Reckless risk takers, that is how we describe today’s bankers and Wall Street moguls and in the process we make the apparent easy leap to blaming them for all the economic woes we face. We are also keen on defining two categories of Americans, the taken advantage of Americans who are faced with unaffordable mortgages, credit card debt, and the “wealthy” who still take advantage of Americans and the system. As unemployment approaches 10% and perhaps beyond, we seem to forget about the other 90% and the unknown percentage of Americans who do not have thousands in credit card debt, or mortgages they should never have taken. Granted the growing number of unemployed is also contributing to mortgage foreclosures and that is very unfortunate, but let us not forget that is not how we got into this mess.
There may be reckless risk takers on Wall Street, but there are many more on Main Street. Every American who took a mortgage geared more to keeping up with the Jones than common sense or to fulfill dreams that required more practical consideration were reckless risk takers. Every politician who pushed for rules that are more liberal on mortgages under the belief that home ownership was a right was a risk taker because he or she did not understand or care about the unintended consequences.
Now there are calls for additional stimulus as if we can buy our way out of this with more debt. More borrowing to stimulate the economy when only 10%
of the already authorized stimulus has been used? I do not know where that stimulus has gone, but I sure know there is a heck of a lot of road construction and if that is the stimulus, we appear to be affecting mostly state workers and contractors while the majority of Americans still are unaffected. While the overall unemployment rate is nearing 10% the unemployment rate for college graduates is about half of that which should tell America something, mainly the future is not in manufacturing. How often do people need to get beat up before they realize that the future is not unskilled work or even in skilled manufacturing. Certainly, we will need those people, but they will always be at greater risk in poor economic times. Instead of making headlines, we need to make fundamental changes in our education system from the ground up. We need to adapt when the economy changes, we need to add courses in basic money and household management and we need to link the education system with the employers and the world economy.
We did this to ourselves; there is no question about that. Moreover, there should be no question that mortgaging of the economic security of future generations of Americans is not the way to our recovery.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 