Letters: Blaming the banks, cause and effect
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Letters: Blaming the banks, cause and effect
Kai Ryssdal: One more thought on the foreclosure settlement to start our letters segment today.
For all that it puts the banks on the hook and helps homeowners, Garrick Rose wrote from New Orleans to say let’s look in the mirror, too.
Garrick Rose: I get it. Let’s blame the banks, we need a scapegoat. But after all, it takes two to tango. If we punish the banks, should we not do the same for those who committed fraud — outright lying on mortgage applications? Shouldn’t they face criminal prosecutions?
On Wednesday, commentator Robert Reich talked about why the GOP candidates generally agree on the problems this country has, but how they miss why we have ’em.
David Rigby hears the show in Winston-Salem, N.C.
David Rigby: Reich is correct that most politicians get the cause and effect wrong. But so did he. The single most important cause of the great recession is that we have exported jobs for several decades. It isn’t one year that’s the problem, it’s the accumulation of many years.
I talked to Walter Mosley yesterday about his latest book, “All I Did Was Shoot My Man,” it’s called. But it kind of turned into a conversation about race and class.
Joel Kirk from Carson City, Nev., had this to say.
Joel Kirk: It struck me that there has always been a slice of our society where costs were always a major concern. But think of how many people at this point in our economy, when confronted by a bill of say $200, might just as soon be told the charge was going to be $2 million. They have an almost equal ability to come up with either amount. None.
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