More On The "Blame Game"
Bank Lawyer’s Blog:
Former CBS New Executive and current executive with National Public Radio, Dick Meyer, is also a blogger at “Against The Grain.” A recent rant on the subprime mortgage crisis speaks to all sides of the political spectrum and tells everybody to stop the blame game.
One of the great tensions in the American spirit for the past
century has been between traditional self-reliance and modern
blamesmanship. Blamesmanship is winning now, and the consequences are
economic, not just moral.
The first cousin of blamesmanship is
the syndrome that turns grown-ups into victims, the social demand that
for every bad thing there must be a victim and a villain. The American
litigation system is our great monument to these most unattractive
ethical postures. Lost money in the market? Sue. Suffered an untimely
death in the family? Sue. Couldn’t afford your credit card payments?
Blame easy credit, declare bankruptcy and let someone else sue you.
[...]
The country is looking for whom to blame for the recession.
Generally, the culprit is seen to be the easy credit that spawned the
real estate boom. So the villains are promiscuous lenders and the Wall
Street financiers who provided a secondary market for risky loans, thus
shielding the big guys from risk and hanging little guys out to dry.
That narrative is broadly true. But it is only half the story.
The
other half is the story of the consumers who took out the risky loans,
the jumbo mortgages and the excessive credit card debt. The liberal
spirit wants to excuse “the consumer” from any moral or economic
responsibility because the consumer is the victim of vast economic
forces and malevolent corporate predators.
Government ought to
protect the little guy. Business ought not to prey on consumers. Well,
yes, sure. But that, again, is only half the…