No. of Recommendations: 15
...If an owner defaults, however, his or her asset does not disappear or lose its usefulness. Rather, ownership customarily passes to an American lending institution that then disposes of it to an American buyer. Our nation’s wealth remains intact.
I don't want to be the skunk at the garden party, but it's more than a bit odd that WEB would write this in the aftermath of the Great Recession in which millions of Americans lost their homes as a consequence of egregious systemic faults within "American lending institution[s]" and in which many of those homes sat vacant and decaying for months, even years, were disposed of in tax auctions that resulted in deeper financial abuses, and wealth indeed vanished--for families, municipalities (such as Detroit, which suffered the largest municipal default in US history and where I worked with displaced families), and even nationally.
I'm particularly reminded of these facts due to the recent passing of Allan Greenspan. As you may remember, on Oct. 8, 2008, in his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan stated with regard to the economic philosophy that had guided his career, "I have found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."
He continued, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief."
As for those us who were not in thrall to free-market fundamentalism, our shock was that so many others were shocked.
