Who is to blame when everything is crashing?

The stock market is crashing. Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure. The dollar is crashing and continuing to decline; supermodels don't even want to paid in U.S. currency. Oil appears to inevitably break the $100 price target. We hear and read it everyday and we know who's responsible. Think again.

The credit crunch is the cause every professional communicator is underscoring most. Foreclosures, mortgage delinquencies and late payments, repossessions, are all up because home loans were issued to people who clearly could not afford them. Anybody, from the man on the street, that self-educates himself reading The Wall Street Journal, and watching CNBC and Bloomberg, to the Goldman Sach's analyst who comments on this issue, says that the financial institutions are at fault for issuing these loans without requiring any documentation proving that the borrower could afford such a loan. But who ultimately gave their John Hancock to agree to pay for these loans? Who didn't determine that he was unable to pay a $3,000 mortgage because, because his liabilities left him with $1,000 in cash flow every month? We are!


Now the Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates to try to remedy the situation which helps the dollar decline further. Foreign investors are taking their money elsewhere. And we have more organizations and agencies to blame. It's everyone's fault but ours.

Oil is almost at $100 a barrel. Who's to blame? According to the Energy Informational Administration, the U.S. and China are projected to account for half of the world oil consumption growth in 2007 and 2008. Buy a hybrid vehicle. Get on solar energy. Very cliche, I agree, but I have yet to personally know anybody who has done either, and most of them complain. My cousin drives a hybrid, only because he works with the Department of Environmental Protection, and its issued to him so he could work. We can get the price of oil down if we didn't demand so much of it and if we didn't buy so many things on credit that we can't afford that's got us looking bad to the rest of the world -- hence the lower dollar.

And, of course, the mastermind of all evildoers, Mr. George Bush, Jr. Do you know how many people I see on Bill Maher, other television programs, and the street who stated that they voted for George Bush the first time, not the second? As an incumbent, the odds of staying in office are in his favor. I was convinced he was going to win the first time and the second without having to sit through one political talk show; all I had to do was determine who had the more popular name. As soon as I heard a news segment talking about how Bill Clinton wasn't showing up at any of Al Gore's campaign events, I knew he didn't stand a chance. Americans vote for the candidate with most star power, period. It doesn't take a political analyst to know that Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. So don't complain that Bush cheated. If Al Gore was going to win, he would have won by a big enough margin that it wouldn't have mattered if Bush fixed the vote in one state; there are 49 more. In life there are no asterisks; only scoreboards.

Become financially literate and grow your wealth to the point that you have a corporation that keeps jobs in America if you think that's the problem. Know your means, and live beneath them or make more money. The founding fathers were able to build a great nation from positions of wealth. You are in America. And you can educate yourself to make as much money as you want. I don't need to tell you how many kids have started a website from their school dorm that is now worth millions. Most of us are just not willing to pay that price.

Neal Rodriguez