10.11.08
Title Industry and the Bailout
As Americans, we are always trying to fix everything. Instead of doing something right the first time, we think we can just fix a terrible job. Every time there’s a problem- be it legal, technological, economic or moral, we just want a quick fix.
Even when we clearly see serious problems with what is happening around us -things like insider trading, Enron, pushing bad mortgages on people, collusion within related businesses, we want to overlook the root cause and just fix it. Well, here we are again at election time. And I am sick about the fixing that Congress is doing and the lack of ethics among our highest elected officials. My first thought is, throw the bums out. All of them. They’re not doing their jobs.
Our legislators pamper private interests instead of doing what they were hired to do - looking out for the public good. They take bid trips and trade favors. They take sides, one party against the other. What happened to a sense of the common good for the people? What happened to “of the people, by the people, and for the people? ” There’s a growing disparity between the rich and the poor in the U.S. and around the world, medical costs are out of control, the poor have no insurance, Social Security is in trouble, we’re having to rescue the banks. These are not new problems. These are old wounds that have not been doctored. Our legislators have let us down.
And the response to lack of morality? Let’s just fix it with a new code of ethics! Politicians talk about ethics and pass legislation requiring students to take ethics classes. Do we really think we can fix everything by having someone spends 60 minute in an ethics class? Are we now trying to assign responsibility for morality to a gov’t agency? Professional groups follow suit - land title associations, mortgage banking associations and others form ethics committees, and write fancy new ethics codes. Do we really think we can fix everything by having someone acknowledge a new ethics code?
We now talk about regulations for the mortgage and title industry and rules for consumer protection. We talk about beefing up the regulators. Yes, the regulators are guilty, but we would not need that regulation if everyone were ethical. The root cause of our problem is greed and a lack of ethics. All of us in the mortgage and title industries have seen this train wreck coming for a long time. Too many mortgages written too fast. CEO’s who simply say they wrote bad loans because they were paid more for them. Loans the consumer couldn’t possibly repay. Where was the morality along the way?
But we are guilty too, we have become a society in moral disorder. Somewhere along the way, with easy credit and eyes bigger than our pocketbooks, we seem to have completely lost our way. Many signed mortgages they could not afford, knowing those loan applications were fraudulent. We borrowed money to seek affluence and material things, rather than focusing on the truly important things in life like family, friendship and goodwill. This bailout, or rescue plan, whatever you want to call it, is merely a symptom of our greed.
It will take much more than a bailout for our country to recover. This will not be an easy fix. The fix will come only when we recognize and deal with the fact that ethical behavior and living our lives in a moral fashion is everyone’s responsibility and can only be done over a very long time in a variety of ways. Ethics is not a fix, it is a daily soul searching to do the right thing. Only when we find our character will this country be healed.