Loss Of Ethics Ruined Economy

When asked recently on National Public Radio why so many financial insiders are using such drastic rhetoric, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel said the closer you are to the crisis, the more you understand just how "very frightening" it is.**

The cultural roots of this crisis have to do with Americans' refusal to recognize natural limits. Americans have lost the ascetic virtue of self-discipline and have become impatient with the idea of constraints on their individual will. This is deeply rooted in American history and psychology, and both political parties base their appeals on their own particular version of liberty.

At no point, though, are the assumptions undergirding contemporary liberal and conservative notions of liberty seriously questioned. Our liberation from natural and traditional constraints can only continue in an atmosphere of steady, broad-based material progress, which, aside from the 1970s stagflation lull, we've experienced since World War II ended the Depression.


That now must change. The cost of our grand national experiment in living beyond our means is now coming due, and not just in the form of the housing crash. If the country indeed goes into a long, deep recession, forcing austerity and worse on the general public, the full social cost of casting aside traditional communal bonds and moral values – the beliefs that enabled people to thrive during hard times – will be painfully manifest. The psychological shock to the body politic will be sharp.

That really sounds like some 'high minded' psychobabble designed to point the finger away from those responsible. The average citizen didn't design the flawed purchase terms behind our current housing crisis. People well above the average intelligence, educated in the the concepts and terms being offered, were aware enough to know what was going on, but the fact of the matter is that the average citizen was being offered a deal to good to be true and they got burned. This is the economic equivalent of 'it's her fault, just look at the way she dressed.' They don't call it predatory lending for nothing.

The average American is simply trying to cope with higher housing and gas prices.

It is the Republican CEO class that is attempting to make hideous levels of profit over and above the growth of the economy. How much did Cheney give his company Halliburton? Two trillion and counting?

What this sounds like is yet again the use of fake morality by the likes of a Rush Limbaugh to make the Wal Mart Nation feel better about YET AGAIN taking it up the ass from the CEO classes.

so, have the lenders made thier investments back?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

so, have the lenders made thier investments back?

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I do believe that you and I have paid for them to be reimbursed, yes.

I'd love it if the taxpayer bailed me out every time I went 34x leveraged. I'd so be in the capitalist class.

Yay the new America. Privatise profit, socialise risk, on the back of the middle and lower class.

Oh the investors?

No, they're fucked.

The BANKERS however HAVE been repaid.

yep, americans are a funny breed, especialy when it comes to spending money.