This is a philosophical post that pretty much explains where I stand on the economic crisis. I believe that while in many scenarios more than one person is truly responsible, ultimately we are all responsible for our own actions.
So for example, a drug addict is to blame for their drug problem and not the dealer. A student is usually to blame for bad grades and not the teacher. The person who pulled the trigger is guilty of murder, not the seller of the weapon or ammo.
So understanding this about me, it should make it obvious that I blame we Americans for the mortgage crisis in our country right now. I blame myself because too, I have an ARM on my rental property and I didn’t put down 20% on my home.
I am part of the problem, and refuse to blame Wall Street — or Washington for that matter. Sure, without the banks willing to give us bad loans, it couldn’t have ever happened; but ultimately it is our crisis to bail ourselves out of and in a way the biggest mistake Wall Street made was to trust that we would all pay our loans back. Now personally I’ve never missed a payment on any of my mortgages, but I made the same mistakes that others have, it’s just that up until now, my mistakes haven’t caught up with me. The good news is that like many others, I learn from my mistakes and honestly believe that while this important lesson is going to hurt for now, in the long run it is going help us.
