America's financial crisis: We knew better

There’s been a lot of talk in the wake of the mortgage industry meltdown about depriving some Wall Street CEOs of their golden parachutes. If you ran a corporation into the ground, you don’t deserve to walk away with millions of taxpayer dollars. And in all probability, criminal charges will be filed as the scandal continues to unfold. This retribution may make us feel better, but let’s not lose sight of the ultimate culprits in this broadening financial crisis: Ourselves.

We all know that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Yet we repeatedly supported politicians and policies who ignored that stark reality. It was wildly irresponsible for us to elect leaders that cut taxes while simultaneously spending like drunken sailors. Yet that’s exactly what we voted for ... time and again.

Government spending requires taxation, but we trounced at the polls any politician who was brave enough to tell us this basic truth. We were the enablers of our own economic destruction.

It was foolish to think that deregulated financial markets would ultimately result in something besides disaster. But we conveniently ignored that fact as long as our property values continued to rise and our 401(k) accounts grew.

Only when the inevitable crisis occurred and our financial fortunes took a turn for the worse did we suddenly have a problem with an economy built on a house of cards. Suddenly, it became apparent that we weren’t going to be able to shove the consequences of our massive debts off on some anonymous future generation. Only then did we start using terms like “unfair” and “unjust.”

We were breathtakingly irresponsible. We acted as if the laws of common sense had been suspended. And now that we’re faced with the inevitable result of our irresponsibility, we’re mad as hell and shocked … shocked!

We got exactly what we deserved. We knew better.