They were laughing and squealing with glee about how their marks were moaning and crying about getting rooked in this deal, and they (the businessmen), had so cleverly outmaneuvered those sniveling fools.

I suppose it must be hard to feel sympathy for people who’s own greed lures them into some get-rich-quick scheme that backfires, leaving them up the proverbial creek without a paddle. But I believe today it is part of the business ethos to deliberately manufacture these conditions, and they justify it to themselves by feeling that those dumb enough to fall for these deals somehow deserve to be taken for a ride. It betrays real contempt for the customer.

Your story reminds me of one from my ex-boss, who got caught up in the ARM swindles of the 2000′s, and wound up taking a bath on TWO houses, one in Florida and one in Texas. After retiring from a very good job (and his professional wife doing the same) with pensions, savings and real estate, they soon found themselves in a deep hole they’re still trying to dig themselves out of. Their retirement turned into a nightmare, and they will die in debt.

I didn’t buy my first house until ’98 when I was in my early fifties. I got a fixed-rate, 15-year, 6.5% VA loan which we paid off 4 years early–on a 30 year old fixer-upper. It meant sacrifice and doubling up on payments, but we got out from under that weight just in time for me to retire early when my own job went in the toilet.

I’m not any smarter or harder working than anybody else, but I was brought up by parents brought up during the Great Depression. They drilled it into my head that there is no Money for Nothing.

Its interesting that there wasn’t even an instrument to bet against the housing market until there was a market for it. The greed of the bankers saw a market for the instrument and paved the way. Nobody in that movie was a hero.

Despite the chilling last line of the movie, there have been quite a few changes in the housing market. Anybody who has bought a house since 2008 knows that the bar is raised much higher than before. Sadly ARM’s are still legal, even though that was the biggest reason for the crash. As usual the most important lessons went unlearned.

Maybe its that way for some, but the complex structures and processes of modern capitalism often have no relation to real human needs, they feed on themselves in a grotesque parody of the real world and become a game played solely for the benefit of the players.

The very idea that you can deliberately bet on a market to fail is obscene, but that the apologists for these financial shenanigans actually insist that it is somehow healthy for the system to undergo these cataclysms is simply astonishing to me. To take advantage of these financial collapses for personal gain seems at the very least to be profoundly unethical. To actually work tirelessly and cleverly to bring these conditions about, to precipitate them deliberately, is much worse. It is a moral crime of the highest order. Those who regard these activities with envy and admiration must have nothing but contempt for their fellow men. We are all just marks to them. We are so stupid we deserve to be robbed. Real human lives are ruined by the millions so these blow-dried wimps can congratulate themselves on how clever they are, and how stupid their victims are.

These people are to capitalism as Dr Joseph Mengele was to medicine.