After the Greed Is Gone

My friend David R. Anderson, the rector of St. Luke's Parish in Darien, Conn., was quoted in a New York Times piece yesterday about how recent events on Wall Street are affecting "the community said to have the nation's highest percentage of residents working in financial industries." David said:

"We're all greedy. If you can acknowledge that in yourself, you can make some progress. If you want to find someone else to blame, you're probably not going to make much progress yourself."

David's eloquence aside, most of us measure progress not in how accepting we are of our sins but in terms of the money we make and how many houses, cars, private school educations, etc. we can pay for along the way. We've aimed for nobility a few times. Remember after 9/11 when we were ready to sacrifice for our country and in a move that was more Zsa Zsa Gabor than Greatest Generation, the president instead implored us to shop? 

Over the past several years it hasn't just been Congress and the White House that have encouraged us to spend. Somewhere along the way Wall Street allowed crucial social compacts to be broken and truisms like you can't get something for nothing and if something seems too good to be true, it probably is to be ignored. It used to be that if after due diligence, mortgage lenders thought a prospective borrower wasn’t up to a loan, they said no. They didn't say, We’ll look the other way while you take on more debt than you could possibly repay. Some of these borrowers should have known better. But who could blame them--us--for trying when housing seemed to be a foolproof investment, providing us with even more of those things we were hell-bent on acquiring? 

Over the past few weeks and months, we've moved from greed to something else though what, exactly, it's too soon to say. One clue is that the president went on national TV recently and instead of addressing us as consumers he spoke to us as "taxpayers," asking Americans to spare some of our "hard-earned money" for Wall Street. In my small way at home (which we bought in 2005, just before the market crested), I'm on a new kick to make do with what we have. We have too much. It was a telling moment when I threw away three contractor bags full of puzzles and games missing too many pieces to salvage and my children didn't notice that a single toy was gone. Yesterday Sam went to a fellow 6-year-old's birthday party not with the customary Star Wars Lego set but a gift certificate for a Kiva micro-loan so that a farmer in Nicaragua can buy a pig. Sam and Julia will probably have a lot to say about how weird their mom and dad are when they get a little older. And the pig farmer is just the start.