Granted, we have all bellied up to the hedonism trough. There IS some personal responsibility for buying the Capitalist 'wealth carrot meme' without question. However, the catastrophic economic reordering we're witnessing is more directly the responsibility of the vile corporate megalomaniacs who own and control the vast majority of this planet's resources. Their hedonism has repercussions
exponentially more damaging than any greedy act of any individual member of the Hoi Polloi.
Having been in the mortgage industry for years (I left because I refused to sell sub-primes), I can assure you that most individual home buyers are NOT savvy about reading the massive contracts that the lenders and title companies have created lo these many years.
In fact, banks KNOW that most borrowers are financially illiterate (moreover, better than 40% of this nation's adult population is
functionally illiterate), and they USE this information when developing their clever and effective marketing strategies. Then, they deliberately market to gullible individuals whose life experiences within capitalism have molded them into perfect little consuming machines (and, isn't it so much easier to blame these poor, pathetic individuals?).
Furthermore, I challenge you to find me a single title officer who adjures their home buyers to 'take your time and read every page of this 80+ page contract, especially the fine print...we'll wait for you to finish...' I have attended countless closings where the title officer pre-flagged every space where initials or signatures were required and moved fluidly from post-it flag to post-it flag, as clients signed their lives away into thirty-year servitude. After all, a twenty-minute closing means much more business by the end of each day...
I am certain that the big lenders are using their well honed marketing strategies to determine how best to hit us with their disgusting "deficiency judgments" (their latest grasping for ever more money) even as our global economy grinds to a halt. (I believe this will be a Pyhrric victory for those vile hedonists.)
Be that as it may, I encourage ALL of those who seek to blame anyone but the bankers and other fraudsters, consider this:
(actually, this should be of concern to everyone watching with bated breath as the global economy teeters on the brink of catastrophic reordering)
{Born} once again warned about the danger of Dark Markets, now grown to $680 trillion of notional value, according to the Bank for International Settlements -- "more than 10 times the amount of the gross national product of all the countries in the world."
(emphasis mine; the quote references Brooksley Born)
Does anyone out there TRULY believe that our global economy has the combined resources to cover this ginormous financial Black Hole, created by an incredibly small number of hedonistic corporate megalomaniacs?! Even the most math-challenged average human being can see that these 'derivatives' and 'CDOs' and other high-risk investment instruments are literally
worthless...
I encourage everyone to stop wasting time and energy blaming members of the hoi polloi for the crimes and malfeasance of an infinitesimally small percentage of hedonistic Corporate Megalomaniacs. We will need to help each other get through the economic disaster we're facing.