Advertisement But strangely, that paper phantom is a source of much trouble.
The lack of it, points out Grace Jones, executive director of Couleecap, can be acutely stressful, “stressful enough it can drive you into mental illness and depression,” she said.
Also stressful is the hoarding of it, which is a simple way of labeling what has recently degraded our economic system.
In the past weeks, the greed of individuals and a society have been laid bare, and we have been shown the power money holds over us.
One group of culprits in this crisis has been predatory lenders, who ripped off families with high fees and high interest rates on loans.
“We’ve been screaming about predatory lenders for years,” Jones said.
Last week, in a meeting with Ron Kind, Jones told the congressman that while the feds might need to bail out the country, predatory-lending regulations must be put in place so this doesn’t happen again.
“The policies and decisions that the government sets up have great impact on families, so the priorities of the federal government are extremely important,” she said over the telephone. “Who are they looking out for? I would advocate that they look out for people, all people.”
That includes those people Jones said Couleecap is seeing more of these days — families seeking to stop or get through the foreclosure process.
But it’s not only predatory lenders, and now their prey, who have money issues. Through the things we buy, all of us are woven into an economic system that looks more and more as though it takes from the poor to give to the rich.
Bishop April Ulring Larson said she noticed a shift about 15 years ago when, as she put it, “we decided as a society that we couldn’t take care of everybody, that some people just simply had to suffer in order for middle class and other folks to have a future.”
One of the problems she sees is that money has become our most intimate and private secret.
“People will more quickly talk about the most personal part of their lives, including their sexual relationships, before they will tell you what they earn and what they do with that money,” said Larson, whose last day as bishop of the La Crosse Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was Tuesday. “When we hide it and we are secretive about it, it holds way too much power in our lives. And then it runs us instead of us running it.”
So while the government bails out the big guys, what are the people to do?
Jones talked about Couleecap’s work developing permanently affordable housing, with the hope of having 50 single-family homes in a land trust by 2012.
Larson talked about the need to care for people who were financially vulnerable even before the crisis hit and about the need for leadership.
“I see it all over our political spectrum, where people lead by intensifying the anxieties and fears of the people. ... This is not leadership,” she said. “Excellent leaders find ways to inspire people toward courageous and bold and ethical action on behalf of the least of these.”
