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Monday, June 28, 2010

Higher Purpose to Falling Limbs?

I’m going to go out on a limb here – you’ll catch the pun in a moment – and put a voice to a question I’ve been mulling ever since a baby was killed by a falling tree branch in Central Park this past weekend:

Was this a surgical strike? Did God “take her out?”

Not Just Another Crazy New York Story

In our youth-worshipping culture, it seems abhorrent to suggest that killing a baby makes some kind of sense. Even most church people would probably be angry with the idea. But I’ll go ahead and ask anyway – and hereby forever disqualify myself for church nursery duty – if, of all the trees, and all the sidewalks, and all the people, in all of New York City’s vast Central Park this past weekend: why this branch and this baby?

For those of you who didn’t hear the news, you can probably figure out by reading this far that yes indeed, a falling tree branch near the popular Central Park Zoo killed a baby and critically injured her mother. Was it just another weird story from a city famous for weird stories? Or is there more that we can't see?

From all appearances, the tree and the branch were healthy. The location of this tragedy is a high-pedestrian-traffic area located near a Central Park Conservancy facility and the only zoo on Manhattan island (well, aside from Times Square and pockets of SoHo); these trees aren’t in some overgrown area off of the beaten path that is rarely maintained. Indeed, all of Central Park can be considered one of the most well-groomed plots of land in the world.

Tragedy, Yes; Accident, No

From God’s perspective, this wasn’t an accident, was it? He didn’t have one of His angels rush into His presence Saturday afternoon after taking tree inventory and discovering one of their branches was missing. This baby was chosen by God to suffer this fate in the arms of her mother on this day for a reason.

We’ve heard of the military’s use of the term “surgical strike” to describe the intricate killing of a person or group of people from thousands of feet – or hundreds of miles – away. Many evangelical believers give lip service to the notion that God is indeed in control of all things. Yet oftentimes, we fail to draw the obvious conclusion from current events: that incidents like the fallen-limb-killing Saturday are nothing other than a holy surgical strike.

Now, I’m not going to mention the names of the baby or her parents, because for my purposes here, it’s not about them. My intention isn’t to personalize this tragedy by putting names on the characters. They’re sinners just like you and I, although I don’t know what they may have done – or left undone – that would have invoked God’s particular action in this case. It may not even have been a punitive strike on God’s part. It may have always been His holy, sovereign plan to bring this child back to Heaven at this young age, since after all, our lives are not our own anyway. But even if it was a punitive strike, God has already made His judgment, so who are we to heap on the blame?

The fact that this child wasn’t anywhere close to an age of accountability means she is with Christ now, which is better than anything she could have ever done or become in her earthly life. We should pray that her family can be witnessed to this hope as they mourn her loss.

Look: Up In the Sky

Oddly enough, there have been at least one other death and a serious injury caused by falling tree limbs in Central Park within the past year or so. The latest incident happened this past February. Granted, with so many people visiting Central Park at any hour of the day, and with so many grand, old trees along well-used walkways, the chances of any branch falling and hitting somebody might be pretty strong. But really, what are the odds? How many branches fall during the dead of night, when nobody’s around? How many branches fall in the middle of the day and don’t hit anybody? To run a scientific test concerning the chances of being struck dead by a falling tree limb in Central Park would require significant effort, but I think we’re safe to assume that it’s a pretty rare occurrence. Otherwise, lawyers for the Central Park Conservancy would be issuing hardhats to every visitor, or closing off walkways.

If you’ve ever been to Central Park’s mall, where statues of poets are interspersed among ancient trees whose branches arc luxuriantly over the wide promenade, you’d think that would be an ideal place for branches to fall. Indeed, thick boughs cantilever over the walkway so densely that they create a veritable ceiling of bark, twigs, and leaves. While for decades it's made for a mystical stroll, I’m sure only now have pedestrians begun to see it as a possible deathtrap.

Some people say the tree limbs falling on Central Park visitors are freak accidents. Some have already voiced suspicions that either somebody isn’t pruning the park’s trees properly, or they’re unaware of some disease that is invisibly weakening the trees.

But deep down, we know better, don’t we?

It's the sovereignty of God. Just a little more exaggerated than usual.

_____

Monday, June 21, 2010

Glory Days in Maine


"Looking Across Benjamin River to Sedgwick"
by Rayford McFarland, West Brooklin, Maine; approx. 1940


I don’t know about where you live, but here in north central Texas, it’s already purty hot. (Y'all say it with me: PUR-tee)

Well, not hot as in fry-an-egg-on-your-truck’s-hood hot, but purt-near close. And it’s supposed to stay around 100 with no rain in sight for several more days. The prospect of which made me put off my deep and dreary essay that I intended for today, and instead took me to a no less sunny, but far more enjoyable place in my mind... that wonderful cabinet where my memories of Maine are stored... (it's a wooden, two-tier cabinet; hand-made, of course... with a thick, faded coat of light blue paint...)

Memories not so much of Maine's atrocious cost of living, or the interminable distances between towns, or the fact that many of my relatives there work more than one job just to make ends meet. No, on days like today in Texas, my imagination easily flits far away to where my gaze rises to behold an iridescent blue sky, sometimes with the puffiest clouds of cleanest white, betraying nary a speck of pollution in such pure, salt-tinged air!

Or maybe my gaze turns and stretches across miles and miles of the crystalline oceanic water, sharp flashes of sun glancing off the crisp waves, twinkling like millions of city lights that are oh, so far away. The water that comes to shore has a greenish hue, and turns a golden color as it washes over stones, pebbles, and rocks, themselves either caked in barnacles or flecked with veins of granite. As the waves pull back from the shore, lap after lap, they return to the deep Atlantic, perhaps to caress a whale or lick the bow of an ocean liner.

Ahh.. and the boats... they ride upon the waves… all sorts of boats, like sail boats gliding peacefully, silently… lobster boats with hardworking motors, putty-putty-putt, erratic as the lobsterman swirls his craft around each buoy to retrieve his catch… all the while, the softly rhythmic lapping of the waves on the shore, the incessant uncontainable tide washing and waiting for nobody. A tide that changes the hue and buoyancy of the water as it creeps up to the rocky coastline, and then mysteriously retreats back out to sea. Not in your timeframe, of course, but to a celestial clock all its own.

Your view of the water, across its broad expanse of twinkling sunlight, stays the same yet changes constantly. Only nighttime hides its comings and goings from view. And without city lights, Maine's nighttime can be the darkest blue you can imagine. Never pitch black, like tar, except in the bleakest of wintertime.

But I’m going to forget wintertime, just like I forget Maine's high prices. Cloudless summer nights seep into the fading sunlight and before too long, they reveal their own twinkling treasures of stars and constellations nestled in a velvet of blackest navy...

The perfect summer day in Maine is so perfect – the only real explanation for why so many summer people, year after year, generation after generation, pay so dearly for the privilege to spend weeks or the whole summer there. I used to wonder why I would see so many convertibles with Maine license plates, until I realized that even though Maine only offers a relatively few days for motorists to enjoy sporting around with the top down, what glorious days those are!

Those glorious Maine summer days… their memories keep me going here in the Texas heat.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Mega-Philanthropy for the Mega-Rich

By now, it’s old news that mega-billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates intend to prevent their heirs from inheriting their vast wealth. They’ve already announced their plans to give away their money and only leave their offspring with a comparative pittance – just something to remember them by.

But have you heard the latest twist by our surprisingly liberal top two capitalists? They’re inviting their 400 wealthiest brethren to join them in their stunning giveaway. Fortune magazine is gushing – or gagging – with the details of this grand race to the bottom of the money pile.

The idea is to encourage America’s highest-net-worth individuals to commit half of what they’ve acquired to charity between now and when they die. Buffett, Gates, and the woman who married into the Gates fortune, Melinda, have already hosted several discrete meetings with fellow billionaires, quietly launched a website, and gotten commitments from several lesser denizens of the Black Card class for the plan.

Depending on your perspective, Buffett and the Gateses are either inviting their own kind to participate in a grand legacy of humanitarian largess, or they’re strong-arming fellow billionaires with a guilt trip over their stupendous wealth. Either way, their aim is to divert as much as $600 billion from family estates to worldwide philanthropic efforts.

That's 600 billion - with a "B".

Wow.

At Least Their Estate Taxes Will Be Lower

Some people find their magnanimous charity almost heroic – that self-made people like Buffett and Gates view their wealth as a tool for such noble goals as the elimination of poverty as we know it. What better way to avoid all of the corruption and inefficiencies of bureaucratic multi-national aid agencies and Third World governments than leapfrog over all of them and pump your vast resources right where it can do the most good. It kind of makes Ted Turner’s $1 billion gift to the United Nations amateurish.

Then there is the churlish proletariat, who have already unleashed a barrage of invective on Fortune’s website, railing against the absurdity of throwing money at problems that have been exacerbated by the generational hubris of industrialized countries in the first place. What about the poverty so endemic in countries which have been stripped of resources and socio-politically marginalized by the West? Who but the Buffetts and the Gateses of the world have built their fortunes on the backs of the disenfranchised and oppressed?

At this point, die-hard conservatives will leave the discussion, disgusted at the reminder that most wealth isn’t so much earned as it is acquired – a nuanced distinction, to be sure, but a distinction with a negative flavor nonetheless. (For example, Bill Gates hasn’t “earned” all of his wealth. Sure, he led a team of computer geeks who came up with the world’s most widely-used computer operating system, but his corporation actually extorted competitors and coerced patents to cobble together the system which made it the dominant player. Remember all of the anti-trust lawsuits from the dot-com bubble? Therefore, he has “acquired” wealth through not only his personal genius and initiative, but also the products, efforts, and manipulation of other people. Buffett's story is far less ethically-challenged; he's simply been diligently prudent in his investments.)

Liberal Democrats, too, will leave the discussion, disgusted that those without wealth can be so jealous of those who have it. Where is our sense of social unity? Can't we just hold hands and feel the love?

Suddenly, The Family Silver Is Looking Good

Which leaves the rest of us, I suppose, wondering if there isn’t some sort of ulterior motive in all of this. Most of us don’t necessarily begrudge anybody whatever wealth they may have, as long as it wasn’t acquired illegally or immorally (the legacy of Bill Gates notwithstanding). But giving away up to 99% of what you’ve worked your whole life to acquire, as Buffett has pledged to do?

Is there a tax dodge underneath all this charity? Is there some sort of latent guilt about the ways in which these people earned their wealth? Have these moguls already tucked away small fortunes in secret trust funds for their kids? Has the process by which they've acquired their money really just been a big game; and now that we know who the current winners are, we put the earnings back into circulation? Does this prove that wealth really can't buy happiness - unless giving it way is how you purchase happiness? Whatever happened to the old – and Biblically precedented – convention of securing a financial inheritance for one’s children?

Or, as I personally suspect, is this just the latest fad for the ego-driven super-rich to try and immortalize themselves?

And who really believes that $600 billion can come close to significantly reducing the worldwide ravages of disease, starvation, and poverty? What about the personal choices people make to engage in risky behaviors that perpetuate ills like AIDS, crime, and drugs? How much social good can be sustained in countries where political corruption strangles democratic reform?

These are all questions America’s 400 richest families will be mulling over during the summer. And they’re not particularly easy questions, either. I wonder what their kids will be saying? What a pickle to find oneself in: either to join Buffett and the Gateses and lend your family’s name to whatever posterity will be secured in this exercise, or opt out and trust your best friends don’t notice the absence of your name on whatever lists will be published in the future.

Ahhh… having so much money isn’t easy, is it?

Friday, June 11, 2010

Push This Chevy Over the Levee

What’s in a name? For General Motors, apparently too much negative baggage. Or at least, so it implied in a memo Chevrolet executives sent out to the brand’s employees in Detroit this week, requesting that they stop calling their cars “Chevy’s”.

It’s “Chevrolet” or, depending on how you read the grammatically-challenged internal memo, “Chevrolet going forward”. Not that my grammar is stellar, but for a bunch of over-degreed head honchos parroting Madison avenue gobbledygook from their newly-hired PR firm, you’d think somebody in division headquarters would know how to properly incorporate trendy corporate-speak when composing correspondence.

Indeed, lame logic oozed from the memo. Attempting to explain why they wanted only one name for their brand (instead of two), authors of the memo pointed to Coke and Apple as examples of one-name products. Except, of course, “Coke” is shorthand for “Coca-Cola” and Apple is known by the names of its products, most of which begin with the letter “i”.

At any rate, the memo caused more than just a few raised eyebrows; one stunned Chevrolet employee sent a copy of the letter to the New York Times, and before long, the whole car world was buzzing about GM’s temerity to ignore one of the most widely-recognized names in the world.

Meanwhile, back in Detroit, GM officials cobbled together a response that was even weaker than their first message. Appearing to be caught off-guard by the maelstrom of indignation from the public about the name change, executives sought to reassure the world that the memo had been written poorly (which, of course, we’d already determined) and that GM was basking in the glow of so much heartfelt sentiment towards one of their storied brands.

Yeah, right. Like maybe this whole episode wasn’t some publicity stunt cooked up by their new PR firm? With advertising costing as much as it does, why not take advantage of the free publicity we can cook up on the Internet by dropping a sloppy bombshell like, oh, getting rid of the endearment “Chevy”? Think that’d work?

Yup – it sure did. Auto wonks got all worked up over nothing, and Chevrolet got a ton of indirect brand exposure for both “Chevy” and “Chevrolet,” not to mention volumes of free market research to gauge how relevant its brands remain in the psyche of North Americans. Then they get to say the customer has spoken, and aww, shucks, folks: you’re embarrassing us with all of your praise of Chevy. OK, we take it back!

Chevy's Already Taken This Customer For a Ride

Not that they heard any words of praise from me. When I read the story online, at first I thought it was just another idiotic exercise in corporate-think, but I lost my affinity for Chevrolet or Chevy years ago, so it just seemed like another dumb move for GM.

You see - speaking of dumb moves - back in 1998, I bought a brand-new Chevrolet Malibu after reading glowing reviews about how it gave imports a run for their money. At the time, it was the smallest car I’d ever owned, but the interior was spacious and comfortable for a car that size, and it had a lot of luxury features for the price.

Within six months, however, it had developed an unstoppable oil leak, sometimes the car wouldn’t start, and mechanics at the dealership determined the driver’s door had been improperly manufactured and installed. It didn’t fit into the doorframe, and the window wouldn’t close properly. I can’t remember how many times I kept taking it back to the dealership, and how may loaner cars I had while they tried to fix the problems. Finally, my exasperated salesman told me my best course of action involved filing a Lemon Law claim against Chevrolet.

Which I did. At the time, Lemon Law claims were handled through local Better Business Bureau offices, so I forwarded all of my paperwork to their Fort Worth office for them to review, and scheduled an appointment. My hearing was quite simple, with a moderator who used to be in the car business serving as judge & jury, and a Chevrolet representative on a conference call from Detroit.

When the moderator told me he used to be an executive for a local dealership, I figured I had my work cut out for me, since he’d probably be prejudiced towards General Motors. But I plodded through all of my evidence, we went on a test drive, and I had letters from friends and my boss all testifying to the problems I’d been having with that new Chevy Malibu. The moderator took it all with a poker face, not giving me any hint as to how he might rule.

Our friendly Chevy guy, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more obnoxious. He yelled at me over the phone’s speaker, he challenged the work receipts from the dealership (even though the mechanics had written them, not me), and he scoffed at the testimonial letters I’d brought.

Then he asked me what I expected Chevrolet could do with a car that allegedly had so many problems. They couldn’t re-sell it in the condition I claimed it was in. They’d lose all their profit on that car.

Like that was any concern of mine! Bewildered, I remember glancing over at the moderator, who kinda rolled his eyes, his discrete impartiality beginning to wane.

Unfortunately, I had read an article about car dealerships sending cars with troubled histories to Mexico and Central America, where they could get away with hiding the cars’ problems they were legally required to tell their United States customers. So I mentioned that article to the guy from General Motors.

“So, you’re some kind of racist then, huh?” he pounced, convinced I’d betrayed the weak link in my chain, by which he could hang me out to dry. You’ll have to remember that this guy from Chevrolet had long ago run out of logical defenses, and had been poking around for faults in my character for some time during this hearing.

“Those Mexicans are good enough for cars like this, but not Americans, huh? Are you saying you’re better than Mexicans? What kind of an attitude is that?”

I was stunned. How did we go from discussing the multiple faults of a six-month-old Chevy to me being a racist? I turned to the moderator, and I remember shrugging my shoulders, my hands outstretched, completely clueless as to how I could respond to such a personal attack.

Fortunately, the moderator had heard all he needed to hear. He chided the Chevrolet representative for trying to make a personal attack against my character, and he decided the case in my favor, telling the Chevy guy to cough up a check for me covering the bill of sale less depreciation.

I had won… but I felt awful. Not that I’d proven my case, but that the guy from Chevrolet had been so ugly to me. How dare he try to save Chevrolet some money by maligning me! And I didn’t even say that Mexicans deserved to have mechanically-inferior cars; I had merely pointed out that it was American dealerships that were sending these cars south of the border. Oddly enough, the guy from Chevy didn't deny that.

I vowed then and there that I’d never buy another brand-new Chevy for the rest of my life.

Or Chevrolet, for that matter.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Paving Paradise, Redux

Unless you're a die-hard architecture aficionado, you probably won't find today's entry especially interesting or even understandable. But for those of you who treasure Fort Worth's jewel box of a museum, the Kimbell, and recognize its design as one of the the most highly-regarded in the great state of Texas, then you'll want to read on.

Without going into too much detail, trustees at the Kimbell have ordered current pop-star architect Renzo Piano, of Italy (not Italy, Texas; Italy, the country) to perpetrate an expansion annex of the original building by the late Louis Kahn on the verdant, expansive lawn which stretches luxuriously from the western porticoes of the museum's main entrance.

It's not quite the same as paving paradise to put up a parking lot, but it's similar.

Here is the
letter-to-the-editor that I sent to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after viewing Piano's plans, which actually were modifications of earlier designs that critics - including myself - railed against as taking up even more of the lawn that his revisions do:

I suppose Renzo Piano's redesigned addition to Fort Worth's esteemed Kimbell is a step in the right direction. Now, if they'll only take a few more steps across Van Cliburn Way and build the addition where it belongs: on the empty lot east of the current masterpiece.

Why didn't original architect Louis Kahn clutter that extravagant lawn with a parking lot? Because its broad expanse speaks so forcefully against the built environment.

On beautiful weekends, the Kimbell's lawn is the gracious veranda, the brownstone's stoop, the urban plaza, only with real grass.

It's as much a part of Kahn's brilliantly orchestrated entrance sequence to the museum's western doors as the gravel walkways, low-profile fountains and trees that the trustees have let grow too tall.

In its review, The New York Times seems to have its fingers crossed as to whether Piano's design rates highly enough. That the Times is following this story shows how important Kahn's Kimbell is to the world of architecture. How unfortunate that decision-makers at the Kimbell apparently are more cavalier.

-- Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Monday, May 31, 2010

If you'd like to send the Kimbell's trustees your thoughts, please feel free to do so!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

What's Good for the Goose?

For some of my long-suffering readers, it may seem like I'm beating this theme to death:

Greed: bad.
Personal responsibility: good.

However, as a nation - and even as evangelicals - we don't seem to be getting it, do we?

What is the point at which the greed pro-business activists think is so necessary to capitalism becomes undesirable? Could it be when its perpetrated by the very classes of people off of which a society’s elite is trying to make their money?

In other words, when bankers act in greedy fashion and blur the standards for morality, conservatives consider that a good thing; but when their customers do it, greed suddenly becomes egregious.

Banking on Bankers Behaving Badly

When banks decided the time had come to bust loose from convention and shake free from the last vestiges of low-profit honesty, Wall Street – no stranger to cooked books – stood all too ready to help. Like wolves salivating for meat, capitalism’s laziest profiteers came up with one of their best stunts yet: packaging sub-prime mortgages with golden bows and hollow statistics they knew eager investors would take at face value.

Before anybody caught on to the con, the people responsible for starting it all would be buried so deep in other people’s money that no proof connecting them to a crime would be found. Sure, they came up with some amazingly complex financial “instruments” and wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if credit-challenged social climbers didn’t buy in to the charade, but the chutzpah celebrated by masterminds of our current mortgage meltdown assumed that they were in control.

So now that homebuyers who suddenly find themselves upside-down in their mortgages have simply stopped paying, who’s howling now? You guessed it: the pack of wolves who didn’t think they’d be left holding the bag: the banks. What an outrage to think that the people we duped are turning the table on us! Isn’t there any personal integrity left in this country?

Well, maybe the banks and capitalist wonks aren’t saying this out loud, but they’re thinking it, aren’t they? And they would have a case, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that their whole business model recently has been built on making other people poor.

You don’t believe me, do you?

The Free Money Call

Last week, a perky young woman representing Bank of America called my aunt in Brooklyn, New York. My father's sister is a proud octogenarian who worked into her seventies and has refused to move out of her dangerous neighborhood because her apartment is already paid for.

This friendly caller wanted to “give” my aunt a "bonus" of $500 just for joining a new rewards program at B of A.

“What’s the catch?” my aunt asked suspiciously.

“Oh, no catch at all,” the smooth-talking young woman cooed.

“No catch? You’re just giving me $500?” my aunt scoffed, almost ready to hang up.

“No catch!” the woman reassured my aunt. “Just make your minimum payments.”

“So, you’re not GIVING me $500, are you?” my aunt confirmed, “...because you SAID you wanted to give me $500. But making payments means you’re not giving me anything.”

My aunt had now gotten mad. She wasn’t hanging up now – she was going to prove this young lady wrong.

“Well, yes, ma’am… you’ll have to re-pay the $500,” admitted the woman. “But you don’t have to pay it all back anytime soon. You can use it to purchase something you want for your home, or maybe a vacation, or clothing… it’s up to you how you want to spend it and when you want to pay it back.”

The woman knew she had to hustle with her spiel to keep my aunt engaged in the conversation.

“So,” my aunt toyed, realizing she had this little bank representative right where she wanted her. “You’re saying that you want to give people $500 to spend on whatever they want, whether they can afford it or not.”

Apparently, the lady from B of A didn’t see that one coming.

"Hey,” my native-New-Yorker-aunt continued, going in for the kill. “I”ve worked hard all my life to provide for myself, and do you know what I did when I wanted something I couldn’t afford?”

“No,” the woman mustered, meekly.

“I SAVED for it. I worked and saved until I could afford what I wanted. That’s what my generation did!” my aunt triumphed. “And now I’ve got a bank calling me – a BANK, of all things! – telling me I can get free money and assuming I’m so desperate for something I'll jump at the chance.” My aunt was indignant.

“Haven’t you banks learned anything? Isn’t this the kind of stupid credit that got us into the mess we have today?”

Did I mention my aunt is a native New Yorker?

The rep from B of A made some apologetic comment, and thanking my aunt for her time, hung up.

It's Not Just B of A

I share this story just to show that even today, banks don’t get it.

Not to say that people who’ve stopped paying their mortgages are right, either. They’re just as much a part of the problem.

But like my aunt, I was incredulous to learn the old “free money” lie is still part of the banking industry’s business model. So really, should bank executives be surprised that their mortgage customers now want some of that “free money” for themselves?

It’s like a bunch of kids in the back of dad’s car in the middle of a family road trip: "He started it!” “No, she did!”

And then Mom bellows, “I don’t care who started it! Just cut it out! NOW!”

Remember the silence in the car that would follow? Wouldn’t that sound nice right about now?

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Mortgage Chutzpah Not Just On Wall Street

Two years ago, while driving past a new subdivision of $600,000 homes in suburban Detroit, my sister-in-law told me an interesting story about one of the families who faced foreclosure in that neighborhood.

It seems she had overheard a group of mothers at their charter school joking about the family, who these mothers scoffed hadn’t “played the game” properly.

“What game?” my sister-in-law asked, confused. She knew the family in question - husband and wife are both highly-educated engineers - and was surprised to hear the snide remarks directed towards them by this group of women.

“Why, you don’t pay your mortgage every month, do you?” one of the mothers shot back.

My sister-in-law was caught off-guard. Of course, she and my brother pay their mortgage every month. What does that have to do with anything?

Apparently, quite a lot. That day, she learned that people all over Wayne County have been living beyond their means for years. Like a secret code, mortgages and car loans had become a big joke among social-climbing, keeping-up-with-the-Jones’es suburbanites all around my brother and his family, who had settled for a house they could afford and drive used vehicles. And when this group of mothers learned that my sister-in-law made sure the mortgage got paid monthly, they basically said the joke was on her. She and my brother were suffering through an unnecessarily low standard of living when, with a little overextension, so much luxury could be within reach.

Bankrupt Fiscal Morality

People who justify such a bankrupt fiscal morality do so by claiming that banks and mortgage companies scam their customers and jack up prices, so they have a right to fight back. How else could anybody afford to live in high-priced places like Michigan without scrimping on paying debt obligations? They still had other stuff to acquire, like vacations, boats, impressive wardrobes, and tons of toys to help their kids ignore the fact that both parents were working themselves to death trying to just keep up with the minimum payments on the bloated American Dream.

As we’ve now seen, however, the joke was on the entire country – both the people with ethics who paid their bills and lived within their means, those who bit off way more than they could afford, and those who helped create the illusion that debt was cheap.

These days, in suburban Michigan, it's no secret that many people have stopped paying their mortgages yet continue to reside in homes they’re not paying for. Anecdotal evidence suggests it will take about three years to process most foreclosures in Michigan, due to its sheer volume of defaulted mortgages. So many homes already sit empty that banks actually want foreclosed families to stay in their homes to prevent vandalism and keep the heat on. And next door, invariably, reside honest homeowners who’ve either paid up their mortgage or continue to pay, and in effect subsidize those who either can’t or won’t pay for their own debts. It’s a sad, sad scenario of greed, materialism, and selfishness.

A Nationwide Disgrace

In today's New York Times, an article entitled "Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, and Stop Fretting" confirms the stories my brother and his family began hearing two years ago about people who intentionally overextended themselves. In the Times piece, several Floridians who have stopped paying their mortgages have allowed their names – and even photos of themselves – to be used as examples of frustrated borrowers who find themselves upside-down in their loans. Apparently, there's no shame to be found anymore in financial mismanagement.

True, during the past ten years, money lenders have been particularly cunning in how they’ve marketed themselves to borrowers. No shortage of evidence exists to show how banks intentionally encouraged home buyers to purchase more than they could afford. Compounding the problem was the banks packaging and re-selling of mortgages they knew were sub-prime – and therefore of a higher risk – without fully disclosing the risk to their customers.

But what part of this scenario negates any borrower’s obligations to repay the loan for which they signed? Just because it might be proven that a bank employed deception – whether criminal or not – can a homebuyer simply take the law into their own hands and stop paying on their debt?

Pot = Kettle

One of the Floridians who has stopped paying on her mortgage justified her actions by derisively dismissing all bankers as “crooks,” which, granted, might aptly describe a good many of them. But is that a legal or moral reason for not waiting for due process? In saner times, when foreclosures were more infrequent, and therefore more punitive, homebuyers would scream bloody murder if banks called their loans in an aggressive fashion, expecting due process in the execution of the foreclosure. But now, when the tables are turned, suddenly due process doesn’t apply?

Another person quoted in the Times piece said the decision to stop paying their mortgage became a simple matter of survival, which almost sounds noble until you read further and learn they still visit casinos. Whatever happened to "once bitten, twice shy"?

It remains to be seen how all of the legal battles over the nation’s mortgage mess will be sorted out in courts of law. For now, it does appear that no individuals will be prosecuted for the lies and corruption which helped bring us where we are today. And for people who have desperately tried to figure out a way to escape the crushing mortgages they ill-advisedly signed, it would be terribly tempting to exact one’s own form of justice on this unfair system by simply stopping mortgage payments.

But two wrongs have never made a right, have they? And it is wrong, isn’t it, to not pay back what you’ve signed for on the dotted line. If you think people should be able to keep stuff they can’t afford, then our whole economic system will crash all around us.

We Keep Coming Back to Greed

The manifestations of the mortgage meltdown have proven to be complex, but the basic reason is simple: greed.

- Greed on the part of banks, mortgage companies, and Wall Street players for quick profits regardless of risk.

- Greed on the part of home buyers who wanted more house than they realistically could afford in the long-term.

- Greed on the part of real estate investors who flipped properties in a race to push up market values.

- And greed on the part of certain liberal politicians and bureaucrats who were pushing lower-income blacks into the housing market, waving the specter of racism against loan officers who questioned their credit.

Just because the cause is easy to identify doesn’t mean the fix will be just as easy. Indeed, the fix will require some painful choices, not the least of which will probably be further government meddling into our economy. Thanks a lot, all you greedy bozos!

In the meantime, how does having thousands of borrowers across the country refusing to pay their mortgages help anything? Are banks still steadfastly resistant to working with homebuyers to negotiate lower payments? Does not paying your mortgage put you in a more favorable light with your bank? Just because up to 40% of your home’s value is currently gone, does that mean that throughout the life of your mortgage, the 40% won’t be recouped, and you should just go ahead and throw in the towel now? How much longer might it take for property values in your area to rebound with people intentionally defaulting on their loans?

Has our nation reared a bumper-crop of such financially-stupid citizens that not paying one’s mortgage can make sense? If indeed, all bankers are “crooks,” does anything get fixed by dignifying their tactics with similar ones of your own?

Doing the right thing is rarely easy, fun, or cheap. But has easy, fun, and cheap usurped hard work and diligent morality as watchwords for the United States of America?