Science and Society

Everyday, we hear about more money being thrown at financial institutions to prevent them from failing. It is disconcerting to see how much money is being given to banks, insurance companies, and mortgage companies. Unfortunately, we have to prevent the problem from becoming worse and taking down the entire financial system. Whether throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into these companies is a good idea or not, we may not know for some weeks or months, perhaps even years.

The issue that has me even more concerned than the billions we are spending to keep these companies afloat, is, what was the root cause of the problem in the first place. If we don't address the primary cause of the issue and continue to throw money at the problem, then the money is ultimately wasted.

We've all heard, at least somewhere in the debate, that the subprime mortgage market was to blame for triggering this whole financial crisis. There have been accusations of deals taking place in the gray markets of unregulated credit default swaps that ultimately came back to bite financial institutions on their rear ends. It has been reported that people were overstating their incomes in order to obtain larger mortgages than they could afford and banks and mortgage brokers weren't verifying the information. In reality, there were a lot of things going on that caused this financial crisis.

But, I think it all boils down to one thing: GREED.

Individuals and companies were overextending themselves to get more and more and more. Mortgage companies were handing out loans right and left, to people who shouldn't have gotten a mortgage, so they could collect more fees, more interest. Banks were jumping in on the rush, lest they be left out of the finanacial windfall. Individuals were buying homes with overstated values so they could not only get a home they couldn't afford in the first place, but get a bunch of extra cash at closing. Meanwhile, CEO's were raking in hundreds of thousands, if not millions upon millions of dollars for making their companies ever more money. They would do anything to make more money, even to the point of putting their companies in danger of failing. Think Enron. Think Worldcom.

Our common sense has been muted by greed, by the lust for more money. To the point that CEO's and their companies were dealing in legal gray areas, or even crossing the line into the dark. People were lying about incomes and the value of their homes. Just for more money.

Now, there is nothing wrong with money. We have to have it to survive. To have a good life. To enjoy life with our families. But, when the uncontrolled pursuit of money- greed- replaces the honest day's work for an honest day's pay philosophy, we have a problem. And now we have a huge problem.

We can throw all the money we want at the financial crisis in our attempt to fix it. Individuals who lied about their incomes to get bigger houses and cash back, should lose their homes. Those CEO's who broke the law because of their greed need to go to jail. Those who dabbled in the legal gray areas, the unregulated markets, the "I'll do it, because I can" areas, should be tossed from their companies. And maybe, just maybe, they need to contribute parts of their multi-million dollar salaries to bail out their own companies, rather than expecting me and my children to do it for them.

-Cincinnatus

Greed is one of the main reasons that has lead us to this.

Re:

“I think there is a silver lining for parents and families,” said Marybeth Hicks, a columnist and author about parenting. “I think this economy is going to give parents the opportunity to regroup in terms of the values that we're teaching our children with respect to money and materialism.”

“Parents need to learn to say no and need to have confidence in that,” she said. “It isn't always in their best interest to give them everything they want, even if you could, because i think they need to learn that waiting for something, delaying gratification, sacrificing, those are important aspects of character development.”

I could not agree more.

Quietman, you hit that nail on the head. Interestingly, I saw not much of this by my aunt and uncle with their son ove the holiday. He almost walked all over them. Sad really, while I was telling my kids no, and dealing with tantrums, they avoided them at all costs, then complained about it afterwards. I reluctanctly held my tongue.