Way back in the Great Depression, Will Rogers said, “Money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.”
Now that the only thing trickling down to the needy is debt, debt and more debt, fear of debt is making people and governments do some crazy things.
Like the town of Indo California criminalizing the act of “house neglect.”
We live in such a “spare the rod and spoil the citizen” economy. Surely there’s some way short of jail time of holding banks accountable for the condition of foreclosed properties.
Sure, abandoned properties end up suffering from neglect. Wouldn’t it be heartening if instead of having a foreclosure mentality, banks somehow got a heart and found a way to help homeowners keep their homes so those home didn’t fall into neglect in the first place? Now the heartless banks that foreclosed on hapless John and Jane Doe America are finding their own heartlessness coming home to roost.
Maybe the banks–and the communities–wouldn’t be in this condition if they’d tried to find a way to keep those families IN those homes. I don’t know exactly what..eliminate interest until people had their jobs back? Would banks be in such horrible shape if they broke even? For banks, wouldn’t breaking even be better than “total loss”–or being saddled with formerly happy homes that are now a glut of crumbling run-down moldy foreclosures?
I’m just picturing bank presidents locked up next to murderers. I’m picturing the conversation in the day room:
Murderer
What are you in for?”
Banker
Mold.
Murderer
You must be a banker from Indio California.
Banker
(nodding)
I am. What are you in for?
Murderer
(pulling out some kind of
homemade jail weapon)
I used to live in Indio, before
my family was homeless…