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• Thursday, August 16, 2007 09:42 PM

  It's an exercise in asset mining.

  The revisions to the Bankruptcy Laws in April 2005 that made it more difficult for individuals to declare bankruptcy certainly looked at the time like a storm on the horizon. Now the wind is picking up and it is starting to rain.

  Most Americans are not savvy investors. We have knowledge of things like graphic design, small engine repair, niche marketing, teaching methods, asphalt engineering, dental reconstruction, vascular surgery, short order cooking and web site publishing.

  We have put our financial faith in a couple of simple, time-tested ideas. One was that the value of your property will always increase. Another that, as the television commercials used to say "To get a good job, get a good education."

  Now we find that our mortgages might ruin us financially, despite the fact that so many of us are working as hard and as much as possible.

  Meanwhile, young people are leaving college with mortgage-sized debt that will likely take decades to repay. (And there are corollaries to that situation which we hardly even suspect yet, such as the sense that it makes no sense to amass debt for a career that will not return enough income to repay the huge debt. So we become a nation of "trained professionals", and the idea that college should deliver an education - not just training - seems somehow quaint.)

  We see discussion here about "warning signs". Hell, the whole thing was planned. That's what the change to the bankruptcy law was about. In a world where natural resources are becoming scarce, one of the easiest things to do is to mine your assets, harvest your wealth.

  —C.E. O'Contraire Read C.E. O'Contraire's other letters
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