The Blame Game

It was requested that I repost this, so here it is, newer posts follow this one;

If you ask the majority of American's it's Alan Greenspan's fault.

If you ask Barack Obama, it's George Bush's and the Republicans' fault.

If you ask John McCain it's Wall Street's fault.

And if you ask Nancy Pelosi it's anybody, but the democrats' fault.

So who's to blame then?

None of the above.

In intellectual honesty we have to give credit where credit is due. Nancy Pelosi is "most right" when she says the democrats are largely un-blamable when it comes to the country's current economic woes. This ignores the fact that the democrats and leftists in this country have effectively cut off the supply of oil in the US and therefore did contribute to the increase in prices and thus the economic slow down, as well as pressured lenders to lend to the lesser qualified to get them re-elected, but these are very tangential to the current crisis.

Second "most right" is John McCain. Wall Street and their mortgage backed securities gurus highlighted in the Sub Prime Primer did provide a venue for which banks could unload worthless mortgages and effectively made them brokers with every incentive for volume and very little for quality. But this is not the primary culprit.

Then you have outright ignorant people who lack the intellectual rigor or curiosity to learn the facts for themselves and become informed, educated people, preferring to just find a scape goat because blaming one person is easier than trying to learn about international finance, monetary policy and price to rents ratios. Yes, of course, Alan Greenspan, how obvious. When he wasn't tripping nuns, kicking kittens and putting hot sauce in the retirement community's water supply, he was actively plotting the destruction and demise of the US housing market.

And do I have to even explain Barack Obama's claim it was Bush's fault? What isn't? Seriously. I got behind an old fart driving on the interstate today, that was Bush's fault. The sun was shining a bit too brightly when I went to lunch. That was Bush's fault. I had a bit of indigestion. That was obviously Bush's fault. Sadly, for a man who claims to bring change, he's just playing politics as usual.

No, the real culprit boils down to two groups of people; one of which no politician has the cajones to point out and another group we all love to blame.

The first group of people who are genuinely the ones to blame for the housing crisis we're in are banks and bankers. Long story short (though I definitely go into more detail in my book) banks, their management and their foot-soldier bankers put their commissions ahead of the American public and lent, lent and lent as they racked themselves up bonuses, commissions and undeserved raises. With little to no regard to the likelihood of repayment, they lent money to deadbeat losers to boost sales and make their figures look better, and to such an extent it threatened the stability of the US (and world) financial system, all at the expense and insurance of the US taxpayer.

The second group deserving the blame is a revolutionary idea I had, also detailed in the book;

Would we even have these problems if people did what they said they were going to and PAY BACK THEIR FREAKING LOANS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Has that thought occurred to anyone? That if the people who put their signature on the loan documents, "promissory notes" suggesting they (I don't know) PROMISE to pay the money they borrowed back, then we wouldn't be having this discussion?! You know, like they agreed to return the money they took? Like how it's been done for eons? You pay back what you owe and do what you're going to say?

The fact that this group has gone completely unmentioned shows us not only how cowardly politicians are to put blame where it is richly-deserved (the deadbeats and losers of the American public), but how personal responsibility has been erased from the American lexicon. Not only do people lack personal responsibility, but society almost fails to expect or demand it. No longer is it the deadbeat trailer trash mom borrowing $50,000 to start a hair salon (I've seen it, this is a real loan), it's the "poor disadvantaged heroic single mom of 14 trying to make her claim in the world." It's no longer the moronic suburbanite brat who drives a fancy import who lacks the basic math skills to put together a budget to find out he can't afford BOTH the import AND a house (again, true story), no, it's "a poor disadvantaged youth who is a victim of Bush-Cheney-Inc."

It is this group of people, the literal, veritable, epitome of financial deadbeats and losers that is to blame, in conjunction with the greedy moronic bankers that lent such fools taxpayer-insured money in the first place. These people are why you have a house worth $100,000 less than what it used to be. This is why you're facing the specter of recession. This is why you might be losing your job. So blame Greenspan. Blame Wall Street. And hey, be REAL original and blame Bush. The banks and the deadbeats of America should be the target of your pitchforks.