Pulitzer Prize candidates: Streitfeld and Morgenson, NYT

In the spirit of contributing not ersatz punditry, or untrue stuff you and I already knew, to Sully's TalkBacker blog, here's a window on something true which you may not have known before: some solid NYT reporting by David Streitfeld and financial ace Gretchen Morgenson on the meme that the mess we're in was made largely by smart public officials and ex-officials acting on the best of intentions.

That meme posits that at the core of this mess was the multi-decade fixation, shared by well-intentioned pols in both parties, on enabling tens of millions of low-income households to share in the affluence created by massive overleverage.

Such affluence was, we now know, a mirage.

Yet bizarrely, no one thought to ask whether a nation in which more than half of the households have negative net worth could or should attain even 50% home ownership, let alone 60%, or the mind-petrifying figure of 70% that Barney Frank et al urged Fan and Fred onward towards just a few years ago.

As a case study in the road to financial hell being paved with the good intention of maximizing US home ownership, Streitfeld and Morgenson zero in on Henry Cisneros, formerly a star of the New Democrats, lately of shite-homebuilder KB Homes and shite-mortgagemonger Countrywide Financial.

Remember Cisneros? He was in my salad days one of the Dems' great hopes: super-educated, good-government, new ideas, new politics, liberal but intelligent about economics. before he flamed out in a sex scandal, Cisneros was one of the bright young lights of the New Democrats along with Gary Hart, Bill Clinton (hmm-- see a pattern here?), also, among the more abstemious, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, and Albert Gore Jr.

Now, for my spin-- which isn't necessarily true (though I believe it to be so), and may not be fresh (probably isn't to those who've read and suffered my TalkBacks over the years).

Could we please stop the great Sharks v Jets pissfest and admit that the essence of this crisis is, was, will be for some time, overleverage?

And that both parties, and a large number of intellectual heavyweights advising both parties, for that matter nearly every major light in this nation aside from Warren Buffett, James Grant and a few other brave souls, thought that such high levels of leverage was a good and necessary thing?

And not just, as Miller and Modigliani of finance theory fame would have it, for firms but also for every US family with an address in a credit card direct marketer's database, as well as all God's lil' hedgefunders, and Uncle Sam and Aunt Fan and Aunt Sal and Uncle Fred and John Boy and Mary Ellen and all the huddled masses yearning to be free of renting and living within their means.

The culprit here is us. Our rotten political class is what we deserve.

And like any other self-destructive sap or addict, until we take the first step and admit our own culpability and state our desire to change, we will not get a better class or a stronger nation.

So here are some of the steps-- twelve are probably too many, though others may think they're too few-- that we Americans need to get back to national recovery:

1. Stop demonizing Otherside. Ain't no one but Americans here.

2. Start ruthlessly demanding -- of ourselves and our pols-- simple HONESTY first. Not "truth", not correctness, just simple logical tests, above all, an honest accounting of our financial commitments and our financial resources.

If you support policy X or Y or Z -- whether it's fighting an overseas war of choice, or importing a second underclass, or raising home ownership or funding discretionary medical treatment of one kind or another or whatever-- then bloody well tell the nation how WE -- not "you", or they, but we the public-- will pay for it. Down to the last nickel.

3. In line with #2, get f***ing serious, NOW, about entitlements. Recall step #1.

4. If you want a national dialogue, then be an instrument of light and understanding, not smirks and sneering. Add signal, not noise.

The internet has become a swamp of noise, garbage, fairytales, conspiracy theories, and even in the best cases, recycling of untrue stuff we've heard 1000x already.

Basta.

Some sort of digital age version of St Francis's Prayer is called for here. Anyone who shares this wish, please update St F's Prayer accordingly and post here-- and no, that's not an invitation to yet more forgettable, and regretfully, imperishable digital snark.

T