Who’s to blame- Look in mirror

The summer after I graduated from college I went on a trip to Europe with 59 other college students. None of us was an experienced traveler. Few of us were fluent in any language other than English, so when we found ourselves in international airports where we could not even understand when flights were announced, we were a nervous bunch.

We kept a sharp lookout for one another, fearful of being left in Copenhagen while the group had flown off to Amsterdam. If one of the bolder ones decided to venture over to a newsstand or went looking for a bathroom, the rest of the group would begin moving en masse thinking that maybe the person on the move knew something the rest of us didn't. Maybe she knew where the plane was! We laughed at our anxieties, but we didn't stop following one another around airports. Looking like an idiot was better than being the idiot who got left behind.

The financial markets are looking a lot like my traveling college friends. We are in a dangerous credit crunch because of lending money on awful terms to people who could not afford to borrow it at saner interest rates. Adjustable-rate loans would be a good idea only if you thought your income would increase significantly or you were pretty sure Aunt Irma was going to die and leave you a bundle before the interest rate was adjusted upward.

The idea that your house would appreciate in value so fast that you would become rich was stupid on the surface. Every other house would appreciate in value too, and you have to actually live somewhere.

The whole thing was a house of cards in the long run, but in the short run some people made out like bandits, and some people who had no business buying houses they could not afford got to live in them temporarily. Like my college classmates, the lenders moved with the herd into creative loans because everyone was doing it and everyone was making money. Those who resisted, and there were a few, were trashed by investors and all the smart people who deemed them old-fashioned and just plain stupid. On the buyers' side, people became convinced that they just had to get a house; everyone was getting a house, an expensive house. And all kinds of rather ordinary people were talked into investing in real estate and flipping houses. There were entire TV shows devoted to showing you how to buy a house, fix it up, resell it and make a fortune. What are you doing skimping and saving in your pitiful little money market account or 401(k) when you could be getting rich by flipping! The price of houses can never go down! This has never happened! Well, it has now. Turns out we had never before run up the price of houses so fast through loose credit and speculation.

Haven't we been here- The dot.com bubble- The hedge fund disasters- The gold rush, for that matter. The message is always the same: You can get rich! You are a fool if you don't get in on this! He who hesitates is lost! Do it now!

Turns out that the biggest threat to capitalism is the capitalists. Not the communists. Not the terrorists. The capitalists. But isn't that so often the case- If the whole thing crashes, it won't be those guys who flew into the World Trade Center who caused it.

Possibly the two most serious threats to the Roman Catholic Church in its history might be the current crisis and the Protestant Reformation, both created by corruption within the Church, not by much feared communism, fascism or Islam. Islam's greatest threat may be the radicals within their own house, not Christianity or secular, Western society. The Chinese may be done in when they run out of water which they are rapidly doing. Maybe the biggest threats to the U.S. are our own greed, poor health, inferior education of our children and the trashing of our environment.

Michael Jackson sang, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror." You can't get much more ironic than that. Did Michael take a good look in the mirror- What on earth did he see- Unfortunately, the financial wizards and Chinese and Catholics and Muslims and all the rest of us may have a lot more in common with Michael Jackson than we would like to admit.

Patricia Hunt is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain and Staunton resident.