Bryant Tutas stepped on our collective toes with his post Morally Wrong....OR...Financially Sound? The post generated 175 comments within just couple of days. Terrific post, terrific comments. Definitely worth reading, so click and you will not regret. He twisted the legal subject and asked whether it was moral.

The reason it is such a passionate discussion, is that we are to make the adjustments, that we did not think we would have to make. We lived in the world, where the promise to pay equalled the obligation to pay, and the moral thing to do and the only right way to do it. Foreclosures were the exceptions, they were not us. Someone else, less fortunate, less diligent, less lucky.

legalWhen the fallout started, we kept adhering to the moral stand. We are paying our debts. But the market kept falling, and holding to the principles was wearing us out and getting increasingly frustrated.

At that time if we could pay, we paid. Changing reality was testing us. The notion that acting responsibly and morally was the right thing to do and doing the right thing was supposed to be good and rewarding... but it wasn't.

Our world in the last few years has changed dramatically. We are painfully adjusting to the new reality. We stand to make our choices how we are going to deal with this changed reality. What is moral and what is not. What we would accept as a norm, and what we not.

We are facing changes that we have never faced before. Moral issues will be numerous, and sticking to the morals of 4 years ago may not help us. It is a nostalgic notion to keep the morals of the past working for the present. The world changes, we change, the morals change. I understand that morals are not the condom used once only (we are still rich enough to afford a one-time condom, aren't we?). But by the same token they are not the dogma, that never changes. They should not be the form without substance, without real life, that left.

3-4 years ago the idea of stopping the payments, do a short sale of your property was appalling. It was definitely a "no". It has changed. It is not only people who made poor decisions, and people who were not responsible. People who thought they were acting responsibly are in the same line.

We have already changed. Unless you think that the only place for them is jail, you have changed your stance on that. This is no longer immoral.

Strategic default that is happening now, not 3 years ago, is often nothing else, but the understanding that the real default is around the corner, and turning off the moral life support today will simply help avoid or delay the moment when it turns into inability to feed the family and provide shelter after spending the last borrowed penny.

Because when we say, that if people can pay, they have to pay, we might be pushing them dangerously close to the point that they deplete their credit cards paying for what they would not be able to keep anyway.

Let them walk. This is not fun for them. They are not criminals. They are you and me, greedy or not greedy, it does not really matter. They are you and me, caught in the big mess, that we did not see coming. We should've but we are neither Bush, nor Obama. Big mess that everyone else failed to warn us about.

 
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49 Comments on Painfully Adjusting to the World

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JUL
07
2009
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Mike - it is partially because I did not use any definition of morals, and use it very generally. I think you are talking about your core values.

I looked up the definition in the dictionary and here's what they offer: Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character.

If you accept it, then us changing our view of walking away, is a definite change from 2-3 years ago. At least for me.

Thank you for your always very thoughtful and sincere comments
11:43pm • #30
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Kris -  I do not blame you. And I think this is far from over.
11:44pm • #31
JUL
08
2009
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Lenn - I think financial and moral are together. your comment made me think and I wrote a blog, inspired by your comment Show Me The Soul...

Thank you
12:59am • #32
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Gynell - "varying stances on our current challenging times" if they involve "judgment of goodness or badness" (and everything does), are moral issue as well as financial.

Doing something (like deciding to walk away) is a financial, but judging it (valuing it) is moral. We do not do one without the other.

I think that you would agree with me on that. Financial is an action. Morals are the compass and sense of direction. Troubled times are when it is not in accord, like now
1:04am • #33
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Bryant - that idea came in the process of reading terrific comments to your blog. When I just read your post, I could not answer.

It was coming to me as I was reading

Thank you
1:06am • #34
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Joe - I think you are right on the  money here. Circumstances may be not our choice, our morals are always our choice.
1:11am • #35
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Anna - But it still is. It still involves judgment. I am not saying it should keep people in the  hole, absolutely not.
1:12am • #36
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Carla - I know how much are we regulated on a State level, and I am sure the Banks are regulated not any less. And often time the Lenders are not banks, but groups of investors that happened to buy securities backed by mortgages.

They are losing, and we can't demand that they feel happy about it. And as far as I understand, these investors do not get bailout money.

So when you are coming to a guy, who is standing to lose $100K, and if he thhinks that he is being screwed, wouldn't you agree?
1:17am • #37
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Lane - it is simply a matter of definition. Core values and morals maybe not the same thing, but I am not a scholar
1:26am • #38
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Julie - I find it an incredibly thoughtful comment. There is no moral or financial absolute. What we do is both the situation and what we are.

This is not a black-and-white world, and our morals are not the set of canonized commandments. And nobody is going to make choices for us, and we will have to live with the choices we make.

Thanks, terrific comment
1:30am • #39
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Charles - If not Bush, then who? And yeah, he was our shame. Two terms and not a single intern, simply pathetic.

And now the country is paying the price... just a different cashier, whose math is plain scary (LOL)
1:36am • #40
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What an incredibly compassionate and well thought out post. Whether we saw it coming or not should in no way affect the compassion due to those in need today.
4:13am • #41
291,755 Points 2 Featured Posts Called Shot Master

I definately think there has been a shift with homeownership but changing morals, really?
7:01am • #42
1,142,806 Points 242 Featured Posts Localism Sponsor Outside Blog Hit Router Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Hi Jon!  Well, you struck a chord with many here and I have to say that it's been interesting sitting back and reading the comments.  Like Fernando, I never would have expected this to be a topic of conversation--EVER--before!  Not sure that it's a moral issue but, it still does not seem 'right' to me.  I just can't put my finger on what it is but, walking away from a contractural agreement and not fulfilling it just seems 'wrong' to me. 

I've never been in those shoes so, I can't say what, exactly, I would do in a situation as Bryant described in his post.  That's probably why I can't wrap my head around this yet!

Congrats on that little gold star!  WELL deserved!

Debe in Charlotte
8:42am • #43

The issue of morality will always get a big response. Because what you see as moral might be seen as immoral to another. Any way that you look at it, you make a great point that we must be willing to change our viess with the times.
11:18am • #44
145,887 Points Outside Blog Called Shot Master

I've enjoyed these discussions, since I've had to make similar decisions.  Another great blog!
5:30pm • #45
JUL
09
2009
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

William James Walton, Sr. - You are right, but it engages us not only on a personal level, but also on society level. Will it destroy the credit as we knew it? How we will be looking at our obligations after we saw that you can change the terms of the agreements when they became unfavorable?

There are a lot of issue, and in any crisis we create new realities, and we need to build our community attitude towards the changed reality.

I liked your term "situational ethics". I think we see it a lot today, when so many people are going with the flow, because there is a flow. Even if they can keep paying. But if you changed the rules, and it is not the contract that governs, how can you tell them that they can't do that? The contract specifies what they can and can't do, but if you allow some to break the contract, you invited everyone to break the contract.

You can't change the rules and then make new rules for some of the people, and expect it to work.

yo either allow people to fail and go through the provided venues, that are specified in the contracts. But if you decide to allow the contracts to be negated, then we have what we have.
1:50am • #46
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

William James Walton, Sr. -  This is  not our choice, the shift is the result of instability. I think this change is, if I can use this word- systemic. It is not just a cycle, where down if followed by the up. I think there are deeper changes (shifts) that are happening today.

It is not the collapse of the market that is stunning, it is the effect of a collapse of the market i one place, and how powerful the ripple effect is. Before we used to talk about crisis and say that they are global, because famine in one part of the world was somehow felt in other parts of the world.

So, we would not buy onions from that part of the world and buy it from another part of the world, but for more money. That was our understanding of the global part of it. Now we created the Tsunami of biblical proportions, and when we just sneeze and cough, other countries are running a full blown fever with deadly results.

This world became smaller again. And more fragile
7:54pm • #47
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Jeani - Surprisingly, not that many people say that. i had very difficult time trying to figure it out. I knew that you can't keep up with the prices going up and up, and up, but at the same time, I did not see anything that would be a powerful (to be heard) voice of reason.

NAR kept bragging how the market was great and was going to get even better with a huge influx of baby boomers starting from 2008, and so on and so forth

By the way, you doing what you were doing was a moral decision, not economical...I would even say it was counter-economical
8:05pm • #48
1,210,622 Points 118 Featured Posts Outside Blog Attended Rain Camp Called Shot Master

Christianne - Bryant's is a great post and it made me think, and like Bryant did not simply foloowed Richard Zaretsky's post, the  same way I am looking at it at a little different angle.
8:09pm • #49

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