Foreclosure

I've been having a hard time articulating why I no longer even read my emails about the foreclosure fight, like the whole thing has just become subconsciously abrasive. It's not that I've forgotten why I joined the fight in the first place -- people are legitimately suffering, the refusal of the banks to help those in trouble get back on their feet is mule-headed and crippling our economy, and the practice of predatory lending is particularly insidious, greedy, and unethical. I guess the question that's started to make that argument less relevant is,  what isn't that way these days? Price markups and deception are ubiquitous -- Restaurants charging 3x what they pay for wine, 50x what they pay for soda; the absurd markup in retail on the backs of sweat shops; the calculating deception going on in grocery stores with "everyday low prices" now being labeled as if they were sale items, Apple charging 2x more than competitors because people are sheep and the product is so complex customers really have no idea why they're paying that markup; hell, even I live comfortably because the company I work for operates on a 50% profit margin. And what about all the other commonly accepted forms of theft? Americans lost $92B to gambling in 2007, how much more was swindled by health care providers and insurance companies, how much on vices -- drugs, alcohol, tobacco, porn; how much by the church and charities, how much by producers of products that don't work, how much by our government? All those except money lost to the government is voluntary, as is money lost to foreclosure. The point is, people make terrible financial choices everyday (myself included), so why are we SO up in arms about foreclosure? What makes us think we have the right to renege on this particular form of contract? I'm not saying we don't, just not any more so than we should be exercising our right to break free of other forms of consumer manipulation. If there's one thing Occupy really got right, it's how pissed off we should be about EVERYTHING. But what to do with all that anger?

I heard a great TED talk by Barry Schwartz on appealing to virtue rather than falling back on regulations and incentives. Barry essentially argued that rules and regulations are there to allow us to be mentally lazy, to not have to think on a case by case basis, and because somebody at some point did exactly what they shouldn't have and ruined it for everybody. That's not to say that most of those rules aren't reasonable and there for good reason, but rather that there are alternatives, and that even in the presence of rules and procedures, people ought to be making their own best judgment at all times. We ought to be making role models, and examples of good behavior and the virtuous. I'm sure in my own case, had I had a role model to follow for the benefits of coming in with at least 20% on a house, and banking locally, I wouldn't have such high monthly rates with a bank I'm embarrassed to be associated with. Likewise, I should be smart enough to not let that 20% rule keep me from buying at the most opportune time. The examples in the TED talk were much better than this one, this is just one petty application in my own life. Back to the foreclosure argument, we don't need the government to come in and place heavy handed rules across all banks (which would inevitably crush small and medium sized banks, and make "too big to fail" even worse), we need to make positive examples of those banks that are banking intelligently. Show the alternatives! Maybe instead of screaming and making a scene in front of Wells Fargo and BofA, Occupiers should be doing free advertising for their local banks... in front of Wells Fargo and BofA.

And yes, of course I am aware of the fraud that goes on in the mortgage industry -- robosigning, using MERS to subvert the public recording process, fraudulent foreclosure proceedings, etc. Except for technecalities in that last point, those arguments don't change the fact that we entered a contract, that the bank bought it (even if they can't PROVE it), and that the foreclosed have failed to uphold their side of the contract.

On this exact same token, banks have the money and the power to do exactly what I'm saying as well. If they don't want to throw an elderly military vet or a dying woman with cancer into the streets, THEY DON'T HAVE TO! The sheriffs do not have to enforce evictions, locksmiths don't have to change locks, etc. All of these people could act out of compassion (albeit at the risk of losing their jobs), if we lived in a culture that could think on a case by case basis. And it wouldn't BE at the risk of losing their jobs if it were either written in -- or better, understood to be in -- job descriptions.