We All Own This Economic Mess

Could everyone be at fault for the economic mélange that we are now facing? Whenever something negative happens, it’s human nature to point fingers and lay blame. Remember growing up, whenever something went missing around the house or something got broken, the first thing you did when Mom or Dad found out was find a way to lay blame and get out of a spanking or timeout. This is exactly the sort of thing that we see happening with the current crisis. Main Street is blaming banks and the mortgage houses for offering exotic or subprime loan packages to unsophisticated and unsuspecting consumers. Meanwhile, the bankers and mortgage brokers blame Wall Street for pumping up global investment portfolios with these same “toxic” securitized loans; and now, Wall Street is pointing the finger at Congress for putting pressure on the private sector to free up more credit to get more low- and moderate-income families into homeownership. At one point, the now, former head of H.U.D. was even laying the blame of over-valued housing stock and the ultimate bursting of the housing bubble on young, gay professionals! But, I digress.
Now, after a few days of wrangling and back-and-forthing, the $700-billion bailout bill was passed. I do not agree with the way the tremendously huge some of money is going to be managed. According to Katrina Vanden Heuvel of the Nation, Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, is going to hire Goldman Sachs’ Neel Kashkari to oversee certain aspects of the distribution and management of the bailout package. Obviously, it’s easy to see why this sort of “hiring practice” is going to be a problem, and it is easy to, once again, find people to blame. But, in some ways, we should all be held responsible for this economic meltdown.
The truth of the matter is that all Americans had reached a frenzied point of greed and over-extension. Those who were doing fine with their 1,500-sq. ft. home now wanted to upgrade to a 2,500 sq. ft. one. Those who were okay with their Acer laptop before, suddenly wanted an Apple. A friend of mine told me how his boss, when the value in his home sky-rocketed, took out a line of credit to purchase a Lexus for each member of his family! That’s how crazy things got.
Of course, there were those who were responsible and cautious, but many of the cautious stood by and watched their friends and families over-indulge.
At the end of the day, we are all to blame, and what needs to be done now is to help those who overindulged to climb out of this mess. I’m not sure the bailout is the answer, but we’re all going to pay for it, and so will our children and their children as well whichever way you look at it, so we might as well own it!