The Shame of Not Paying Your Mortgage

In my novel Rocket Man the protagonist contemplates not paying his mortgage many times. Underwater and unable to move he sees no way out. Certainly with one in four mortgages underwater  millions have considered doing just this. Walking away from their homes to start over. The statistics on this are hard to find but it is on the rise to the point where Freddy Mac is now offering a  program that allows borrowers to do just that...walk away.

But middle class shame keeps many people in place paying on an upside down asset they will never come out of. The rich have no such shame. If they have a bad investment they toss it aside and give it back to the bank. They have no sense of shame or middle class morality. But a lot of people do to the point that when you read articles about who has walked away from their mortgages they wont give their names even years later.

We have been shamed into thinking it was our failure. Somehow the derivative players who used our homes like picks in an elaborate game of poker were caused by us. When our houses were cleaned out we had no control. When the Ponzi scheme hit the traders ran for cover and were bailed out but the middle class was stuck with the empty bottles and tattered streamers of that party. We were stuck with worthless homes.

Strategic default they call it. That is what savvy people call it. Some would say it is a rationalization but this morality has been applied fairly. The banks were bailed out and were never held accountable for loan products that sold borrowers down the river. Yet middle class people are expected to stay in a house that is upside down with taxes based on a value that no longer exists.

I one time lamented to my mother in law that I should have been smarter financially. She looked at me and said, Jesus Christ, it was a depression. There was nothing you could do. She should know. She went through the first one.

 Rocket Man...the American dream upside down

The Extremists Have Us By The Throat

Like the weather the extremists have us by the throat. The current heatwave will kill many because we are not equipped to handle our globally warmed planet. People in cities will die first because the grids will fail under the demand. And like our killer heatwave the Tea Party extremists in government will kill off people too. They will do it by paralyzing our democracy. They are doing it right now. A New York columnist wrote over a year ago that if the Tea Party people got into our government we would have gridlock and government would cease to function. We have gridlock and our government is not functioning.

We are not prepared for extremes in weather or political parties. We base all our forecasts on the middle ground. People do best in the center of the spectrum and tend to die off with weather gets too cold or hot. Same with politics. Extreme left or right is not good for the country and people die because of it. In our current extreme right dysfuntionality the Tea Party has a loaded gun to the Presidents head. Give in and slash entitlements or default on your debt. That is their play.

We no longer have a democracy. We have a plutocracy. A group of wealthy people making sure their interests are served under the cover of a populist insurgency. It is the Art of the Deal gone bad. The Dick Army surrogates are marching under the cover of populist good, but the middle class is dying. Four hundred families have more wealth than 150 million people. Think about those numbers. Yet the Tea Party has made it their sworn duty to not raise taxes on the rich. Smell a rat? Why would a populist movement care about millionaires unless they are a Trojan horse?

Because Potter is not selling he is buying. He is buying control of the government with  extremists in the House of Representatives. They will not bend. They will not play. The Tea Party extremists  will have their way and the President is already caving. And the middle class will lose their Medicaid, Medicare and have their Social Security whittled away. While the rich get richer and the Tea Party suns itself on the beaches of our decline.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July