Time Out For A Rant

Let’s blame:

President Bush
The Republican Party
The Democratic Party
Congress
Wall Street
The CEO of every bank and investment firm
The mortgage brokers
The insurance companies

But...

God FORBID...

We should blame ourselves.

We, who seem to have lost our work ethic along the way, becoming instead a nation of people who feel entitled to make something from nothing.

House flippers. The kind who buy, sit, and sell. No tangible good produced there.

Day traders. Or, more accurately, gamblers. Fingers fly over computer keyboards, while nothing is actually produced.

Multi-level marketing. Make money off of signing up people to make money off of signing up other people. Oh, yeah. Lots of all-American production there.

No credit? No problem. Here’s your house.

No job? No problem. Here’s your house.

So what if the higher interest rate down the road makes the house unaffordable? We're talking RIGHT NOW. And RIGHT NOW, you want that house. Figure the rest out later.

Buy now, pay later. That’s why God created credit cards. When those bills become too burdensome, you can always walk away unscathed with a little think called bankruptcy.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, your neighbor’s dog’ll bite you. Instant $50,000 MINIMUM, and that’s without having to go to court. Or there’s always the local grocery store. They’re constantly leaving water in an aisle, perfect for the slipping...

Plenty of ways to fatten up the bank account without having to perform actual work.

And if everything goes to hell, well...there’s always the government. They’ll take care of you...won' they?

How many of you salivated when you read the email going around purporting that $700 billion could be spread out over 200 million American adults, giving us $450,000 a piece, which we would in turn spend on mortgages, college loans, and consumer goods? How many of you were already picturing that plasma screen TV on your wall??

Until someone emailed back and suggested you calculate the division problem...

Take some responsibility, people. Do a little work.