dishonesty, greed, recklessness & arrogance

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http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/stories/wcnc-041009-sjf-houseofhorrors.c16af1aa.html

Our economy is built on a house of cards (excuse the pun) of dishonesty, greed, recklessness, and arrogance (e.g., CEO salaries and union demands for pay without work). Modern day crooks from Enron, MCI, AIG, Freddie Mac, and MANY, MANY others drove our economy into the toilet.

President Obama is right—we need change; but, not the kind that puts money into the pockets of crooks. We need to get honesty, integrity, and responsibility back into our economy. If that had been the case in the first place, then the bailouts wouldn’t be needed.

The housing industry has more than its share of crooks building shoddy houses with help from government (similar to the way that AIG, Freddie Mac, and the other crooks got government help). Part of cleaning up the housing industry, a major component to our economy, is cleaning up the shoddy builders AND their coconspirators, e.g., crooked and/or incompetent contractors, corrupt mortgage lenders, less-than-truthful realtors, government (as the story from the link above states), and US. We’re a BIG part of the problem, too, because we ALLOW it to happen by not DEMANDING change. We should DEMAND that government protect consumers by enforcing building codes and passing consumer-friendly laws that would, among other things, eliminate binding arbitration and restore our right to sue builders and government for shoddy construction. There are “lemon laws” for new cars in all 50 states, but, to the best of my knowledge, not a single state has a “new house lemon law”. And, there never will be unless WE DEMAND IT. Both figuratively and literally, you can’t build a good house on a faulty foundation.
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