Anyone read this article?
MAGAZINE
My Personal Credit Crisis
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: May 17, 2009
How love, subprime lenders and willful self-delusion led one man, an economics reporter, to the brink of foreclosure.
Having read this article, all I can say is I DO NOT understand this mentality. You do not borrow half a million bucks if you can’t pay it back. You also do not charge almost $350 for groceries, $700 in clothes from J. Crew, and $179 at GapKids if you are also staying up at night wondering how you are going to pay your bills. This man deserves NOT to be bailed out. He made his bed… he needs to sleep in it. At the end of the article you finally figure out how this man (AN ECONOMICS REPORTER!?!!?) can admit to being such a total sucker… he has a book coming out.
In America, the incompetent and the unaccountable foolish get rewarded…the productive get punished. That’s the gist of the article, which unsurprisingly
originates in NYC.
From Fact To Fiction In 52 years —
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
By the way, I’m having a great Spring day.
The reporter in question isn’t a personal finance writer; he’s s macro-economist.
I think he willingly incurred debt to secure love (again). His second wife/girlfriend seems a lot cooler than the mother of his children. The amount of alimony/support he’s paying number #1 is criminal. He should have gone for primary custody; if he had been successful, this would be a non-story, since he’d have enough cash to pay for his spawn and his new chick’s kiddos, too.
I don’t excuse the behaviour but I do empathise. The moral of the story, here (for men), is to find yourself a sugar momma who can pay all your bills…
There’s another interesting wrinkle to this story:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_road_to_bankruptcy.php