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Remember This, It Is Never Your Fault!
by James Glaser December 31, 2008 That is the new mantra in America. If you bought a house that you couldn't afford, it wasn't your fault. That evil banker or mortgage broker made you buy that house by telling you that you could afford it. Nobody can make you buy anything. Nobody really knows what you can afford other than yourself. The banker doesn't know that you spend fifty dollars a week on lattes, another one hundred fifty on wine and beer, and the same eating out every week. Nobody but you knows if you are buying pot or coke every month, or even if you are pouring money into that 1932 Ford coupe that you want to finish for your high school reunion. Nobody knows what your real finances are except you. So when things come crashing down because you can no longer afford your house payment, or because you never could afford your house payment, it is perfectly understandable that you are looking for a fall guy, any fall guy. That's ok. It doesn't hurt anyone if you push the blame off on somebody else, because most people that know you aren't going to believe you anyway. They know how you spend. What hurts is when the government and the media start telling us that it isn't our fault that we get in trouble, and that government has the job of saving us. When the government steps in and starts saving us that is nice for us, but it is a real strike against having any personal responsibility for our actions, today or in the future. If every time a bunch of us gets in trouble, government steps in and bails us out, the next time we have a chance to buy something we can't afford, we'll buy two I don't think we have learned from our mistakes. For sure our government hasn't. Some time the buck has to stop, and we will have to pay the piper. Other wise, we will have another housing bubble, and whom do we blame then? |
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