It's Not Just the Bankers Who Destoyed Western Civilisation

Ah, the Bankers, how they have garnered the wrath of the world. Between the growing public anger vented on their villas, and the recommendation that bank employees wear their "civvies," it's not a happy time to be associated with a bank. Especially a bank whose name is recognisable by a large number of people. The violence is growing, and we don't doubt that things will be getting worse for the world's new collective whipping boy.

It's not without some truth: the world's major banks designed, packaged, and sold various schemes which - intentionally or not - was the poison pill for the world's economy. The question is whether or not the pill contained sufficient poison to kill the economy, or merely give it some serious health problems. It seems that the latter is true, as the world economy is in a flaming tailspin, as the numbers seem to suggest.

However, we feel the bankers have gotten more than their fair share of the blame for destroying Western civilisation as it is presently understood. On the Times Online's list of 'ten people who should be most hated,' we see ten faces very deserving of anger. There is, we feel, another clique of individuals who have an equal - or perhaps greater - share in the collapse. They should get their fair share of the anger. These persons are the realtors and developers of the United States.

No, really. The reason we level our finger at these recently unemployed persons is simple. They are the architects of the great suburban build-out in the United States, the mortgages for which is a goodly part of the toxic crap now causing the world's economy to keel over in convulsions. The build-out was strongly popularised at the end of World War II, through such legislation as the G.I. Bill. A house in suburbia became the Holy Grail of the average American, as evidenced by the last sixty years or so of rapid suburban construction.

It was a seemingly endless source of money, and it became enshrined as part and parcel of the so-called American Dream. Great amounts of money have been made selling dreams, and so the developers built suburbia, the realtors sold it, and the bankers financed every step of the process.

From this unwholesome ménage à trois the poison pill was crafted. To and from suburbia flowed the sub-prime mortgages, the credit cards, the automobile loans, and the like. All those forms of debt were sliced and diced into many new and interesting forms; other, even more exotic expressions of High Finance were invented to slice and dice further. Put simply, the bankers are indeed to blame, but they had very willing assistance in their quest for more money.