Common Sense - The Missing Ingredient

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The aphorisms and common knowledge, our basic moral teachings, seem to have been placed in the ice box of “everybody else is doing it” or “that guy at the mortgage company said that it was okay.” Our government embraced “deregulation” but created loopholes that benefited the big contributors… they deregulated greed, and left the rest of us with the bill.

We need to find the good folks out there, Republicans and Democrats, and get to work together. Hey, there are lots of folks who strongly believe that the government needs to be structured so that their point of view, economic, religious or political, becomes the point of view imposed on everyone else. What happened to tolerance, freedom of religion, respecting divergent views – even fighting to make sure each American can express free thoughts? We have never had to work together like this since Pearl Harbor .

How in the world do you create a cohesive society, a solution to a litany of problems that require Americans to be on the same page – assuming that the educational system actually provided enough of an education to read a page?! How do we punish the liars, the frauds, those who fostered the necessary dishonesty to fuel a market where those who could not afford to buy homes were given the tools to buy them anyway, those who benefited with cash in their deep and soiled pockets… without dismantling the economic system necessary to rebuild America as the greatest economic power on earth and take care of citizens who are worried about losing their homes or are actually losing them?

Tough balancing act, and it is not going to happen in the near term. But we do need to expand the search for the managers, executives, brokers, dealers, fraudulent mortgage applicants who stretched the truth to make a buck. If someone has to lose their home or their savings, let’s focus on those who made it happen – not the just institutions that actually provide the jobs we need – but the INDIVIDUALS who made the decisions. And what happens if a CEO, not willing to take the pay cut that is mandated if his or her company gets a governmental buyout which might benefit some innocent homeowners, opts to let this or her company tank just to get the pay?

The “Deciders” – in government, in office towers and those people who thought it was acceptable to change the government’s rules to permit flagrant and unjustified borrowing, or the persons who believed it was just fine to fabricate a loan application and lie about their income – owe the taxpayers of this nation one hell of a lot of money. Let’s start collecting it. File the suits, begin the prosecutions, and collect the money that the rest of us are now being asked to shoulder.

And let’s help the individuals, the families, who did nothing wrong, but cannot borrow money for life, for their non-fraudulent business, for their kids’ educations or need some relief from mortgage and home-value crisis that they had nothing to do with. And let’s be proactive in a fight to create individual and corporate responsibility where it has been dormant for way too long! We have a rescue bill; let’s see if government actually implements a rescue plan!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.