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The Suicide Solution
A few days before Congress passed its Housing Bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton MA found her own solution to the housing crisis. Just a little over two hours in advance of the time her mortgage company, PHH Mortgage Corporation -- may its name live in infamy -- was to auction off her home, Balderrama killed herself with her husband's rifle.
This is not the kind of response to hard times that James Grant had in mind when he wrote his July 19 Wall Street Journal essay entitled "Why No Outrage?" "One might infer from the lack of popular anger," the famed Wall Street contrarian wrote, "that the credit crisis was God's fault rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs." For contrast, he cites the spirited response to the depression of the 1890s, when lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with the message that "We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out.... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary..."
Grant could have found even more bracing examples of resistance in the 1930s, when farmers and tenants used mob power -- and sometimes firearms -- to fight foreclosures and evictions. For more on that, I consulted Frances Fox Piven, co-author of the classic text Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, who told me that in the early 30s, a number of cities were so shaken by the resistance that they declared moratoriums on further evictions. A 1931 riot by Chicago tenants who had fallen behind on their rent, for example, had left three dead and three police officers injured.
According to Piven, these actions were often spontaneous. A group of unemployed men would get word of a scheduled eviction and march through the streets, gathering crowds as they went. Arriving at the site of the eviction, they would move the furniture back into the apartment and stay around to protect the threatened tenants. In one instance in Detroit, it took 100 cops to evict a single family. Also in Detroit, Piven said, "two families protected their apartments by shooting their landlord and were acquitted by a sympathetic jury."
What a difference 80 years makes. When the police and the auctioneers arrived at Balderrama's house, the family gun had already been used -- on the victim of foreclosure herself. I don't know how "worthy" a debtor she was -- the family had been through bankruptcies before, though probably not as a result of Caribbean vacations and closets full of designer clothes. It was an Adjustable Rate Mortgage that did them in, and Balderrama, who managed the family's finances, had apparently been unwilling to tell her husband that their ever-rising monthly mortgage payments were eating up his earnings as a plumber.
Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once," Scurlock told a gathering of the National Assocition of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, "describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, 'If you don't help me, I've got a gun in my car.'"
India may be the trend-setter here, with an estimated 150,000 debt-ridden farmers succumbing to suicide since 1997. With guns in short supply in rural India, the desperate farmers have taken to drinking the pesticides meant for their crops.
Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too. And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can't pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition -- like an ever-rising number of Americans -- you're no longer needed at the workplace, then there's no further point to your existence. I'm not saying that the creditors, the bankers and the mortgage companies actually want you dead, but in a culture where one's credit rating is routinely held up as a three-digit measure of personal self-worth, the correct response to insoluble debt is in fact, "Just shoot me!"
The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns, metaphorically speaking, in the other direction. It wasn't God, or some abstract economic climate change, that caused the credit crisis. Actual humans -- often masked as financial institutions -- did that, (and you can find a convenient list of names in Nomi Prins's article in the current issue of Mother Jones.) Most of them, except for a tiny few facing trials, are still high rollers, fattening themselves on the blood and tears of ordinary debtors. I know it's so 1930s, but may I suggest a march on Wall Street?
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So many people are willing to march on Wall Street - but can't afford to get there.
Wasn't there a news item about the head of Fannie or Freddie making $20 million a while back?
Wasn't there something about a hedge fund manager making over a billion dollars in one year?
Did Enron's gang of officers have to pay anything back?
Tyco's? Any other company that's committed theft or made millions while their employees lost everything?
What does the CEO of Blackwater make? KBR? Halliburton? Your insurance carrier (assuming you have it)?
We live in a nation where we are taught that we can be anything we want and can succeed by hard work - how many people do you personally know who has managed to do just that? Or have those hard working friends been living from paycheck to paycheck (assuming they are getting paychecks)?
I'm agnostic, but I have a feeling that a lot of people worship the dollar - isn't that why it says "In God We Trust" on it?
Fannie and Freddie were cooking the books to make more bonuses. Angelo M, CEO Countrywide made a $20 mil bonus in one of the worst preforming quarters of the company. The airline industry was another example, I believe Northwest Execs got big bonues while the employees pay and benefits were cut.
I teach classes to homeless people and children. After spending a life being in the corp sector , I have to try and look these people in the face and say that hard work matters. They know it doesn't.
Buffett, Gates, a group need to get together and push for the welfare of this country, or the goose that laid their golden eggs will die(Although Buffett recently suggested putting money overseas)
This country needs infrastructure not high paid middle men raping America. Medicare has run at 3% overhead for years, why not single payer health insurance? Why not local governments who own wind powered electric plants? Why not nationalized military instead of insulting are brave men and women with companies like KBR, Blackwater, and Halliburton raping them (figuratively and literally- see ABC special in Dec 07). Why not taking money away from CEOs whose performance is abysmal?
Why is this country going down the toilet?
LOBBY MONEY DEMOCRACY PRIVATIZATION
(GOOD BYE CONSTITUTION)
GET READY TO BOW DOWN TO RED COMMUNIST CHINA
(And you thought the cold war was over.)
Will the last CEO that's raped his company and received a Golden Parachute please turn out the lights before the country goes under. I'm sure no CEO wants the compensation rules changed until he gets his first.
Here's the real problem: It's not that there are people blaming God rather than humans for this - it's that there are people in our society who are all too happy to blame the victims here. "They should have done the math".... "They should have read the agreement"
It's a corollary to the "What's the Matter With Kansas?" syndrome. There are ample political messages, proferred from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Jay Severin, and other wingnuts with platforms, chanting the mantra of "personal responsibility" - introduced by the Reaganauts and later zealously fetishized by Newt Gingrich in his Contract ON America. And all too many blue collar voters (yeah, I do play the class card because that's what the GOP does) suckered in and were cowed by the rhetoric, lest their own neighbors think they were freeloading in their own communities.
As long as we live in a country where the rights of individuals are a priori presumed to be second to the rights of corporate money handlers, we as Americans will sit in judgement of one another and fail to see the broader implications.
Excellent perspective Outlier. Caveat Emptor is the rationalization for all manner of confidence games. Sociopathy really.
So you're saying there is nothing wrong with people buying a house they can't afford? Damn and all this time I lived in an apartment because I thought I was doing the right thing by not buying a house since there was no way I could make the payments..
That's all you took from Outlier's post, that there is nothing wrong with people buying a house they can't afford? Well, you made his/her point, that the middle class is its own worst enemy enabling the wealthy to walk away with 99% of the resources.
The wealthy do not play by the rules by which you and I live (I too live within my means in a small manhattan closet that passes for an apartment). The wealthy are not on our playing field, to think otherwise is an illusion/delusion used to keep us just treading water.
The problem is greed - not the greed of middle class home owners who wanted a decent standard of living - but the greed of the wealthy who live on the backs of regular working stiffs. That's the problem. Let's stop beating up on each other.
Its like having your car repossessed, no one believes
it's for car repairs. When they put the notice on the
door for forclosure you immediately become a failure.
It's a shame that a life is lost because of money, but
money is the new god in America.
Yes, we must start recognizing the rules for what they are - rigged. This is not a free market system. It is rigged. Just because a very few (what one tenth of one percent) manage to steal all the money doesn't make the rest of us losers - it makes them thieves.
I owe nothing and have very little. But to consume on credit is completely irrational. It may be the American way, but it is destroying us and our nation. Don't buy into it.
When I first heard from my friends in real estate about these ARM's all I could think was:
IF IT'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE THEN IT IS!
No suprise that this all happened under W and his lapdog Rep congress.
Have they no shame?
More blood on the MERCHANT'S hands.
Gee, I feel awful you can't afford to live here anymore, I really DO, and I'd like to help you, but
I JUST CAN'T !
I just watched the very weirdTerry Gilliam movie "Brazil" that came out in 1985......
We used to watch this cult flick frequently. Maybe that's one reason we have avoided the debt and greed trap.
"Brazil" is one of my faves...an
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
And to think this Paddy Chayefsky classic came out in 1976.
I was thinking about this parallel last night! thanks!
here is mine
DAY OF THE LOCUST (film version 1975, John Schlesinger)
I am so sorry to see that the woman you wrote about killed herself. I'm sad, too, to read the comments and see that others have done so as well.
I've known of people who killed themselves in response to a bad financial situation. They were ashamed, or depressed, or afraid for their futures. They forgot that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Money problems will eventually go away. What if you're about to lose your home? At worst, you can say it was expensive rent and move to a new apartment (or a homeless shelter). You need not die because of it.
If you're worried about losing your business due to personal money problems, it might be helpful to incorporate and make yourself an employee with a low salary. The laws vary from state to state, but you'll survive. You don't have to kill yourself for that, either.
Call someone. Anyone. Talk about it. Go to a lawyer or to legal aid. Do what they recommend. They may suggest many things, but suicide isn't one of them.
No matter if you feel that you're an unworthy idiot who made a terrible decision to buy a house and then lost your job. You can say "screw the mortgage" and use your leftover money for bus tickets to another state. Start over. You're not an unworthy idiot - just a human who made a bad mistake. Let life go on. With you in it.
Desperate and fearful people make bad decisions. An example is how the Homeland Security "terror alerts" and Fox News, etc, influenced voters to feel more secure with Bush over Kerry. Whoever wins the next election, the next four years are going to be very rocky and eventful. The politicians and demagogues will continue to demonize the "appeasers" and "environmentalists" for the wars and economy. I'm tired of the name-calling, this is retarded. Can't we have a rational discussion of problems and solutions? The MSM and politicians reduce issues to a junior-high school level of taunts and smears, slogans and broad generalizations. Aren't we more educated than this?
"Aren't we more educated than this?"
The answer is no. For proof check out the informative and hilarious book "Just How Stupid Are We?"
"Stupid" seems to be the word of the day when describing American lately. What a shame. How is that BBQ America?
LeeX,
Thanks for the good post. But, NO, we aren't more educated than this. One of the two Ed's, Ed Gillespie or Ed Rollins said back in 1995 that he/they/ the Repub party was playing to their lizard brain base.
That says it all.
Uh, give it time. We're just not there yet. When enough people have lost enough, they will get fed up - en masse - and take action. The majority in society are not suicidal. Never forget that. Your government hasn't...
I doubt that people 'will get fed up -- en masse -- and take action'. I hope I'm wrong, very much hope I'm wrong. I would really like to see a march on Wall Street, on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., on each of the mendatious lending companies, esp. those.
I am glad to see Barbara Ehrenreich taking yet another stand; this is a good one. I commend all her articles. (And books.)
By then Bush's private security forces will be able, and immunized against legal action, to take whatever means necessary to keep the crowds under control.
It's too late!
Very sad. I know someone who committed suicide 22 years ago. It haunts family and friends who are left behind. Forever. One suicide is one too many.
It's understanding how a breadwinner in the throws of helpless depression find suicide to be the only viable financial option in hard times, especially if my wife and kids could collect on my life insurance policy. Ever wonder how many road casualties
Part 2.
Remember, when you stand and sing “America the Beautiful”, the picture you see in your mind is distorted and is an illusion.
Remember, when you stand and sing, “God Bless America”, remember the Bible quote, “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me”.
"Poverty is the worst form of violence." - Mohandas Gandhi.
"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Genocide has been practiced by our government for many years. So has slavery.
Something you may want to consider:
The face of a terrorist is not necessarily one of the Middle East.
Always remember who ordered and carried out the genocide of the Native Americans nation, now called America.
Always remember who ordered and carried out the imprisonment of slavery. The destruction of families by the capture of peaceful men and women in their homeland; the savage bloody beatings; the raping of the females; the selling of innocence humans like cattle in a foreign land.
Yes, many evils were perpetrated by those perpetrating evil in those instances you decry, but open up your mind and perceive the truth that many evils against all kinds of people and animals, too, have and still are being perpetrated all over this planet by people of all races, religions, and creeds. The evil of rape, murder and genocide, for instance in Darfur, is being carried out by fellow citizens of that country. Suicide bombers have been killing others of their own race/religion right along with those not of their beliefs. Children are starved and mistreated in many countries with oppressive governments. Evil comes in all colors, sadly.
Also, can you explain "who ordered and carried out the genocide of Native Americans" and "the imprisonment of slavery?" What exactly was his/her name?
The American Gov. READ/STUDY this nations history
Part 3.
Who committed these crimes? Could it be our Christian fathers of past generations? Or was it the Jewish or Muslim fathers?
It"s not the shade of one"s skin that breeds evil. It"s the hate and the evil that reigns in one"s soul.
These people (our citizens) suffer every day with little to eat, no medical care and for many " no place to lay their head in rest. These are our citizens, our children, our parents and grandparents and our wounded soldiers. The shame of all this is that our government, organizations and people that say they believe in and worship God turns their heads and looks away. It's a seen that they seem to be afraid to acknowledge, so they just walk away and pretend it doesn't exist, while the elderly, veterans and children suffer and die. They don"t raise their voices to condemn this suffering. I wonder if God would approve or will God hold them accountable for not raising their voices and speaking out on behalf of "The Least Among Us" - "Our Forgotten American Citizens" - that suffer in poverty.
Here is my favorite movie of all time. It represents the gist of what ails mankind as a whole. It is powerful. It's worth watching again and again. Google video.....
Without further adieu...th
http://vid
Until very recently, we had strong bankruptcy laws that allowed people to keep their houses (though not their credit).
In the name of "personal responsibility" (and at the behest of the credit card companies), the Republican Congress trashed these laws, while simultaneously incurring ruinous debt for the entire nation.
We have a better Congress now. We may soon have a better president. Can the bankruptcy laws that protected Americans since the Great Depression be reinstated? Is that too much to ask?
Stop putting the blame on the "Republican Congress" for all our ills, as if the Democrats have been fighting them on anything whatsoever. The Republican Congress may have trashed these laws, but like everything else they've trashed during the Bush Administration, they did it with the Democrats in Congress enabling and helping them every step of the way.
I agree with you. The political system is broken and run on both sides by the true criminals.
Ronald St. Reagan and his ilk wanted deregulation and they go it. So here we are, whats next.
Part 1.
It’s called GENOCIDE. YES, GENOCIDE the AMERICAN way. Carried out by our elected officials; our religious establishments that value billion dollar castles, they call a church, more than they value a human life (tax exempt) and all the organizations that proclaim to help the elderly, veterans and children (all called charity organizations that are tax exempt).
Many say other nations have commented genocide, my question to them is: What would you call a slow, terrifying and degrading death of millions of our seniors, veterans and children that live in poverty? What would you call a nation that allows the suffering of millions of our people that live everyday with hungrier to the edge of starvation, no medical help or no place to call home.
Welcome to our American nation where millions of our elderly, veterans and children, (“The Least Among Us”, “Our Forgotten American Citizens”), suffer and have suffered and will suffer until death takes them.
And the powers that cause this slow long term starvation and the death of the human spirit are directly aided by their right wing religions.
Adjustible rate mortgages should be illegal.
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