We all remember the wise words that were spoken about the "Ownership Society" and the gentleman who reminded us of this was President Bush. He is correct, an ownership society that owns their own real estate is indeed a much better society and makes for a much better civilization. Why? Simple, because each homeowner is a stakeholder, owning the property underneath their feet and the family's home and in business we have similar psychological term, called: "Buy In!"

Buy in is real and for anyone who has ever run an organization before they realize that buy in means that each person has a vested interest in the success of the group or in this case of the Ownership Society, they have buy in to the community, as they own a piece of it, and all of a sudden it matters. So, then what happened? Well, the real estate loans allowed folks to borrow 100% or more of the actual inflated home values. In that case no one actually owned anything, except a piece of paper telling them they owed money.

Economic Enslavement whether by one's own free will and signing away of their future earnings, or by way of shear survival and borrowing to keep their heads above water, basically it amounts to the same thing. It is more of a slave society than an ownership society in that case. Do I blame the President for using positive public relations to motivate folks to think about homeownership?

No, actually, I very much agree in the buy-in principle. Unfortunately, what happened was a feeding frenzy of really bad loans on properties whose artificial price points rose to unrealistic numbers. Where do we go from here? Well, we need to make sure this does not happen again, so we need better financial education in HS about the time value of money, credit card debt and oh yes, how to balance a check book. We also need responsibility from those who borrowed more than they could pay. It seems only fitting that we be thinking here at this point.