What's happening now brings back memories of the Savings & Loan industry collapse back in the the 1980's, followed by the domino effect caused by the Enron collapse, followed by the domino effect caused by 9/11/01. Another very sad element of the Carlene Balderrama story is that insurance companies don't pay on suicides, or at least make the beneficiaries wait for 2 years, potentially making the financial trauma even worse for her family.
The fact of the matter is that most people are simply not financially savvy enough. I say this because I spent nearly 20 years in the investment banking industry and saw first hand that the average "Joe" out there never learned, or bothered to learn, financial responsibility, and women are particularly vulnerable to financial disaster. My generation and younger are too spending oriented, not saving oriented. Our parents (or grandparents) were the last generation to have survived the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression and WWII. Why baby boomers didn't learn from history is perplexing. I taught my kids to create an emergency fund; but, trying to get them to save for their retirement, yeh right! They think they're too young.
There is so much finger-pointing in the lending crisis that there's a vicious circle. I feel sorry for this woman's family. I personally knew a woman who committed suicide for a similar situation. She used to be my next door neighbor.
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What's happening now brings back memories of the Savings & Loan industry collapse back in the the 1980's, followed by the domino effect caused by the Enron collapse, followed by the domino effect caused by 9/11/01. Another very sad element of the Carlene Balderrama story is that insurance companies don't pay on suicides, or at least make the beneficiaries wait for 2 years, potentially making the financial trauma even worse for her family.
The fact of the matter is that most people are simply not financially savvy enough. I say this because I spent nearly 20 years in the investment banking industry and saw first hand that the average "Joe" out there never learned, or bothered to learn, financial responsibility, and women are particularly vulnerable to financial disaster. My generation and younger are too spending oriented, not saving oriented. Our parents (or grandparents) were the last generation to have survived the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression and WWII. Why baby boomers didn't learn from history is perplexing. I taught my kids to create an emergency fund; but, trying to get them to save for their retirement, yeh right! They think they're too young.
There is so much finger-pointing in the lending crisis that there's a vicious circle. I feel sorry for this woman's family. I personally knew a woman who committed suicide for a similar situation. She used to be my next door neighbor.
July 25, 2008 - 7:00pmThis Comment
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