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?

Comments

[CindySue]

You said: "The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money"

+ + + + + + +

Thanks for reminding me.. A few months back, my ex's bank, BB&T, kept calling here.. CEASELESSL­Y.. He is admirably trying to help me out as I continue towards regrowth as a psychiatric survivor.. In doing so, he took a financial hit for it..

How did his bank, BB&T, respond throughout­..? By calling at 8:45*PM*, 8:10*AM* day after day, week after week.. I *BEGGED* them, both to real people and to voice mail, to consider my *EXTREMELY* delicate mental health at the time.. Asked them to *PLEASE* accommodate my mental health via the ADA, that I was [*extremely* depressive], and to *please* call during regular business hours..

Oh, and yes, did tell them we were working desperately to keep up and had no intentions whatsoever of default..

Now notice I did not say "do not call".. Instead, through tears, it was to "please call" during *more reasonable* business hours..

They called FOUR TIMES that next Sunday night.. And the calls that used to once in a while come during banking hours were pushed to the outer edges of closer to 8:00*AM* and 9:00*PM*..

Thank you for the reminder :: Next stop Congress to *please* investigate BB&T's lending operation as a whole, starting with the calls to this phone as proof of unreasonably abusive debt collection tactics, tactics that lead to situations just like Carlene's.­.

Peace..

[deminmo]

Yep, I know those phone calls well! But if you remind
them you have legal rights too, and that various federal
and local agencies will support you, if you pay anything
toward debt (may vary be state tho) they cannot call at all
hours. Oh, most collection companies are in places like
India, so there is a time difference.

[Sciguy]

Ah, BB&T - I just opened a small savings account there. They weren't going to tell me that they would charge me for it ("To avoid monthly maintenance fee: Minimum balance of $300 OR one recurring preauthorized deposit or transfer of at least $25 per monthly cycle" - quoted word for word from their Personal Services Pricing Guide). After I found that fine print - the bank guy had told me that there were no fees - I told him that it was taking money from those who could least afford it. I refrained from using the term "predatory practices.­" Still - I was tempted to just tear up the papers and put my $145 paycheck elsewhere.

As for precarious mental conditions - I had a friend who had her car reposessed. The lender kept calling her for payments. She told them at least 20 times and wrote twice that it was no longer her responsibility, the co-signer would pay, she was on SSI and couldn't afford to pay for a repossessed car. They kept calling, threatening her with dark, unspecified terrors. They threatened to "get a judgement on her." They absolutely terrified her. She ended up in a mental ward. They kept calling. She finally stopped answering the phone. Eventually (months later), they stopped calling. Mostly.

I'm glad that you lived through your problems. My friend did, too. But I do understand how predatory lending practices can lead to despondency.

[jinjinpinti]

I read a book once in which a fellow discribed how he dealt with those calls. When he'd answer and find it was "them," he's start yelping, "Oh, owww, I just tripped and bashed my foot......­gotta go....!"
Seriously, we don't have debtors' prisons in this country, yet, so know that there is nothing they can really do to you, especially on unsecured debt.

[SILVANUS]

BB&T sucks.

[Tulka2]

You are one of my heros, Barbara Ehrenreichn!

In the film "Children of Men" there is a t.v. advertisment that runs in the background of the action for a medicine called "Quietis". "When things become too much." It dawns on the audience that this is a suicide pill. (I am appaled by the current movement for legal, assisted suicide. Doesn't it seem premature to offer comfortable death before everyone has comfortable health care?)

Perhaps the reason there is less outrage about evictions is because we have all been effectively seperated from our families and communities. In the 1930s, if it happened to one person, it felt as if it was happening to us. It WAS happening to us. The same heartless, capitalist culture that says we each of us need our own houses, washers, dryers, cars, ect. now says we will suffer alone too. The same capitalist system that lured us from our families and into the cities now says we shall die alone. I know it's not a plot, but they could not have planned it more skillfully if it were. It's just the way unfettered capitalism unfolds in the real world.

"In America it's socialism for the rich and free-markets for the poor." Martin Luther King

[dogman44]

Well stated Tukla2

[HakimKutta]

As the Buddha said, "All is suffering.­" If we're not suffering one way we're suffering another. We are all a bundle of misery with occasional breaks of contentment. We bring this all on ourselves with our desires and holding on to our fantasy world. The whole world is suffering, just step outside of your little enclosed golden cage and live in the so called third world for awhile. and you'll see real misery. If you eat too much you'll explode, if you don't know your limit you'll go under, if you believe The Lie it's because you were sleeping. Too bad, that's social Darwinism, American style, and since our whole culture, with few exceptions, has bought into this fantasy, we are going under with no one to blame but ourselves. These are all wake up calls; foreclosures, 911, our bulging jails, our drug addicted kids, our fat ass population, etc., we are a country of Excess-capital E-and sooner or later we must pay for all that candy we've consumed. All that Christian pap we've swallowed is now coming back up to choke us. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, for the wars will be continuous as we fight and kill to stave off the inevitable.

[croneofcaulder]

Hakim, referring to Christianity as pap is not a very Buddhist attitude. Christ and the Buddha taught pretty much the same things; read the book called Jesus and Buddha the Parallel Sayings. It's not the fault of the Founders if their followers screw and twist the teachings beyond recognition; though I will admit, Christians seem to have been infinately more egregious in this regard than Buddhists.

[jinjinpinti]

Buddhists say that "Christ was lost in love."
As for parallels between Buddha and Christ, well, not so much. Buddha did not believe himself a diety nor the son of a diety and never suggested you'd go to hell if you didn't agree and worship him and his dad.

[speedingpullet]

Off Topic - just wanted to thank Ms Ehrenreich for 'Nickel and Dimed', which I finished last week. Absolutely enthralling and terrible.
I'm looking forward to reading more of your books, and I'm very pleased to see you contribute to HuffPost.

[racetoinfinity]

CNN reported on a march on a bank in New York City, I believe, and it was effective. The bank re-negotiated the loans, so it's not all passive turning anger on selves.

[danaseilhan]

Did it ever occur to anybody that maybe the lower classes aren't up in arms because after a day of cleaning your homes, serving your burgers, raising your kids for you, and answering your phones, we're kind of sick and tired of doing your dirty work for you? Now we're supposed to go out and shoot corporate CEOs because a bunch of spoiled babies took on loans they couldn't repay because apparently nobody ever taught them basic math or showed them how to use Google or a library, and now they're hoisted by their own petards and we're supposed to clean up that mess too? Cry me a river, I just spent four years in substandard housing where the floor is falling apart and there are roaches falling into the pots on my stove from the stove hood. I have a three-year-old daughter and she's had to live in this mess. Fauxgressive answers to this question include propping up a failed "educational" system that indoctrinates her as a consumer who can't think, forcing me to work a below-living-wage job that won't support the both of us, and kowtowing to the Right's bludgeoning of the lower classes out of a desire to not look "intoleran­t." Next!

[arachne646]

Dana, I bet your reason for living is not so you can pay for a nice manicure and more fashionable clothes, but that you're your little girl's mother. Everyone needs meaning in their life, and today so much of the economy is designed to convince us all that our most important reason for being is to earn and borrow money to spend more and more on the latest stuff. Dishonest and misleading payday lenders and mortgage companies must take a lot of the blame for many debtor's problems, even if living simply and saving for the future is discouraged and too often neglected today.
I hope you'll be able to get a chance to look on-line or phone to find out about your landlord-tenant rights in your state. I hope your present home is in much better condition, and that you're able to see your family and friends often. Having a community to help one another, even when none of us is in great shape, can be very rewarding--I would encourage you to investigate single mother's groups at local community centers and churches when you get chances to. Peace.

[Sciguy]

It was *** metaphorically *** pointing the guns in the other direction. No one is advocating actually shooting CEOs. Marching, maybe. Fighting back, surely. But not shooting.

[MrWebster]

Who are you directing your rage at? At the crybaby Carlene Balderrama? who couldn't repay her loan and learn simple math? At the public schools? At Fauxgressives I guess. I had an ex-sister-in-law who was a very conservative Christian and never voted for liberals as they were not good people. I noted to her that she was able to live because of public assisted housing and it was members of her church who wanted to abolish ALL public assistence. She got so mad and confused we had to stop talking and haven't talked since.

[jinjinpinti]

Well stated, Dana. It is galling to watch these people overextending themselves financially and then getting bailed out when so many of us worked and saved and bought everything second hand to buy a low priced fixer home we could afford to pay for, chose a sensible fixed rate loan, made a down payment we'd scrimped and saved for and then furnished the place from the thrift store. You go on HGTV and you watch them buying huge, new McMansions they can't afford, then furnishing them with pricey, high end appliances and furniture, remodeling any small "outdate" with top of the line granite, marble, hardwood flooring, etc. all while wearing designer clothes, driving new Hummers, having massages, pedicures and household "help" for yardwork, childcare and cleaning. Then when it all comes due they feel sooo put upon and victimized. It's enough to turn your stomache.

[SILVANUS]

"Who ya gonna get to your dirty work when all the slaves are free?"
Joni Mitchell, Night Ride Home 1991

[glitzqueen]

Here's another example I'm aware of, in which a couple facing foreclosure last October offed themselves:
www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2008-05-14-mortgage-foreclosures-mental-health_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Our government is very slow to release suicide statistics: several years behind, as I discovered when trying to study how the worsening of our economic travails under Shrub and His Thugs might be affecting the suicide rate. I expect the truth will be shocking, when we eventually know it. The article cited here quotes counselors reporting that financial problems have become the leading cause of stress and depression, which certainly makes sense.

[bobtr900]

glitzqueen,

Well said.
And may I add that Shrub and his thugs are not done with us, yet. There is more to come.
Jeb Bush is just waiting in the wings for his turn to do more of the same. And all of them are helped along and encouraged by their right wing religions, including my own religion,C­atholicism­.

[Pierremj]

As a mental health professional for over 30 years, there are general procedures in EMERGENCY mental health for peoples with suicidal ideation. Psychological first aid are:
* Show composure. Personal mien is critical. The patient's interpretation of another person's actions will aid or deter treatments efforts.. The person is facing a crisis excerbated with severe anxiety.
* Supply honest information. Truthful support could be of great value. The therapist's response could be as follows: "I don't know the extent of your situation/problem, but it will be checked and we will do whatever is needed."
* Remove the person/patient from a stressful situation. Where possible, irritating and upsetting stimuli should not be allowed to continue.
* Develop a clear plan of action. The impression must be conveyed that something definite is being done to help.
* Contact available relatives or friends. Information from significant persons can be invaluable. Initiate appropriate intervention and follow-up procedures.
* Utilize the patient's (person's) personal resources. While there are instances dependency feelings can be accepted and permitted initially, it is usful to emphasize the patient's inner strengths early.
* Provide suitable advice and direction. Persons in crisis require definitive guidance.
* Encourage activity. Simple activities are very helpful in reducing anxiety, reducing panic, and motivating individuals to move away from depressed feelings. Unless medically contradicted, merely using the muscles may be extremely valuable. Yoga could be of immense help. This can be done by encouraging people to help someone else accomplish a task.

[JScott]

Might work if the professionals are willing to work GRATIS (perhaps there are some non profit social service agencies that can provide), remember these folks are in dire financial straits, and getting a mental health professional is the last thing on their mind much less having the money to pay for it.

[jinjinpinti]

Some truth here. As a retired mental health worker/cri­sis/respit­e outreach, I was all my agency could afford to pay after hours to provide services to consumers (of MH svcs) living independently in the community. Suicide was only one of the issues that consumers presented, but intervention as comprehensive and thorough as Pier delineates was rarely providable. Sometimes all I could do was drive to the person's house, talk them into flushing the plate of pills and drive them to the local hospital E.R. where they would be summarily dismissed, due to lack of insurance or money, and after which I would be scolded for not doing "hospital diversion" well enough because the agency had to pay capitation for its consumer caseloads. Of course, you never got to really know who you had successfully intervened with, only when you had failed and one, occasionally, finally succeeded.

[Ironfox]

Gee, thanks a lot for your cut and paste steps from a mental health pamphlet.

What the hell does this have to with the content of the article?

[francoise]

In our consumer societies, some peoples (in China or South America) are turned into laboring slaves, while some others are turned into consuming slaves.

And all this because they're brainwashed from birth with the greatness of their country and taught how to be good citizens.

The political correctness prevents everyone from rebelling against the ideas hammered in our brains since childhood.

It's sad when people see themselves as failures and are reduced to suicide because they can't imagine how the system has crushed their free agency.

[Chavez08]

The minion buys the gun, and "Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" pulls the trigger. Nice partnership.

[EngineerBill]

It is easy to be judgemental of other people. In the USA it is also easy to be judgemental of yourself. The truth is that in most cases your own wrong decision(s) usually play a role in your misfortune. I should know. I've had a lot of that happen to me already. The point is to remember the lords prayer. G-d grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. It is too bad that Mrs. Balderrama couldn't face the consequences of her misfortune. I am sure if her now widowed husband and orphaned children could talk to her, they would have pointed out that she was worth far more to them than her house. Our culture needs a little less worship of "rugged individuaalism" and a little more "we're all in this together". Hopefully Obama's presidency can help bring this around.

[bayside]

They just need to hang on.. Americans have already lived thru the depression ,we can do it..They helped each other..., If you really get down look around ,there is always someone a whole lot worse than you are. In other words Count your blessings.­.We have a lot of them..

[dct1999]

The Serenity Prayer is not the Lord's Prayer.

[Paul]

A little less worship of consumer goods or trophy houses, as well.

I have worked with the homeless. In some ways their existence is very liberating - they are not captive to "stuff".

[Lexica]

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of our most savvy chroniclers of life lived on the edge in America. 'The Suicide Solution' is an extension of her most recent books dealing with the subject of ordinary people trying to survive in an increasingly unsurvivable country. We are a society on the brink of destruction, and the finger of blame can be pointed in many directions at once. Including at ourselves.

Corporate greed, unbridled consumerism, and a naive sense of entitlement, have resulted in a very scary economic environment here in the USA. If we are measuring our worth by material possessions then it follows that life is not worth living if we can't have what we want. When did we lose the understanding that self-worth isn't measured by material wealth? Some of the wealthiest people in this country are worthless human beings.

[LuckyBlessed]

And some of the wealthiest CEOs I've worked for, are the angriest , most spiteful people in the world. And the more they got, they more angry they seemed, odd...

[heal57]

Good post. I don't know why we don't get outraged at what's happened to our homeowners, no medical for Americans,our soldiers, the Iraqi people, we have to change this system, but getting justifyably angry and doing something about it; put our feelings into passion to change America. There is information for homeowners facing foreclosure on the Web. One of the better ones is livinglies.wordpress.com


Independent for Obama '08

[bobtr900]

The entire Bush family are perfect examples of wealthy people who are worthless human beings. Unfortunately they are not done with us yet. There is much more to come.

[websmith]

Population control has certainly advanced since the days when empires used to expand by destroying crops. Now, instead of murdering us through starvation, they get us to do it. The result is the same. The emperors still laugh as we die and our wealth is pilfered.

They also laugh as we squabble over Obama and McCain like it's going to make a difference. They snicker at our inability to realize that this has been going on for almost two centuries through many different political administrations. They are amazed that we have been unable to figure out, in all of this time, that, as long as we allow the government to exercise the illegal power to regulate, it's going to continue.

Vote out those who would regulate while you still have the chance.

[word2thewyz]

Regulation is not the problem. Callous greed is the problem. If your response to callous greed is deregulation, you must have slept through the S&L debacle and the Enron debacle. Both over-regulation and under-regulation can be a problem, but our problems of late have been in the latter category, not the former. Of course if you're Ayn Rand, you'd simply unleash the superior beings and all our problems would be solved. But given what the various head financial honchos have done when their leashes have been loosened, I'm not convinced that they're superior to anyone.

[davidpeace]

Actually, it's the lack of regulation that is the cause of so many of our society's problems. The eighties began a boom in deregulation and was continued through democratic and republican administrations. On the other hand, we have a nation that seems to put a priority on conformism and tends to look down on those that foresee problems once deregulation starts. We even have a proverb for this: Keeping up with the Joneses.

[DrPaulProteus]

deregulation: taking something that used to be a crime and making it legal.

I'm not looking for anyone to regulate *me*, websmith, but we could do with more regulation of markets to protect us and the planet from the hyper-capitalists.

In the 80s, Reagan declared the era of "big government" to be over and a long trend of loosening regulation began. We've had 30 years of increased deregulation in the name of "free markets" and "free trade", and America is teetering on the brink of disaster as a result.

And they say Liberalism was a failure... I grew up during the 70s, when they say "Liberalism failed", and we had a middle class where one parent could work an average-income job, afford a decent home and still survive. Schools were funded. Public Libraries. Unions were strong, or at least stronger. I'm not saying it was perfect, but, hell, it was way better than this. (Hey Barbara, maybe your next article or book could take a look at the average family's prospects under "failed liberalism" vs. the failed Market Fundamentalism we've got now)

If its big government vs. big capitalism, i'll take my chances with the former, thanks.

[January]

The foreclosures are the predictable consequence of the Bush economy. Its whole point was to make the rich richer. Its only justification is that it got a lot of new housing built.

I do not believe for a second that the lending institutions had any doubt about the eventual outcome. The bank lending on homes made the developers rich. The people with the mortgages were conned into believing that they were purchasing homes. In fact, their monthly payments were simply rent paid to the lenders while the market bubbled. Now the landlord is prepared to put them in the streets and resell the homes.

[kegbot1]

The comments of Chavez08 is right on the money. People have been taught that only they are to blame for their own misfortunes - part of that is the pernicious effect our form of right wing Christianity has had on the population. We should actively rising up against this fascism, but instead we're killing ourselves as sacrifices to the God of Greenspan and rugged individualism.

And you know damn well what would happen if some family or some neighborhood group send a sheriff's deputy back in a body bag - they'd send a SWAT team with choppers (like Waco) and leave no man, woman or child alive as a message to anyone else so inclined. Cops look at is as it's their family and career against yours and your rights - and guess who loses every time. The banks reign supreme and the executives who run them care nothing about how many people have to die or are ruined to protect their fortunes. And the laws are always written for their benefit and protection - not ours.

continued

[kegbot1]

Great comments on a great and necessary story. While there are not a lot of suicides yet you can rest assured that a lot of people have this as an exit strategy or endgame. Myself included - and not just because of mortgages but because our so-called civilized country doesn't offer universal single payer health insurance. I own a small bookstore and cannot afford health insurance. I had my gall bladder out in Jan 2006 when I had employee provided health insurance. If that would happen today, I lose my store and more - no questions asked. I won't let the health industry have my store or my son's college fund - those are both for him. I'm 45 and I have lived a decent and good life. But I will not spend the rest of my life in debt slavery nor will I transfer those debts on to my sons and surviving mother - she's having enough trouble trying to live the rest of her life in dignity and keep her own home (the one I grew up in). If I get cancer or some other kind of serious medical problem I will take care of it in my own way.

contunued

[jinjinpinti]

Actually, suicude in the older population is much more prevalent, has always been, than you might think, however, a health issue may not have to be a finacial catastrophe. Check around in your state about medicaid. Also ask around in medical settings for charity clinics available for medical and surgical issues particularly in teaching hospitals. There is much available here in my state (Wa.) you'd never know of without asking. As for loss of financial status, it, like all crises, has two aspects: The bad, with losing things you thought you needed to survive, and the good, with learning just how little you REALLY do need to have plain, simple, and freer life.

[LJinFla]

Yep, I understand, kegbot1, luckily I have health insurance. If I did not, I would be in the same position. I don't know if I would have the guts to do it, but given dire circumstances, perhaps I could find the will.