The Marketplace

Falling down, whether from a bike, a horse, or 2005 FHA home mortgage, leaves you with a personal story all your own that lots of people can relate to. I fell down on personal finance, but I did have help:

Clearly, my experience with the collapse of the housing market can be seen as bias toward self-forgiveness with regard to poor critical thinking and business acumen. It is important however to note that the story of each individual makes the story of "us." If so many of us can display such poor judgement of reality that we decimate the world economy, maybe we should keep in mind why.

The structure of the machine that fleeced the population is perhaps too difficult to describe fully, but I've enjoyed reading a few authors' attempts. My opinion is that people were led to believe something that turned out not to be true, and as a result were relieved of all the "game credits" they were supposed to have accumulated in life.

The tried and true method of getting people not to read the paperwork had been shaved down to a science by the time most of us signed our mortgage paperwork in 2005, at least in Florida. My failure in this regard taught me the remarkable difference between what was "fair" and what was "allowed."

While fair play has hardly been a value in the U.S. economy, it is within the power of people to cement the value of fair play in our conscious ideal. The opportunists, pragmatic in their callous handling of the story of man, do still add to the richness of it. Being clear on the truth of how the world got the way it is today (what is allowed, apparently) has already enhanced my own perspective, and recent events around the world have proved to me that I'm not the only one.

It seems this question then, is about the guilt for my loss of "credit," and: Yes, I am "responsible" for my actions, but the system of mankind's dependence on itself clearly needs some tweeking as well.

Further questions will hopefully produce more statements about that system, and suggest some tweeking ideas. Until then, I'll settle for humble chaos with a mind toward stability. That's how you get back up from a fall, after all.