It was very encouraging to see the role of a local parish church and the community of the neighbors featured, even though overall it is a tough piece to watch.
Foreclosure is a way of life here in Lee County, Florida….especially in Cape Coral. It leads the nation in foreclosures….and many Churches have done what they can to help save family homes….but in this economic climate, even churches have limited resources….
I remember very clearly that just a few years ago, many of the financial “gurus” were advising people [i]not[/i] to pay off their mortgages quickly. No, they were told that they should rather invest the money they would have used to pay down the mortgage quickly into the stock market, where they were sure to get a much greater return on their money. It was presented as folly to pay off a low interest long term debt, because inflation and the tax break you received made your home [i]almost free[/i]. What was ignored is the admonition of Scripture that the debtor is slave to the lender.
Some of the folks forclosed on were irresponsible and should never have gotten a mortgage in the first place; but those that have lost their jobs in the recession are real victims (and I don’t use the word lightly). They are victims of the corporate greed that even today lures companies into the vast and unregulated derivatives market, with enough peril that it can collapes the entire financial system. They were victims of the [i]expert[/i] advice about investing their [i]spare[/i] money in the stock market rather than paying off their largest debt. They were victims of the government greed that raised their property taxes, based on the real estate bubble’s inflated property values and [i]unrealized[/i] capital gains…they were taxed for several years on the imaginary inflated value of a profit they never made. Finally, they and all the rest of us are victims of the ill conceived bailouts to the select companies that our representatives arbitrarily (or worse) decided were “too large to fail”.
Less than a year later, many of those companies have proclaimed that they will not being paying back that money and still others have asked for even more bailout money. Meanwhile, the underlying fundamental flaw of unregulated derivatives trading continues unabated and we all are just waiting for the next company to fail and trigger yet another domino crisis in our currency system.
It was very encouraging to see the role of a local parish church and the community of the neighbors featured, even though overall it is a tough piece to watch.
Foreclosure is a way of life here in Lee County, Florida….especially in Cape Coral. It leads the nation in foreclosures….and many Churches have done what they can to help save family homes….but in this economic climate, even churches have limited resources….
I remember very clearly that just a few years ago, many of the financial “gurus” were advising people [i]not[/i] to pay off their mortgages quickly. No, they were told that they should rather invest the money they would have used to pay down the mortgage quickly into the stock market, where they were sure to get a much greater return on their money. It was presented as folly to pay off a low interest long term debt, because inflation and the tax break you received made your home [i]almost free[/i]. What was ignored is the admonition of Scripture that the debtor is slave to the lender.
Some of the folks forclosed on were irresponsible and should never have gotten a mortgage in the first place; but those that have lost their jobs in the recession are real victims (and I don’t use the word lightly). They are victims of the corporate greed that even today lures companies into the vast and unregulated derivatives market, with enough peril that it can collapes the entire financial system. They were victims of the [i]expert[/i] advice about investing their [i]spare[/i] money in the stock market rather than paying off their largest debt. They were victims of the government greed that raised their property taxes, based on the real estate bubble’s inflated property values and [i]unrealized[/i] capital gains…they were taxed for several years on the imaginary inflated value of a profit they never made. Finally, they and all the rest of us are victims of the ill conceived bailouts to the select companies that our representatives arbitrarily (or worse) decided were “too large to fail”.
Less than a year later, many of those companies have proclaimed that they will not being paying back that money and still others have asked for even more bailout money. Meanwhile, the underlying fundamental flaw of unregulated derivatives trading continues unabated and we all are just waiting for the next company to fail and trigger yet another domino crisis in our currency system.
Truly, the love of money is the root of all evil.
Typo…
Should read, “…they will not [b]be[/b] paying back that money…: