Suicide Spreads as One Solution to the Debt Crisis

[dajoki]

Suicide Spreads as One Solution to the Debt Crisis
By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted July 29, 2008.
In a culture where credit rating is the key measure of self-worth, the increasing response to huge debts is "Just shoot me!"
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/93077/

A few days before Congress passed its Housing Bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton MA found her own solution to the housing crisis. Just a little over two hours in advance of the time her mortgage company, PHH Mortgage Corporation -- may its name live in infamy -- was to auction off her home, Balderrama killed herself with her husband's rifle.

This is not the kind of response to hard times that James Grant had in mind when he wrote his July 19 Wall Street Journal essay entitled "Why No Outrage?" "One might infer from the lack of popular anger," the famed Wall Street contrarian wrote, "that the credit crisis was God's fault rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs." For contrast, he cites the spirited response to the depression of the 1890s, when lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with the message that "We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out .... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary"

Grant could have found even more bracing examples of resistance in the 1930s, when farmers and tenants used mob power -- and sometimes firearms -- to fight foreclosures and evictions. For more on that, I consulted Frances Fox Piven, co-author of the classic text Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, who told me that in the early 30s, a number of cities were so shaken by the resistance that they declared moratoriums on further evictions. A 1931 riot by Chicago tenants who had fallen behind on their rent, for example, had left three dead and three police officers injured.

According to Piven, these actions were often spontaneous. A group of unemployed men would get word of a scheduled eviction and march through the streets, gathering crowds as they went. Arriving at the site of the eviction, they would move the furniture back into the apartment and stay around to protect the threatened tenants. In one instance in Detroit, it took 100 cops to evict a single family. Also in Detroit, Piven said, "two families protected their apartments by shooting their landlord and were acquitted by a sympathetic jury."

What a difference 80 years makes. When the police and the auctioneers arrived at Balderrama's house, the family gun had already been used -- on the victim of foreclosure herself. I don't know how "worthy" a debtor she was -- the family had been through bankruptcies before, though probably not as a result of Caribbean vacations and closets full of designer clothes. It was an Adjustable Rate Mortgage that did them in, and Balderrama, who managed the family's finances, had apparently been unwilling to tell her husband that their ever-rising monthly mortgage payments were eating up his earnings as a plumber.

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once," Scurlock told a gathering of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, "describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, 'If you don't help me, I've got a gun in my car.'"...

[gratuitous]

1. The robber barons are a lot smarter now

They crush nascent popular movements before they even start, and they do it by expertly separating and isolating various factions of the flock they're shearing. People in desperate straits are separated from the hopeless. People in a bad way are encouraged to think that while the ax is going to fall on those others, they will be spared. And all along the theme that it's "their own fault" is repeated over and over, even by people that a casual observer would think should know better. Overleveraged speculators are demonized, and then lumped in with first-time buyers, the inexperienced and the flat-out rooked to make it look like everyone is getting just what he or she "deserves," and that it's really no concern of anyone's if people are living on the streets.

And so, isolated, frustrated, penniless and hopeless, these people take the last available path. But the robber barons are there to soothe us that it was all their own fault and doing, and don't pay any attention to record profits posted by Exxon because that is completely disconnected from everything else.

[SmileyRose]

2. I know (knew) one of these people.

someone who's family still comes to my church. The husband and wife owned a hardware store they inherited from his Grandpa via his Dad. It was doing OK but then they had a fire. They had insurance but they weren't insured for the loss of income and once they got it all fixed they found out the husband had a rare cancer that is highly "curable" but very very expensive and their health insurance didn't cover much. The credit cards were already maxed out from the fire, they were behind in house payments, the medical debts were piling up. He found out his life insurance would pay off enough to pay off everything including the house and leave his wife some savings if he committed suicide. He decided to shoot himself for the good of his children.

[tpsbmam]

21. A friend did the same.....

though different details, my friend did the same thing. Just adding here that it's never for the good of the children, despite what people convince themselves of when they're going through all of this. It's hell for the children.

[SmileyRose]

37. Oh absolutely.

his wife called it a permanant decision for a short term problem.

[flashl]

3. The vultures will not stop

Scammers target the financially troubled

Mortgage frauds and foreclosure scams that target people in trouble are becoming more common.

Miami Herald
Jul. 31, 2008
BY FEDERICA NARANCIO

WASHINGTON --Frauds aimed at people in financial trouble rose sharply last year, according to a consumer agency survey released Wednesday.

''Mortgage fraud and foreclosure scams are among the fastest-growing and the worst complaints,'' said Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, which issued the findings.

In mortgage fraud, a supposed financial advisor charges fees to refinance home debt at a rate that's said to be favorable but isn't.

In a foreclosure scam, high fees and bad advice leave desperate homeowners worse off.

Also surging, according to Grant, are fake-check scams. In such a scam, the scammer demands cash back from an overpayment with what turns out to be a bad check. Or the scammer writes bad checks to someone who's paid a commission to cash them.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Welcome to the down side of free market, Libertarian bastards.

[Lyric]

5. Neither the government nor a jury would ever give in

or show mercy to a "poor people's movement"--not anymore. If a hundred of my neighbors and friends gathered at my house to stop an eviction, and used ANY kind of obstructive tactics, they'd probably all be shot down in the name of "keeping the peace." Angry mobs of desperate poor would have riot police called against them. The government has better weapons, a media that bows and scrapes to their every bullshit justification, and absolutely no pity or compassion.

We are slaves and prisoners, friends. Cold-blooded murder for the sake of a property crime is now accepted, forgiven, and defended--even here on DU. The "law" has lost its own spirit. We now live in a corporate world, where soulless "rules" with no consideration for circumstances are the supreme law of the land, and showing even the slightest disrespect for those rules is enough to get you killed outright.

[dajoki]

6. Well said...

Like the story said "What a difference 80 years make." What happened in the 30s cannot happen today because of the cold blooded mindset of our government and way too many ordinary people who may someday find themselves in this same situation. It is not only "trickle down" economics, but also "trickle down", heartlessness.

[MisterP]

38. there's also fewer electoral choices now: you can "choose" between neoliberals or flaming Cons

in fact, the 90s neoliberal hijacking of the Dems not only entrenches the freakish mélange of oligarchy and Libertarian anomie that is conservatism on both sides of the aisle, it shields that conservatism itself by painting it as "what the people want," "moderate consensus that's so good both parties adopted it," and basically unquestionable. The voters, fearing to be spoilers, are painted into a corner and makes this "little vs. nothing" choice. On top of that, this "win first, question later" mentality builds up a rank-and-file frenzy around whichever corporate candidate makes it past the media purges during the primaries: being the Only Choice they become the One Hope, squelching discussion and simultaneously reinforcing a bipartisan conservatism.
this dilutes liberalism/leftism and makes people think they've "done something" for the cause of justice when they've really just accepted centrist pap--thus hindering performance of actual change
this is all on top of the decades of RW red-baiting, from 1949 McCarthyism to 70s screeching that "defeatism" and objective reporterage (the bane of conservatives of any party) "lost" Vietnam

[dajoki]

40. I've been saying...

for a long time that there are no longer two parties , but one giant conglomorate party which leaves the voters with an empty feeling. The Democratic party that I grew up with is no longer there, both locally and nationally.

[ladjf]

7. "Poor people" have no political clout in a Republican world.

[LBJDemocrat]

10. Oh please.

Two words: Grover Cleveland.

Edit: My point is that you're misleading yourself if you think we're going to return to the days of FDR by getting a Democrat elected.

[ladjf]

11. How did you get all of all of that out of my simple

statement that poor people don't have in clout in the Republican world?

Is my statement about the lack of political clout in a Republican world true or not?

I think you are trying to advance the idea that the poor don't have any clout with the Democrats either. That may be true. But,Republicans have consistently shown their lack of empathy with poor, sick and elderly.

[dajoki]

14. True...

I read an article about that and I think I posted it. If I can find it I will post it again.

[Mandate My Ass]

9. hate radio is part of that problem

I know from other posters here that Limbaugh and his ilk spew constantly about the poor. They've managed to turn people in the same leaking lifeboat against each other while the rich sail away in their yachts.

[dajoki]

13. Great point...

"They've managed to turn people in the same leaking lifeboat against each other". And they also managed to make these same people believe that it is all their fault.

[sharesunited]

8. A nation of empty houses while graveyards and tent colonies swell.

[SoCalDem]

12. Societal pressures have changed us all

Not wanting what you have, and lusting for what you cannot have, makes people take unreasonable risks....and it also makes them reluctant to face facts.

If you cannot afford to pay your bills, you HAVE choices:

move
spend less
try to get an extra job (without incurring MORE expenses to HAVE that job)
admit to yourself and family that you cannot afford your lifestyle

In the end, it's JUST a house, and it's only THINGS..

As a society, we have come to believe that if we don't have what we want, life is not worth living.. sad..

[El Pinko]

15. Why on earth would a person commit suicide over this? DON'T DO IT!

If you are in over your head, then declare bankruptcy, or just walk away.

There is no dishonor in doing what it takes to save your butt in the face of the coming economic shit-storm.

The credit card companies market their "product" relentlessly, then are ruthless in doing everything they can to enslave people, including knowingly lending people more debt than they can handle.

They KNOW That many people will be trapped into a cycle of paying the minimum, then using the cards to buy groceries, and that for many people, it would take 40 years to pay the damn things off even paying as much as they possibly could per month.

I did it, I walked away, and do not feel the least bit of guilt. The 450 bucks a month I was paying out to credit card companies now goes to buying food and shoes and other things that my kids need. They can sue me, and if they win, the amount they are allowed to garnish from my paycheck by law is STILL less than I was paying in minimums before. But luckily, they usually don't sue, and there is a statute of limitations on debt.

Don't commit suicide, and if you are already way in default, don't fall for it when the collectors try to get you to send in 50 or 100 bucks. That resets the statute of limitations and does NOTHING to pay down the debt (which the collector has bought from your original creditor for pennies on the dollar).

These are HUGE and ruthless corporations that engage in usury. Don't let them do a number on your mind.

Set yourself free.

http://www.budhibbs.com/

http://www.naca.net/

Your rights under the law:

http://www.expertlaw.com/library/consumer/fair_debt_collection.html


Let the wingnuts spout their shit about "personal responsibility". For some reason, they don't have a problem with CEOS getting golden parachutes financed by government bailouts of companies they bankruptes.

That's okay, but somebody who makes $20k per year raising 2 kids is supposed to feel guilt about reneging on a debt they have already paid thousands in interest on?

DON'T FALL FOR THE GUILT TRIP. FREE YOURSELF. START OVER. LIFE GOES ON.

And I mean this from the heart.

[Marrah_G]

17. I will bet this has more to do with addiction and mental health

She hadn't paid it in 42 months. She was hiding the bills. Her husband had no idea she wasn't using the money to pay the mortgage. He had no idea they were coming to auction off his house that evening. She was very skillful at hiding the truth. To me that sounds like addiction. Drugs? Gambling?

[El Pinko]

22. MY message only tangientially relates to the OP story.

This is is just my plea in general plea to people who find themselves in these situations.

I won't speculate about the OP. I'm just sorry for her, is all.

[Marrah_G]

26. Totally- I feel so bad for her and her family

Suicide is horrible.

We need single payer socialized health care, we need it now and we need it to cover mental health and addiction.

[dajoki]

19. Many, many people should take your advice...

I feel the same way. Thanks for the post!!

[mdmc]

24. thanks for these links regarding debt

God bless:hug:

[El Pinko]

28. Yeah, they were of great help to me.

I think I'll post that as an OP now, just to get the resources out there.

[sammythecat]

35. Thanks for this post

Looks like some very useful information. I added those links to my favorites and I'll check them out tonight for my own benefit as well as some others I know.

[Blue_Tires]

39. well said

in late 2006 i was very close to doing myself in - heavy debt and unemployed....luckily i found a good therapist who showed me another way...the changes didn't happen overnight, but now i'm in a much better place, and cannot believe how close i came to suicide over financial issues...

[Marrah_G]

16. Not a good story to profile on this.

The woman had not paid her mortgage in 42 months, while hiding the fact from her husband and everyone else. The money was going somewhere. She was hiding the notices and phones calls.

This is most likely a case of addiction.

When she realized they were coming to auction the house and she could no longer continue hiding the fact that she had not been paying it, she killed herself.



http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/07/facing_foreclos.html

[dajoki]

20. 42 months is a long time...

but I don't know how the mortgage company let it go that far. I was FOUR months behind when they stopped accepting my payments and it stretched to 12 months while I tried to work something out, which I finally did.

There is alot of blame to go around, including the lender, and was the husband THAT oblivious to the whole thing? Its hard for me to believe he was. Blaming it on addiction or mental illness is just to simple, maybe she was afraid of her husband, maybe she was covering for HIM.

[Marrah_G]

25. If you read the original accounts it seems fairly obvious.

She was doing something other then paying the bills with the household money.

[dajoki]

36. And so was hubby n/t

[geek_sabre]

34. hubby'd filed for bankruptcy 3 times in five years since they bought the house

he knew about it. and his salary was more than enough to cover the mortgage on that house, so the money was going somewhere else.

[dajoki]

41. How?

I don't know exactly what the law is, but you can't file bankruptcy three times in five years.

[geek_sabre]

42. should say "attempted to file"

[SidneyCarton]

18. Get used to this...

Things will get worse before they get better, and we are a society that sees no sin greater than failure. Bankruptcy, Debt, Foreclosure, all of these are essentially unforgivable sins in the eyes of society, that essentially reduce the victims to the state of Old Testament Lepers. As the American middle class is unaccostumed to ruin (running on the back of years of easy credit) this situation is likely to come as a shock, and when people find themselves in a situation in which there seems to be no escape, they often choose the permanent solution to a temporary problem.

[mdmc]

23. I often have wondered why victims of bullies kill themselves

instead of killing the bullies...

[Marrah_G]

27. She wasn't being bullied- She hadn't paid the mortgage in 42 months.

[mdmc]

30. I didn't read the story

I knew this one kid that was bullied so much that he killed himself. The bullies were at the funeral. I walked up to them and said, "How come he killed himself? Why didn't he kill all of you instead?" They all knew that they deserved to die.

[Marrah_G]

32. I hate bullies too

I was bullied as a kid and my youngest son has some developmental problems, making him an easy target and school has been hell for him.

However, this year he is entering HS and decided that he is going to play football. The coaches have been great and the kids on the team are really accepting of him, some are even protective. I was scared to death the first few meetings and lifting days, but now I am thinking this is was a really good choice for him. Hopefully this is going to be the first year that he doesn't hate going to school and starts gaining confidence and self-esteem.

I can't say enough about the coaches in this town. The team might not win alot, but they are family and academically oriented first and foremost. They want the kids to enjoy sports, not be stressed to death over it.

[mdmc]

33. sounds like good stuff

:kick:

[Evoman]

31. They do....and then we sit around and ask what video games they are playing.

[napi21]

29. Although I wasn't alive then, I've heard that a lot of people did that

same thing back in the days of the depression. I think, with some, it's their only answer to a truely hopeless situation. It's very sad!