GREED!

“Wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organized, protected robbery.”
-- Frantz Fanon

“If all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.”
-- Christina Stead
House of All Nations, 1938


Some context here, on 4/6/08 The Ann Arbor News did a feature cover story on a local family that lost their home. There is also an on-line interview with Martha Behnke, should anyone wish to read it. I know the family well. This is my response to the News’ story.

To The Ann Arbor News:

I’m not much of an economics expert, but I do know the Behnkes quite well. Two years ago, George Bedard and the Kingpins, The Macpodz, and FUBAR put on a “Behnke Family Benefit” at the Pittsfield Grange. So it was with great interest that I read your feature story on 4/6/08. Martha Behnke’s story (and I encourage everyone to read her on-line News interview) puts a human face on the foreclosure crisis now becoming epidemic in our society.

All too many of us share Special Deputy Woodside’s contention that “They [those who are losing their homes] made life choices,” and “They chose a lifestyle they couldn’t afford.” Four points here: 1) people don’t choose to contract horrible diseases, lose their jobs, and struggle to keep their families healthy in the face of having no health insurance; 2) to anyone who knows the Behnke’s, the idea of their living a “lifestyle” beyond their means is preposterous, they eat cost cutter food and have sold off all of their precious family heirlooms simply to stay afloat; 3) the banks encourage bad home buying “choices,” as long as they ultimately profit in the end; and 4) stereotypical assumptions like Woodside’s, which he is not alone in holding, fall into that insidious “blame the victim” mentality so pervasive in American culture.

In my view, the Behnke’s story has political implications. As much as we’d like to, we can’t separate the looming economic catastrophe before us from the ill advised war now draining us of blood and money. Money that could be used to bolster our infrastructure, maintaining the roads, aiding in the recovery from natural disasters, improving the health of our citizens, and funding a stronger educational system, is instead being funneled into the gaping maw of a senseless debacle.

At the same time our government renews its contract with Blackwater, George Bush and John McCain caution that we shouldn’t reward the irresponsible decisions of desperate home owners who created their own mess. Meanwhile the government can’t move fast enough to bail out failing banks and avaricious money changers like Bears & Stearns. What’s happened, and the Behnke story is a case in point, is that the banks want families to step into the debtor quicksand, as long as the homes they might eventually foreclose on maintain or increase in value.

Until now--and believe me friends, there is a paradigm shift going on that is beyond the comfortable cyclical explanations that have worked since the depression--greed has ruled the day. But the times they are a changing, and the worm has turned. It is fast becoming the case that what the banks are being left with is fool’s gold. Many homeowners are simply walking away from an untenable situation the banks encouraged, and the banks in turn are left with fast diminishing collateral: homes that are rapidly losing value that may never be recovered.

FUBAR has always been a “Benefit” band, and we take great pride in generating money to help others. Perhaps soon one of the local lending institutions will approach us to organize a fundraiser.