Credit lenders suffering from withdrawal

I am sorry to keep talking about sad things in my luxury real estate blog entries, but I just read an article in CNN entitled "Ex-bankers on pushing customers to rack up debt" and it once again brought up many familiar concerns to my mind on the topic of consumer debt. I wish that I could talk about happy topics. I would much prefer to discuss luxury properties or any other topic, including how getting adequate sleep can lead to more success, but, alas, I feel it much more pressing to focus on the problems upon us.

I am absolutely disgusted by the state of our financial markets. It seems to me that dishonesty is rampant and the very people who are responsible for this mess are asking for a great deal of money to supposedly solve the problem. But I care about people much more than institutions. And, based upon the testimony of the two honest women in the CNN article, who both have good consciences, I see little difference between the practices of certain banks and lenders and the practices of drug pushers. Many lenders trick people into taking more money than they need, they strive to get young people addicted and they keep people in a state of dependency for extended periods of time. All of that adds up to trouble.

Debt is a plague that, when handled unwisely, can lead to all sorts of problems that I think are even worse than the horrible effects of drug abuse. People can at least stop taking drugs and eventually go through a process of withdrawal and recovery. But with debt, even if a person stops going into more debt, they still have interest building up on the money they owe and they face all sorts of roadblocks on the way to recovery.

The very institutions that have pushed so many people to get addicted to debt are now suffering from a major withdrawal (pardon the banking pun) and seem on the verge of collapse... wait a minute - collapse? How is this possible? It starts with how good people are treated. We have not been treated fairly and now those who have been engaging in dishonest practices are reaping the bitter fruit. We have become a nation of debtors, instead of a nation of wealth.

Perhaps our financial market, as it currently stands, should not be saved. Perhaps we must soon create an entirely new and honest way of working with our money. Whatever we choose, we cannot keep doing what we have been doing.

I feel like I've been ending every blog entry with an apology for being so negative. I just don't want to leave my readers with a sense of anger or hopelessness. I think that there is much to hope about. There are plenty of good people in this world and in our wonderful nation, the United States. I am confident we will make it through this sad time. I just want to make sure this never happens again.

The photo of the parrot biting a credit card is from www.flickr.com/photos/djkbird214/2695122732 and it is the copyright of dj-squared.