Thinking More, Buying More

WHILE APPLYING FOR a refinance on my house, I mentioned to the potential lender that a certain well known economist, of high repute, Joseph Stiglitz, has blamed the recent great recession on the financial services industry. Don't know why I mentioned that. Just trying to make trouble, I reckon. The young lady replied that many people share this opinion. Maybe, but there are also many people who blame the millions of working class and poor Americans who had the temerity to take out mortgages they couldn't afford, and many people blame the government, with its endless meddling and regulating. All I know is, its the big corporate financial services providers who got bailed out by we the people, and its the big shots in those companies who got paid a lot of bonus money for incompetence. Also, its the big corporations (Bank of America, Citigroup,etc) who keep getting hauled into federal court and convicted of financial crimes. So, I want to get my financial business, mortgages, checking, savings accounts, away from the big financial criminal, which most recently paid a 17 billion dollar fine-bribe to the government. You get tired of doing business with sleazy criminals. The more poor you are, the more interest you have to pay on a thirty year loan, to compensate the lender for the risk. But the higher the interest, the greater the burden on the already low income sub prime borrower, and the more likely that the loan will be defaulted. Our huge corporate financial services lending institutions are raping the poor, with predatory lending, and siphoning the wealth upward. How lovely of them. Meanwhile, we give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, clinging to the insane trickle down supply-side economics of Reagan-Bush. What we need is a good dose of demand-side trickle up economics, low interest loans for the poor, more discretionary income for the poorest of the poor, creating new consumers, who, demanding more and buying more, grow the economy, paying more to the big boys who seem to so desperately want their huge slice of the pie. If only somebody would think of it.