I believe we Americans have an addiction problem. We have repeatedly been accused of being addicted to oil; but it is not only oil, as was proven in recent days when we acknowledged the need to bail out our financial institutions to the tune of $1 trillion. At this point we really have no choice, because we cannot allow our economic system to crumble. What we are really addicted to is greed and selfishness.
The problem began with our loss of control over the collateral and credit-worthiness of borrowers. This was allowed to happen by our federal government — not Democrats or Republicans, but Democrats and Republicans — all Americans. We have deluded ourselves in thinkingwe do not need any discipline or self-control over our wants, in spite of our inability to pay. The underlying values that we had 20 or 30 years ago have been allowed to erode, and people now expect to have whatever they want whenever they want. We see this on a micro scale with today’s parents — a permissiveness with their children and by extension to our own government, which abdicated their regulatory role of our financial institutions.
One example is the wish to own a home regardless of a person’s financial situation. In our desire to give people what they want and to profit from loans, we stopped looking at the underlying value of what borrowers were buying and their ability, or lack of it, to repay the money lent to them. The naive individual, hearing that all real estate should go up in price, concludes, "Well, the bank wants to lend me this, so I must be able to afford it. The value will only increase tomorrow." We are both guilty here — the individual, as well as the institution.
We have done this before. We watched our stock market crash in the Great Depression because of the belief that "tomorrow it will be worth more than it is today." When the depression occurred, we understood that we needed to do the right thing and put controls on the margin necessary for investments in the stock market. We have totally failed to recognize the similarity; and, because of our greed, we have not done the right thing to control irresponsible lending and borrowing. Now we find ourselves with an additional trillion dollars of debt!
Managing our economy, managing our energy, managing our environment, and managing our defense are all important if we are going to have a strong government — an admired government. For years and years we have done the easy thing. Now we need to do the right thing. It also seems to be against nature for those who are running for election to do the right thing, for it is far easier to do the popular thing. Whoever is elected — and they are all talking about change — I hope will have the strength and the independence to do the right thing, because the popular thing just won’t work anymore. This country needs a strong overhaul in attitude to rise above our addiction to greed and selfishness.
Abe Littenberg
Lincroft section of Middletown