Shame on Bill Maher and Joe Klein

Anyone watching REAL TIME on HBO Friday night would come to the conclusion that at the core of the mortgage crisis was an immorality and “rot” in the hearts of the borrowers who were raped by the wretches of Wall Street. “Would our parents have done that?” They asked as if the answer was obvious. Nobody with an ounce of moral fiber would walk away from a home, leaving the debts and debris of falling housing prices behind them. The arrogance of these “Liberals” who liberate nothing and the “Conservatives” who conserve nothing is outrageous and immoral.

At the core lies an innocence of the buyers of mortgage products that were sold to them under false pretenses with the intention of creating profits for others. The lie was that the property was worth more than the loan and would be worth still more later. The truth was that the property was worth less than the loan and would be worth still less later. So these defrauded victims walking away from the deal are expressing not their contempt of morality but their disgust at the lack of morality in a system that encouraged fraud, rewarded it and stuck the homeowners with the bill twice over — once for the real loss on the house and once for the taxes they paid that went to the perpetrators of the fraud.

“Would our parents have done that?” Our parents and any other reasonable person would take whatever steps were necessary to be free of an illegitimate debt that could never be paid in two generations. They would have protected future generations using whatever means were at their disposal. Our parents and grandparents earned enough money to pay for their lifestyle without going into debt. They looked at the end of the month to determine if they could afford something rather than looking at the beginning, before all the expenses were taken out. They paid cash. They were not slowly deprived of earning a living and then thrown a false lifeline of credit to make up the difference between the declining value of their wages and the increasing costs of their living and raising a family.

Our parents were committed to saving for the future rather than spending it before the future was even known. Our parents were not bombarded with “knowledge” from media, government and peer pressure that debt was good and that extending oneself on credit was something called “leverage.” Our parents were protected from fraud by courts and governments that had not yet sold out to the financial services industry. Morality was a precious commodity rather than a slogan used to beat down people already oppressed. Justice was assumed when there was a rising, thriving middle class.

Somehow we have arrived at a point where the people with the most money get to say what is moral and what isn’t, even as they lie and cheat their way to obtain the wealth that allows them to assume those powers. “Would our parents have done that?” No, they wouldn’t have lied and cheated like that. They would not have taken advantage of the ignorance and innocence of working people unschooled in financial jargon. And if they screwed up, and caused damage to a person or society, they would fix it.

Tags: Bill Maher, Joe Klein, Time Magazine
Posted in bubble, Corruption, Eviction, securities fraud |