Ted Turner was asked recently on a CNN interview who was responsible for the financial crisis and he said "All of us. We've been spending more than we make for a long time ... " Basically, he's right. The flip side of offering easy credit and bad loans is that someone has to be there to accept it. The ethos of America for most of my lifetime has been "have more, have more, have more." Almost everyone I know has been living, to some extent, beyond their means -- and when we're really honest with ourselves, we know it. I'm speaking of someone who has gotten himself into trouble more than once abusing credit. Easy credit is like any other addictive substance -- like oil or cocaine -- as there's a market for it, someone will supply it. Its not just this or that financial institution or governmetn practice that has to change, its our entire belief system about possessions, wealth, entitlement and so on. I'm not saying that government and corporate players don't have a lot of responsibility and shouldn't be held accountable for it, I'm just saying that taking responsibility begins at home.
Olin ----- Original Message ----- From: Nick Arnett<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 12:35 PM Subject: Taking responsibility (was Re: How Government Stoked the Mania) Let's look at the bigger picture. You won't get any argument from me that housing is subsidized in the United States via the tax code and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. So I'll just go ahead and acknowledge the general truth about your contention that the government interferes in the free market for housing. Unlike you, I don't have a problem on principle with such government activity. However, that belief is not principle is a sideshow to the matter at hand. Is the meltdown in sub-prime loans defensible by saying, "The government encouraged us to do this?" No. The financial industry is not a herd of sheep. Is the insanity of a market that bet there would be no significant housing market corrections in the next few years defensible by saying "The government subsidized it." I don't think so. Anybody who plays in finance knows that corrections are like earthquakes -- unpredictable in specifics, but all too reliable. Is the moral abrogation in making predatory loans defensible by blaming government? No way. When we take unfair advantage of others, we are wrong, even if the victim was wrongly motivated by greed and even if those in authority wrongly encouraged us. Those who are quick to blame home buyers for accepting predatory loans should be at least as fast to blame the financiers who made them -- and far faster to demand restitution. Those people were conned; the victim of a con deserves to lose something and government is not obliged to rescue them beyond a reasonable social safety net. But government has a strong obligation to prosecute the swindlers and compel restitution to the maximum extent possible. As with virtually all con games, most of the money is gone. The government is faced with a very difficult problem, since we're talking about swindles that were apparently largely legal (failure to regulate) and on such a large scale that there is no common sense solution. Simply put, no government action, inaction or blunder excuses a swindle. If the government somehow led the mortgage industry down this path, the industry is no victim, it is neither blind nor vulnerable -- it did not have to follow. Anyone who imagines that on its own, the industry will accept culpability in the form of some sort of voluntary restitution, is dreaming. If government policy was wrong, it needs to change, but that will never be an excuse to take the con artists off the hook. Our government is our means of holding swindlers accountable; only the most extremist of anarchists would argue that free markets do so. Those who champion personal responsibility and government accountability seem strangely eager to excuse corporate misbehavior by pointing the finger at the victims ("you shouldn't have taken that loan") and their legal protectors ("the government encouraged me"). Yes, the victims should have known better. Yes, the government blunders. But no, those issues do not remove responsibility from industry and the individuals who profited from the con game. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l<http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l> _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
