September 24th, 2008 
joel Even after watching hours of CEO’s and stock brokers drill down on the symptoms and complexity of what is probably the worst financial crisis in America since the Great Depression, perhaps the best explanation and analysis of reality that I’ve seen has come from a seemingly unlikely place.
On Tuesday’s Oprah show, Suze Orman gave an impassioned, no-nonsense explanation of how we got in the situation we find ourselves. But there was little finger pointing of the administration or Congress. In her “not afraid to show tough love” way, she gave an indictment of not only Wall Street, but Main Street and what she calls the national lie we were all accessories of.
Orman explained:
“You bought a home that you couldn’t afford…You spent money like it was going out of style and it wasn’t your money to spend, because why? They were borrowing it. When you borrow money, you leverage yourself. The United States of America leveraged itself so high that when it started to come down, the whole thing now has fallen down.”
You won’t hear candor like this from the politicians or pundits. It’s much easier to blame an evil CEO or congressman than Joe American. But it was Joe and Jane American that bought into the lie that you could enjoy prosperity built on total debt.
Suze Orman, using the powerful bully pulpit of the Oprah Winfrey show, is willing to speak the truth. It’s both refreshing and absolutely terrifying at the same time. If you can get a hold of the show, watch it.
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I walked by Jack Tirak’s grave and the ground was rumbling. After this post, I think he is rolling in his grave.
There was a time when you tried to use a credit card and, lo and behold, the transaction was stopped because you were at your maximum. No purchase for you!
Not anymore. You can max your card (and the bank hopes you do) and they will honor your overlimit purchase. Why? They can now charge an overlimit fee of $39 and up.
Regardless if the consumer is an idiot, a poor mathematician, or greedy, it is the bank that fails to monitor the established credit line.
I see not one word in your post from you or Suze or Oprah, on variable rates and ballon payments and the rise in interest clause that put the payment the consumer was led to believe he would pay….into the stratosphere. Net result? Foreclosure.
These gimmicky financial instruments were not created by John and Jane Doe citizen.
Do we buy too much and on debt? Yup?
In pre-1969 days, folks with debt were considered to have character flaw. VISA entered the market and the rest is history……debt history.
Your Social Security Trust Fund has all the money it needed to pay bills at retirement. Employers and employees kicked in.
The change to “No raising Taxes”, but shifting Social Security Trust monies into the general fund did a double damage. Accumulated excess retirement money disappeared, and the dragon of debt gorged.
The citizen is doing nothing more than their government is doing.
The loans should have been turned down and we would not face this problem.
How can you blame a citizen when an appraiser went out to a house and saw it was worth zip, but appraised it at hundreds of thousands so that a bank and attornies and all the rest of the money folks at home closing, could make a whopper of a buck?
And as the venerable firms in Wall Street go bust, the leadership all have golden parachutes upon exit of a bankrupt firm.
Tell me again Joel, or Suze, which citizen has a foreclosure accompanied with golden partachutes?
I found it hilarious that Suze Orman would go on Oprah and complain about the American Public overspending!
Did Ms Orman once scold Oprah for having at least 10 houses? NO!!
Did Ms Orman scold Oprah for, at one time, spending $100,000 on a DINING ROOM TABLE AND CHAIRS!? NO!!
I get a kick out of Oprah…she has all these people on to preach to OTHERS about how to live their lives. But Oprah keeps buying homes and spending tens of millions on oceanfront homes.
I realize Oprah has more money than God. However, how much is enough?
Maybe Oprah should have titled Ms Orman’s visit “Suze lectures everyone on how to live….except me, I deserve 20 homes!!??”
Oprah has gotten waaay to preachy for me lately.
Perhaps Oprah could sell one or two of her homes and use the proceeds to help “Ameican” kids in our poorest inner-city neighborhoods, instead of taking her philanthropic dollars to South Africa. How soon we forget from hence we came.