Oh Rick, I have been on your side many many times, but on this Boston Tea Party you are simply wrong. In fact you are being very dangerous in your discussions because what you are doing is dividing the people and making a very bitter situation more bitter. You are letting your ideals get in your way!
Rick Santelli’s “rant of the year” has touched a nerve with those who feel the government is promoting “bad behavior” when it tries to help 9 million U.S. families avoid foreclosure.
First let me tell you straight off that I do agree we have a problem, and I do agree that we should not be promoting bad behaviour. Politically I am a Libertarian (proof with my political compass rating). However, and this is where things get challenging, what if you were drowning?
For referece, in 2001 my wife and I sold our German house for 20% under its value. We lost our downpayment and had to pay for the house an additional 2 years. The reason was because we locked into a higher interest rate and had to pay the difference. We received no help from anybody and we struggled. So you would say, “hey Christian why are you against Santelli?” Answer is because at that time we had jobs, and we COULD pay off the debt.
These days the situation is much harder because people are not having problems swimming, they are drowning. And here is where my life guard metaphor comes in. Yes people swam where they should not have, and they drank alcohol before swimming. Yes these people should drown. But I ask you, would you let that person drown even if it is their own fault? And when that person is rescued, do you not think that maybe they will change their habits?
What Rick is doing with his Boston tea party antics is the same thing a classroom clown would do to the person who almost died by drowning. The clown would jump into the water and say, “oooh look I am drowning, I am drowning, save me, save me…” How would onlookers react to such antics at a beach? Think hard on that one…
I am not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination, (for example I still stand by the Bush tax cuts!), but I also do realize that we are a society tied together. Thus if parts of our society falls, it is only time before the rest falls…
NOTE: for those wondering what I have been doing for the past two months? HippoTrader… Coming soon…