Why we are really in this financial crisis

The Republicans blame the Democrats. The Democrats blame the Republicans. The Libertarians blame them both. Everyone blames Wall Street.

Who is really at fault? How did we get into this mess? When did debt become the American dream?

I believe the fault lies not with any political party or policy, but with a mindset, an ideology.

We have become dependant of 'credit'. We have forgotten the caution in the Bible, "The borrower is servant to the lender." We have been fooled into thinking that we must have things NOW instead of saving for them. We buy cars on credit, we buy houses on credit, we buy electronics on credit, and in the worst case scenario we pay our bills on credit!

The kids and I have read portions of the book "On Jordan's Stormy Banks" (A very good read by the way), in that book there are several times where some old black man or woman talks about how they never borrowed money (never 'bought it on time'). They may have been 'poor', but they came out of slavery and did not want to be servant to a creditor, they wanted to be free.

The idea that owning a home is a 'right' (and according to President Obama it is) is so wrong! No one is guaranteed that. Home ownership is not an inalienable right! But I digress...

The problem is that Americans are so in debt. The reason they cannot afford health care is because they have so much debt. That may not be the case every time, but I do think it is generally true. The reason they are in debt is because they think that they must have certain things. They are not willing to go without in order to be free.

Wall Street did not force anyone to buy a home they could not afford. Wall Street did not force anyone to invest. Wall Street did not force anyone to use a credit card. The only culpability that Wall Street has is that it propagated the myth that 'credit' is good. And of course even that you cannot blame Wall Street totally for. The people who believed the lies are not innocent. They should have thought, they should have investigated. If they didn't know, they could have, if they had really wanted to. Those who have gone into the debt trap did so of their own free will, perhaps unwittingly, but always willingly.

The economic crisis was caused by people making investments and using credit irresponsibly. The American people, not Wall Street are really to blame. Perhaps our leaders should have warned us more, but of course they are in the same credit boat so why would they? Even our current President is continuing to lie and say that how much debt we can accrue is the measure of how strong our economy is!! What a load of...uh...crap!

My husband has a business that has never borrowed money. Making payroll week to week gets a little tricky sometimes, but there is no debt. If he can do it, so can everyone else. The problem is of course that the businesses, like the individuals who run them, want it NOW! They do not want to save and grow slow. They want to appear prosperous when they are not. Debt creates a false sense of prosperity. Prosperity from debt is an illusion, and illusion that we see crumbling all around us and yet we still do not want to acknowledge the true cause. It is so much easier to blame the faceless Wall Street.

The growing 'prosperity' that America has enjoyed was doomed to fail. And now that it has everyone is playing the blame game and not wanting to take responsibility. Unless we do, we are bound to continue in the error and spread more blame where it does not belong. Every one of us must accept our part of the blame for this mess. We must stop accruing debt. We must save. We must seek out real prosperity, not the mirage that debt presents. Go without that new iPhone or the plasma TVs or the blue-ray or the new car...until you have saved for it. Only then will we get out of this mess and have something real to show for our hard work.