The Tyranny of Foreclosure – Part 1

 

Since 2008 there have been over 4 million foreclosures in this country. Many more millions of homeowners are “under water” and many more have engaged in short sales to get out from under crushing mortgage debt.

Last night we had dinner with friends in their home of twenty years; twenty years of raising their two girls, twenty years of entertaining and encouraging family and friends, twenty years of growing in their marriage – there won’t be another twenty years, or ten years or even five years in this home, the won’t be another year and there may not be even another month; not for them, not for their daughters. Vickie and I were one of their last dinner guests. It isn’t that they’re moving into a retirement community, or that they are selling in order to purchase a home in which to enjoy their “golden years” – they are being forced out of their home under the tyranny of foreclosure. I use the word “tyranny” in the full sense of the word; it is economic and emotional tyranny that surpasses anything the Founding Fathers fought against, the Colonial-era Stamp Act is a fifty-cent toll booth charge compared to the American foreclosure process which is wiping out the savings, retirement accounts, security and hope of millions of Americans. The economic aristocracy pays no price for its lasciviousness and lust as our elected representatives bail it out, giving it carte blanche to despoil the bank accounts and homes of those who were once its trusting and foolish customers.

The diabolical beauty of the debacle is that because we are a nation of individuals that cares little for our neighbors, as long as the tentacles of the deep-sea monster do not touch us we don’t care, as long as we are in little danger of having our own economic life blood squeezed out of us we content ourselves with (perhaps) a pinch of sympathy in the sure knowledge that “those people must have done something to deserve it.”

We don’t pause to consider that the mortgage brokers took their money and ran with impunity, not caring about the fate of their clients – was there ever such a massive breach of fiduciary duty? The layperson trusted the professional and the professional breached his duty. We don’t consider the tens of thousands of real estate agents that sold their clients hell under the guise of heaven – they also took their money and ran with impunity – again the professional taking advantage of the layperson. Most of all we don’t consider that the consumers played by the rules laid down by the financial institutions and Federal regulators and that when the game turned ugly the financial institutions and Federal regulators conveniently ignored the fact that they were the ones who devised the rules – they set the interest rates, they approved the home values, they provided lists of approved appraisers, they engineered the macroeconomic conditions…and they bailed themselves out while crushing the ants on their picnic table.

We are told that the financial institutions are too big to fail and must be bailed out, the corollary of that is that the individual and family is too small to matter. Twenty years in a home of love and care and family and friends and memories is no small matter.