Who really destroyed America?

We are all responsible. From our government to wall stree to the average person. We spent more than we had, were irresponsible with our money, did not save for a rainy day and basically spent the last few years on a spending spree. Lack of responsibility and common sense on alot of people's part is reason we are in this mess today.

Deep down, we as the people of the United States of America have destroyed America with all of our spending and lack of education.

I think it is a combination of many people from different backgrounds that destroyed America. It gets worse with time also.

I believe in the saying that, "When you blame, you give up your power for change." While I would agree that our government and others in leadership have mismanaged a lot of funds, Americans are known for living above their means and spending money that they do not have. It is call credit and most of us are guilty of this on some level.

The way I see it, there are three groups of people to blame... The mortgage companies handed out adjustable rate mortgages like they were free during the whole time that the real estate market was booming. It is now time for those mortgages to start "ballooning," people cannot make the payments nor get refinanced to a fixed rate mortgages. This, combined with the increased cost of living due to the trickle-down effect of high gas prices, is why the foreclosure rate is higher than it has ever been. The corporate managers of big businesses are also to blame. They have ran the companies into the ground, spending lots of money on unnecessary expenses such as corporate jets and other wasted money, and now the companies are going bankrupt. Apparently, the burden of bailing these companies out is going to fall to the tax-payers. Labor unions are also partially to blame for the collapse of the auto makers. They demand so much money for the workers they represent that it drives the cost of production a lot higher than it has to be...

I blame the reptilians....again!

A mortgage company can't encumber you with a loan without your signature, nor can an auto dealer sell you a car without your consent. Americans are to blame for the state of our economy - you can't borrow yourself out of debt.

Who destroyed America? 1. Madison Ave. 2. Our banking industry 3. Government 3. Wall Street 4. Ourselves First, as Madison Ave became more and more savvy in understanding how to manipulate us to desire things we really didn't need, our eyes were opened to all the new and shiny things we could have. The bad news was that they were creating new desires in us. The good news was that we had to save up our money in order to buy them. As our real life intruded on these desires, most of us didn't buy most of the things that we wanted. But then our lending institutions and banks made credit cards available. At first they were fairly hard to get. But with time, almost anyone could get one. Some we were no longer buying things that we could pay for, we were buying things based on whether or not we could afford the monthly payment. this was a fundamental shift in our economy and in my opinion the most influential factor in our current economic problems. Credit become king over cash. As this became a big industry, government got involved. Our government has never been particularly good at managing our economy, which is why I am VERY nervous about this wave of bailouts. It just makes sense that if the government is going to give them money, they are going to want some influence over their industries. But that is a whole other discussion. Our government acts too dramatically and much too late. It's kind of like driving on ice. If you look well ahead of where you are going and make small subtle adjustments, you will usually do well. But if you wait too long and make drastic movements you will lose control and crash. As our economy was thriving, they decided that too many minorities were being declined for home mortgage financing and that was discrimination. Without looking too deeply into it to determine why that was happening, they passed legislation that required lenders to allow a larger percentage of minorities to be approved for mortgage loans. So people who one day could not get a loan because they were not credit worthy, suddenly become credit worthy. Nothing changed in their financial status. One day you were not eligible, the next day you were. I'm not saying that the banks did not play a role in the current crisis, some banks kept their criteria for acceptance high, most did not. That's when Wall Street got involved. Now lenders were packaging up this flood of new mortgages and selling them as mortgage backed securities on the Street. These securities became hot and in high demand. As the demand for these securities rose, lenders scrambled to generate more mortgages and further lowered their acceptance criteria. So people who were even less qualified were getting mortgages. These mortgages began to go bad. These people who we knew weren't credit worthy a few years prior were defaulting on their mortgage payments. Big surprise. so homes started to go into foreclosure. Housing values began to slide. Houses become worth less than the mortgage note that secured the home so investors were no longer interested in buying mortgage backed securities. So now lenders had these mortgages that they could not sell on the Street. Lenders cash flow came to a halt and credit dried up. As credit dried up more houses went into foreclosure and bank no longer had there biggest asset: mortgage payments. Banks began to fail. Wall Street reacted and the market lost serious value. But underneath all of this was our continued desire to have more than we can afford. It was this mind set that led to this whole fiasco. If we as consumers would live within our means, the efforts of Madison Ave., the banks, our government and Wall Street would not have had the impact that it has.