In the midst of the sub-prime blow-up, people are pointing fingers at a lot of places. I don’t doubt that the banking industry and the Fed are culpable, but we can’t absolve individuals who make such decisions to speculate on real estate or live beyond their means of their responsibility in creating this mess. A comedian’s commentary about the difference between dogs and cats that I heard years ago reminds me of how I feel people act. When a cat-owner goes on vacation, he can leave a week’s worth of food for the cat and it will eat it slowly throughout the week. However, if a dog owner did the same thing, the dog would eat it all at once and lie on its back groaning about how much it ate. People, in my view, act like the dog: so many people just keep consuming with no regard for when to show temperance or regard for staying within their means. This LendingTree commercial, which aired a few years ago, sums up a troubling mentality. I never found it funny, only scary. Whoever laughed at it then probably isn’t laughing now.
Taking on more debt to temporarily alleviate your already crushing debt-load? Who can claim that the idea anything but absolutely brilliant.
Read the full article: How Did We Get Here?