lost much of its value and luster, a realization made acute through constant mass advertising that reminds one that a newer and better model is available but also rightfully due to us, especially when your creditworthiness has just been demonstrated to credit lords all over the world. Thus is renewed the cycle of personal loss of ownership over life itself. Even if one pays one’s bills on time, one’s lifestyle may still thrives on things that represents someone else’s ownership since one borrows to buy the next fashionable thing.
And the worst recent example of this hopeless conjecture is related to the millions of Americans who have recently lost or face the potential to lose their homes even if they maintain their normal levels of employment and income. As a result of a fraudulent collusion among investment and commercial bankers, mortgage companies, stock brokers, real estate dealers and, we have to admit, their own personal financial illiterateness, lack for prudence, and may be greed, millions of Americans found themselves in an impossible financial situation: what they owe in terms of credit borrowing substantially exceed what their houses are worth in the mortgage market. They found themselves trapped in a financial scissor of crushing indebtedness, due to excessive borrowing on the basis of their home mortgage, and ever rising interest rates in a semi-collapsed or very weak housing market. For most this has meant that given their actual levels of employment and income, they can never hope to claim or reclaim ownership of their houses. Even if they remain full participant in their society’s normal economic functioning, they cannot hope to secure the ‘dream” of homeownership our society upholds as the rightful due to every