Wall Street *is* our Main Street

I suppose living in the financial capital of the U.S., I'm obligated to blog something about this financial meltdown.

Sidestepping any commentary on the massive bailout/rescue package and instead focusing on the heart of the issue, I think the anonymity of corporate America has relieved us all of guilt in our business dealings.

Yes, I grew up Catholic so I'm well acquainted with community-inflicted guilt. But here, I think there actually is something positive to be said.

My dad likes to tell a story of two big burly guys coming to his parents' home when he was a kid. The men were there to repossess a washing machine my grandfather had missed some payments on. My dad, of course, was mortified that all the neighbors were going to see this washing machine getting bounced down the front steps and into a collection truck.

Think about how much has changed.

John and I recently bought a nice bedroom set from Pottery Barn. Like many Americans, we put it on our credit card. We did not put it on an account with a locally owned department store, where we know the people who work there.

So if we decide to stop paying on our new bedroom furniture, the people at our Pottery Barn store don't care. Not only are they hourly employees of a massive, faceless corporation -- so it doesn't affect their paycheck one way or another whether we pay -- but Pottery Barn gets its money regardless.

Our credit card has already paid Pottery Barn so our obligation is to Chase. Not that we know the people we deal with at a local Chase branch or anything. If we stopped paying on our credit card, we'd likely get a phone call from some hard working guy in India, calling himself Dave or Rick or some other middle America name, urging us to pay.

If we don't, though, what are the real consequences?

Do we have to worry that burly men are going to come take our dressers away? Do we have to hang our heads in shame next time we go to the bank to deposit a paycheck, because we know everyone who works there and they all know we're behind?

No. It's all pretty detached, and I suppose at worst, we'd just screen our calls and let everything go to voice mail so we didn't have to talk to the collections folks. Then we'd go on enjoying our new bedroom set.

I think most people, in their hearts, want to be good. And I think most people don't feel much guilt taking a little extra when they don't think there's a real victim.

So if overextending myself means I know I'm going to have to face the appliance store owner in church on Sunday, I might rein it in. I don't want to hurt someone I know. I'd probably know that his mother's been really sick or he's saving up to send his kid to college -- I'd know how my actions affected another human being.

However, if some amorphous entity, some ginormous bank wants to give me the power to spend myself silly, maybe I don't feel it's actually hurting anyone. On the flip side, if I'm the mortgage officer approving a loan I know full well the people have no hope of keeping up on, but I'm in some far-flung location where I won't have to see those people after they've sat at their kitchen table wondering how to stave off foreclosure, maybe it's not about hurting anyone, it's just making my quota for the month so I get my bonus.

I think back when we all lived in smaller, interconnected ecosystems, our actions probably felt more like we had accountability for them. Like back in the days when lots of people still paid by check, you really didn't want to bounce a check to your local grocery store if you knew they'd do what lots of retailers did -- taping copies of the bounced checks to the register, for all your busy-body neighbors to see.

The more I read and hear about the mortgage meltdown, the more I wonder if anyone felt any accountability: the people taking out the loans, the people making the loans, the Wall Street guys buying and selling the loans.

Maybe if we all worried about how our neighbors would think of us when we got our latest toy repossessed, rather than trying to show off to our neighbors with cars and homes we can't pay for, we wouldn't need a reminder like this -- "Don't Buy Stuff You Can't Afford."