that lived through the Great Depression who, in the aftermath of WWII, found that they could actually have things again. Everyone could have their own home, two cars, a television, a toaster, a refrigerator, and so on.

And our government not only told us that we could have this, but that we could have more, and in perpetuity. Let's see what all we've come across, thanks to this mentality.

Debt: we have immersed ourselves up to the eyeballs in debt. Why? Because we believed we had to get things immediately, even when we couldn't afford them. We worked on the assumption that, because we didn't have to pay immediately, we could have, because assuredly the funds would be there later on to pay back the debt. We see how well that has worked.

Social Security: our government started plundering Social Security back under the Johnson administration, thinking that we could simply keep paying out social security as long as our work force kept expanding as quickly as it was at the time. The Baby Boomer generation was aptly named. But then the Baby Boomers turned around barely reproduced at all, and suddenly the work force didn't grow as expected, and all that plundering started to catch up with us.

American Vehicle Industry: Back at their height, the American vehicle manufacturers started handing enormous retirement packages, working under the assumption that Americans would keep buying new cars at an ever increasing rate, and thus providing funds to make sure those packages were honored. But then came the bust. Due to foreign imports and a number of other factors, the American companies lost a large share of the market, and their profits dwindles. They could not longer honor the retirement packages, and they had to be bailed out.

Dot-com Industry: A lot of people lost out on this because they thought they could set up little dot-com industries, get bought out, and live off of that money. This also ended in a bust.

Housing Industry: Again, people believed they could keep playing the market under the assumption that the housing market would keep expanding, that property value would keep rising, and they could buy beyond their means, hold on for a while, then sell and make a profit.

We've seen this pattern again and again and again. The trend is the same. We see trend in the market. We take a huge risk and play that market under the assumption that the trend will keep on going forever. And when the trend changes, we lose.

And it is greed that makes us do that. We gamble, not with what we can afford to lose, but with everything, because we think we found the magical means of getting everything right now.

I'm sorry, but we don't need the brand new car, the 8 bedroom house, the 48 inch HD TV, an Xbox 360, a PS3, a Wii, every movie known to man, 6 4-wheelers, a boat, some jet skis, an RV, and so on. We especially don't need to put ourselves into the red to acquire all of these. But we've been taught that we have to have all of these, that we deserve all of these, and when we don't get them immediately, we fall prey to greed. The poor were as guilty as anyone else in this. The only difference is that they are the ones going to pay heaviest, while the ones who committed the most atrocious crimes are going to get bailed out and suffer little to no consequence at all.