B-Rant

- submitted by L. Keenan on 09/23/2008

  

The Collapse of Shame in America

By Linda Keenan

Last week I mentioned to a dear friend some item or outing I wouldn't be spending money on because I'm so pathologically cheap, not to mention terrified for my child's economic future. "You're the reason the economy is sinking!" he spluttered.

I beg to differ. When we hear talk of securitized debt, overleveraged investment firms, complex bailouts of big, mysterious institutions, and accusations of lax oversight by regulators and politicians, we neglect to finger the perpetrator in our own backyard: average Americans who wanted it all, wanted it now and were willing to stretch their budgets or even the truth to get it.

We should all be ashamed, those of us who indulged and those who sat quiet about it for too long. At the same time our nation faced catastrophe from terrorists, and then sent men and women off to war, the rest of us went on an unprecedented orgy of spending.

Yes, we had enablers. We were teased with low interest rates and exotic deals that sounded too good to be true and were. Yes, the very rich are probably the very worst offenders, especially CEOs with exorbitant pay packages who end up driving their companies into the ground. Yes, the poor surely got hosed by predator-lenders.

But the roots of this failure also begin right at home, with vast numbers of people who engaged in a willing, and often willful, suspension of disbelief as to what they could afford. You might call them ill-informed, or stupid.

My mother, who weathered the Depression and owned just one dress as a teenager that she would swap with her sister, would call them greedy, shameless, and perhaps even unpatriotic. Harsh, yes, but I think Mom was dead on. I've collected quotes from various media outlets and I ask you: Are all these people victims?

The Oprah Winfrey Show, Debt Diet, 2006:
Lisa and Steven B. .... made $102,000 a year, lived in a new home with their children ... owned four cars. {They} were drowning in ... $170,000 in debt.... eating out three times a day, seven days a week. Lisa used to spend $800 a year on plasticware. Lisa {says} she has never actually pushed a cart through a grocery store before.

The New York Times, Feb., '08
Debt adviser Mory Brenner: "I'd say ... this is crazy. You cannot afford this house, even if nothing happens and rates stay ... low. And the response would be: 'I don't care.'"

The New York Times, Aug. '07
"One of my patients said: 'I financed my car. Why shouldn't I finance my face?'" -Plastic surgeon Dr. Lisa Cassileth.

The New York Times, Aug. '07
"Dr. L. Mike Nayak, a facial surgeon, said that his patients include 'teachers, retirees, psychologists, regular middle-class working folks. I have a couple of jail wardens."

The Suze Orman Show, '07
Mike: "It's a fine piece of art .... it evokes a feeling from when I lived in France....
Suze Orman: "You want Miss Orman...to allow you to deplete, really, all of your savings ....to buy a 28 thousand dollar antique BACKGAMMON TABLE?

The Oprah Winfrey Show, Debt Diet, 2006
"When Dan E. quit his job and went back to school, the {E.'s}... purchased a brand new home they knew they couldn't afford. Their house payments tripled. First, they cashed in Dan's 401K. And when that was gone, they began living off their credit cards. Dan decided to make his biggest sacrifice yet by selling half of his Chicago Bears season tickets - $1,000 saved."

Sacrifice?

I'd like to close with a short tale of someone who is a true victim of this economic meltdown, even though she's done everything right and sacrificed too much already. She is a good friend I met in the playground three years ago, a real American patriot, who gave birth to her first baby alone while her husband was in Fallujah, Iraq, for a year.

She works an early morning shift and weekends at a home for the severely disabled. She scrimped (believe me, I saw it up close) to afford a low-income house with a healthy down payment and a traditional 30-year loan.

It kills me, because despite her family's hardship, she still saves money, and I know her savings rate at the bank has plunged to almost nothing over the past year, and the stock market meltdown has surely clobbered her family's retirement.

Now her husband may be facing a layoff. But luckily, because my friend is such an amazing saver, they can weather a storm, at least a brief one, with their modest cash savings.

It might be instructive to know that my friend, I'll call her Amiko, isn't even American. In fact, she speaks very broken English. She was raised in middle-class Japan, where they know all too well about having to cope with a never-ending recession. Scary as it sounds, Americans may have something to learn from radical penny-pinchers like Amiko. And they may need to learn it fast.

Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy...read more rants