The Tyranny of Foreclosure – Part 2

Our friends highlighted in the previous post have been unemployed and underemployed for an extended period of time – everyone who criticizes others for their economic condition ought to try unemployment for an extended period so they know what they’re talking about. If they don’t have the courage to experiment with unemployment they might consider simply trying to find a job and see what the experience is like. That won’t replicate the identity crisis that unemployment precipitates or the stress whose roots reach deep into the soul and strangle hope and joy, but it might give the judgmental person a small taste of what the job market is like.

Our friends, much like millions of other Americans, acted in good faith with their mortgage company, they sought solutions, they drained first their savings and then their retirement because they naively believed that if they did the right thing that others would do the right thing. And as many other Americans they now realize that their best course of action would have been to save their money and let the bank have their home – at least then they would have had their retirement intact. After all, large businesses appear to have no moral qualms about stiffing creditors and pension funds and retirees, and they certainly have no qualms about seeking welfare payments from the taxpayer while at the same time paying executives obscene compensation. Why don’t we condemn corporations who are on the equivalent of food stamps?

 We have another friend who has been unemployed for an extended period, so far he has made his mortgage payments by engaging in the great American homeowner pastime – liquidate your savings and retirement. His interest rate is 9%; recent interest rates have been as low as 3 – 4%. He has requested that his loan be modified to a lower interest rate, the mortgage company won’t consider it because he isn’t employed – this is a fine example of predatory mortgage company logic. The consumer thinks that by lowering the interest rate that the likelihood of our friend remaining in his home is increased as is the likelihood of the bank continuing to receive payments. If our friend were employed the lender would refinance the home and lower the payment, but since he isn’t employed it doesn’t make any difference that he is not in default – the lender would rather he go into default and lose his home and his equity…to the lender.

 Is this the Great American Dream or what?

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.

Literally?

When someone tells me, “I literally stood in line for 20 minutes at Wal-Mart yesterday,” I think I’ll respond, “Do you mean there are times when you’ve figuratively stood in line for 20 minutes?” Or if I hear, “He literally ate 3 pieces of pie at lunch,” I’ll ask, “Have there been times he figuratively ate 3 pieces of pie?”

Or if my cousin Clovis tells me that our Uncle Corbin literally got married for a fifth time I’ll ask, “Do you mean that he once figuratively got married for a fifth time?”

Where did this use of “literally” come from and how did it explode into popular usage? It has come to rival “reach out” in banality and is running neck-and-neck with “to be honest with you” in eliciting a response from me. I am pressed to ask people who tell me that they are being honest with me about the other things they’ve told me – are they indicating that they are taking a timeout from falsehood and that I should prepare myself to hear the truth?

If “literally” means that something actually happened then am I to infer that everything else I’m told is to be taken figuratively?

“Susan, did you send that report to accounting today?” 

“Yes Bob I did.”

“Susan, did you literally send that report to accounting or were you speaking in a figurative sense?”

 “Bob, if I had literally sent the report I would have said “literally” – how dumb can you be?”

Are we using “literally” because we live in such a virtual world that we can’t distinguish between something that physically occurs and something that we imagine? Or are we using “literally” ubiquitously because the norm is to spin language and events to such a degree that when we actually tell the truth it has become the equivalent of “to be honest with you”?

I’m amused that people use language they way they pick up a cold or the flu, by being around other people and not guarding against infection. One minute Susan doesn’t use “literally” every other sentence, the next minute she awakes in a world in which “literally” is crucial to effective communication. However, unlike a cold or the flu Susan doesn’t even know she’s been infected and as she reaches out to others she spreads the infection. It would be courteous if folks who misuse “literally” would cover their mouths before speaking just as they hopefully cover their mouths before a cough.

To be honest with you the next time someone reaches out to me with a description of something that is modified by the word “literally” I think that I will go quite literally mad.