Calculated Risk posted a few videos from an upcoming PBS show, "Inside the Meltdown" or something like that. I have a huge problem with this whole idea. First, here's a tidbit.
This is all too easy. It's yet one more look into the machinations of Wall Street and how one firm or another went under, dragging this or that other firm and so-and-so's money down with it. It avoids looking at the most hideous thing of all, the mirror.
At the height of the mortgage mania, I was in the process of selling a custom luxury home that I had helped design and had built for me. It was tailor made for the way I wanted to live. There's nothing like it in San Diego. It's so unique that you can see it's primary feature from Google Earth. As I was considering my options and trying to work out a way I could keep the home, I was offered "liar's loans." On the mortgage application, I could write down any amount of false, undocumented income. I could have been approved for any amount of money.
The choice to lie or not was mine, not the mortgage broker's. "The serpent tempted me and I did eat" is an admission, not an excuse. The financial crisis we find ourselves in wasn't caused by my mortgage broker taking a gun to my head and forcing me to sign the papers, it was caused by people like me choosing to lie on their loan documents. I didn't lie, I didn't sign the papers and I ended up selling my wonderful house. Many people did lie. Without those lies, there would have been no subprime loan crisis, no financial meltdown, no global depression.
The finger-pointing and accusations and blame is all over the news now. Talk radio is practically wall-to-wall with explanations why this party or that is at fault. It's all too easy. The truth is much, much harder - too hard for us to contemplate.
We're to blame. We did this to ourselves.
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