The Suicide Solution

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 Assocition 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.’”

India may be the trend-setter here, with an estimated 150,000 debt-ridden farmers succumbing to suicide since 1997. With guns in short supply in rural India, the desperate farmers have taken to drinking the pesticides meant for their crops.

Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too. And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can’t pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition – like an ever-rising number of Americans – you’re no longer needed at the workplace, then there’s no further point to your existence. I’m not saying that the creditors, the bankers and the mortgage companies actually want you dead, but in a culture where one’s credit rating is routinely held up as a three-digit measure of personal self-worth, the correct response to insoluble debt is in fact, “Just shoot me!”

The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns, metaphorically speaking, in the other direction. It wasn’t God, or some abstract economic climate change, that caused the credit crisis. Actual humans –often masked as financial institutions – did that, (and you can find a convenient list of names in Nomi Prins’s article in the current issue of Mother Jones.) Most of them, except for a tiny few facing trials, are still high rollers, fattening themselves on the blood and tears of ordinary debtors. I know it’s so 1930s, but may I suggest a march on Wall Street?

Comments

[foreclosurefish]

Good article. People who identify themselves with their credit scores and roles as consumers need to realize that their inability to pay their debt has been largely engineered by the banks. Giving up and taking such drastic measures, while somewhat understandable, is not the solution.

After all, large corporations go bankrupt every day -- you don't see any of their directors or CEOs bawling their eyes out and contemplating suicide. On the contrary, they just go to the government for handouts and treat the bankruptcy as a method of sticking the taxpayers with the bill.

Bankruptcy or foreclosure should be looked at as a business decision and a reaction to changing economic conditions. Not as a moral decision -- corporations certainly don't consider it a moral decision, and neither should homeowners.

[Rhea]

Organized political action? What a concept! I long to see people in the U.S. participate in this kind of thing. "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna...."

[shay]

Great post. Sadly though we have become a society that only values money and for many when there is no money or in this case debt, we stop seeing our value.

[mjk]

Your comments err a bit. 23 years age my husband opted for this solution for business/money woes. Even with mental health care he made the choice of suicide. However, his estate, i.e. wife and 3 children, inherited the debt with no life insurance payment. I paid everything along with years of legal proceedings and costs. I raised 3 sons hovering slightly above the poverty level and look forward to old age of real poverty. The financial plight of the surviving family isn't even on the radar of a subject no one wants to acknowledge.

[Jason Gooljar]

I'm all for a march on Wall Street. People have started to protest in front of health insurance corporations like GHI concerning health care costs too. Who want's to organize this? Or who's willing to help me organize it?

[Anarcissie]

Marching on Wall Street sounds like fun, but what are you going to do when you get there?

Let me suggest some possibilities.

(1) You can wave signs around, yell, and demand that the rich be nicer or else. This is called "working within the system." A big demonstration will cause politicians to emit wads of hot air; then things will go back to what they were before. But you will have had a nice march, anyway.

(2) You can employ the power of the state or violent revolution to replace the existing financial system with something else. In this case, you had better figure out what the replacement is beforehand, and get everyone to agree (or make them agree). You'll probably need a great leader, too. You may get more marching than you bargained for. Note: this sort of thing has not worked out too well in the past.

(3) You could forget about Wall Street and the various medical care and insurance rackets and build alternative institutions that serve _your_ interests and desires instead of rich people's. Oh, wait, that isn't marching anywhere. Cross it out.

[W.C. Varones]

We are tracking these cases in Greenspan's Body Count. Carlene Balderrama is number 36.

[Greg Farnum]

Beautiful column. I hope others with a public forum will gain the courage to speak as clearly as you have.

[le.gai.savant]

Barbara, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Of course there ought to be more outrage about the the greed & corruption amongst the financial elite and the venal idiots we've allowed to take over our government, but please, don't tell me people are killing themselves over having less money. Behind each of these stories you'll find some deeper cause of despair I'm sure. There are millions of people out there in financial distress and saying that this is something that actually causes suicide might even give someone the idea. Saying the people ought to pick up the gun and turn it on bankers or other crooks is at least as pernicious. What if someone, having read your article, did just that? While I believe in justice for thieves, the death penalty or being shot in the street is kind of harsh, isn't it? Maybe you're just displaying your brilliant wit here or something? I hope you don't encourage someone with your lovely writing turned to such a nasty end. Also, of course, there are things that really do need to be done about this crisis -- crooks prosecuted, even more important, relief for debtors in over their head and some sane economic policies, ending the war and so forth. You really don't think we'll get there by someone picking up a gun and shooting a few bankers, do you? If you do, go visit someplace where this has been tried.

[Anarcissie]

The problem isn't a few crooks. The problem is systemic.

[Barbara E]

le.gai.savant: Did you skip the word "metaphorically"? Of course I'm not suggesting shooting anyone.

Anarcissie: I think the function of a march would be to shame the finance industry and alert the politicians that we are angry.

[Anarcissie]

I don't think trying to shame the shameless is going to accomplish much.

If what you want is to replicate the social democracy and welfarism of the 1930's, you will have to wait for different conditions. In those days, the various ruling classes of the West were frightened by the success of Communist and fascist movements and figured they'd better buy off the workers, as well as get their own games under control. There is no threat like those of yesteryear even on the horizon today. Rightists have tried to create bogeymen out of Russia, China and Islam but they are unable to scare anyone, even themselves.

I do think things are going to get worse, though -- given the long-term abuse of the economy and especially the monetary system -- so maybe they'll get better, too, from someone's point of view. I myself favor movements toward autonomy, toward making the ruling class and the rich irrelevant. They control us only because we let them.

[Brian]

On the day Ted Stevens senior US Republican Senator with 30 years in congress was indighted, Barbara gets to the core of our economy which is "if you can't pay your debts or """play your role as a consumer"""you're no longer needed" Yaaahhh!! Our economy is cannabilistic, and the next time you hear some devil preach the wondertudes of 'free market capitalism' as if that is what we have going her, get out of the room! We don't have free market capitalism, we have a rigged market requiring huge amounts of capital if you want to make a mark in it. These pundits are toxic messengers of brainwashing, as "the system" wants people "programmed to recieve". Anyways, I think Barbara has unearthed to the core of the problem. The machine we live in eats us alive and then when we are no longer a profit center it spits us out, either into infirmatiy, old age, or prison or even worse homeless. I think we need a new type of analytic politique that transcends socialsim or marxism or hippism, but looks at an American as simply a consumer. Debt is modern slavery. Debt is never worth suicide as debt is just a loan that promises if you pay for a very long time, like a 30 year mortgage you get to own the property, yet the state can at a whim tax it away from you anytime. Its all an illusion. Whenever the state can take your property for unpaid taxes, it means you don't really own it. You are simply being put through layers of illusions. Thats not to say, it might be a practical thing to do to mortgage a house and pay taxes if the numbers work for you and still leaves you a measure of dignity and a cushion. But our brand of consumerism makes you push the buying envelop. "Pushing the consumers buying envelop".
1. American narcissism confused as patriotism.
2. great advertising and glad handing and unrequited promises.
3. addictions and drug and booze induced decision making.
4. relationship blackmail, threat of pulling away ones love if you don't get that "thing" or "dream holiday">
But let me add the greatest travesty of todays America and that is the huge amount of debt students and their families have to take on to get even a basic college education. Its insane and wrong. "Generation Debt" covers it well. One question--during the recent housing boom and double and tripling of prices, did anyone ever hear anyone from mortgage lender to the "innocent" sellar ever wonder if it was ethical to saddle people with these yet huger mortgages they would be paying off month after month for most of the rest of their lives working extra hours, overtime, two jobs, and separating marriages over the stress, but whether it was ethical to be part of this? I watch on the home channel how suburban dwellers drool when the realtor tells them their house has doubled in value in the past 10 years, but no one ever asks the question, how is the first time or even second time home buyer going to be able to afford it. A mortgage is a backbracker, a home wreaker. But its all about "me, me, me" and somehow these same people think going to church on sunday absolves them of their very deep sins. Outside of all the greed, I am appalled no-one has even started a national discussion on the ethics of greed. By that I mean the hurt and harm greed can do to others and is that ethical? But no discussion, just sign me up to the ponzy scheme. Yet we are the greatest nation the earth has ever seen. Something is not computing here.

[paperpusher666]

Brian, the banking industry did an excellent job of convincing people that they can no longer file for bankruptcy to have their debts discharged. You still can, but you have to earn the median or less for your family size. In Maryland, that is about $40K per year for a single person, and add about $3K per year or every additional family member.

People tend to focus on the monthly payment more than how long it will take to pay off a debt. For at least the last ten years, the focus in the lending industry has been on making payments affordable, either through car leases, reduction of minimum monthly payments on credit cards, or pay-option mortgages, or worse, the toxic 80/20s where you took out another loan for the down payment as well.

Deductibility of interest never seemed like a great deal to me. Suppose that my combined tax rate is 30% and I'm deducting $10K in mortgage interest. My taxes are lower, but I still have to pay that $7000 "left over" in mortgage interest. People confuse deductibility with a tax CREDIT.

One can argue that housing prices HAD to collapse when the average house price was 4-6 times people's income, and higher than that in some places. Few buyers compared the after-tax costs of ownership with the cost of renting. I get a hard time from family members because I didn't buy a house when I moved back east four years ago. It was cheaper to rent by about 30% for the amount of space that I had.

One of the books that you should read is "Balance Sheet Recession" by John Koo. It is about the Japanese, but there are lessons that apply to the U.S. The main one is that a recession is inevitable as people repair their personal balance sheets, either by paying down debt or filing for bankruptcy.

It is hard to start a discussion on the ethics of greed when we are taught that we have to get what we can, while we can, as we await the next downsizing. Your "greed" may be someone else's "survival".

I'd like to see credit card interest capped at 2-4 points above the fed funds rate and oenalty fees capped at $10, but that would cause 80% of the people to have their credit cards cancelled. It wouldn't be profitable enough. The most moneymaking customers for the banks are the highest risk customers, because they can get 24-30% plus however much in late fees.

[JMarra]

You could forget about Wall Street and the various medical care and insurance rackets and build alternative institutions that serve _your_ interests and desires instead of rich people's.
------

Everyone does that to some extent. I tell everyone I know to remember who among their friends and acquaintances (hint: it's helpful to have friends and acquaintances) is a doctor, lawyer, nurse, or other professional who will negotiate with you directly and bypass health insurance and its corporate agenda. Find those people, help them find others, start building local networks of support and help.

I was greatly helped this way. There are health care professionals who want to HELP more than they want to make money for the corporation. Developing respectful and mutually helpful relationships with actual doctors and nurses is a good starting place.

Sometimes you don't do it until you absolutely have to--maybe it's good to start compiling local knowledge now. It's worked for me on dentistry and foot surgery.

[JMarra]

They control us only because we let them.
----

The system gives property more recourse to legal physical violence than it gives to me.

I can storm the gates, and the police or privately hired security can give me a concussion. I may recover and file a lawsuit. I might win the lawsuit, some years down the road. A lawsuit will cost me money, and necessarily reduce the time I can spend protesting the original issue in the first place.

[Buena]

I don't think people are killing themselves because they "have less money." Losing your home is a lot more fundamental and devastating, and I could see how it could lead to suicide.

Are we at a tipping point here in the U.S.? How much longer before we get angry enough to do something, i.e. vote, march, protest, keep to the streets like we did in the Vietnam era?

[Anarcissie]

JMarra: '... The system gives property more recourse to legal physical violence than it gives to me. ...'

Yes, as an individual it's hard to beat the system, and especially hard not to get sucked into the system and become like it and part of it. Hence I go about preaching the gospel of collective autonomy. Doesn't seem to do much but maybe I'm planting a few seeds here and there. Your suggestion of establishing personal relationships is something like what I'm talking about.

Buena: '... How much longer before we get angry enough to do something, i.e. vote, march, protest... ?'

Voting, marching and protesting are basically asking the ruling class to be nicer. There are some problems with this approach. First, ruling-class people didn't get where they are or stay there by being nice. It is not really a behavior they understand well, although the more clever ones can simulate it on occasion. Second, the ruling class itself has to some extent lost control of the situation. They have allowed themselves to be seduced by easy money, stock and real estate bubbles, celebrity, and so on. Being a lord and master is a hard job and they've muffed it. Even if they wanted to (which they don't) it may well be impossible for them to rectify the damage they've done from the top.

It is probably going to be up to outsiders and lower-downs to rebuild our economy and restore our politics to some semblance of reason and virtue. In other words, the knight in shining armor, the man on a white horse, is you.

[Ron McAllister]

Just this Sunday I sat and watched with sadness as I listened to Fritz Hollings, the retired North Carolina Senator. Greed is the biggest problem in American political system, driven by K-Street lobbyists demanding more money and influence from "Joe Average American." $30,000 was the amount of money Hollings had to raise weekly! He stated sadly that pretty much all of his time was in the pursuit of cash. He admitted freely he was more concerned with that than creating policies to help average Americans. I hate to sound like the Ugly Canadian, but I have to tell the fine folks of still the Great U.S. of A not only are your bank accounts and governments deeply in debt but your entire democracy has a deep rot, troubling not just for you but for citizens around the world. It's time "Joe and Janey average America", to wake up and see, that a group of devious, dangerous, Neo-Cons have robbed you all blind! It's funny how American's lampooned the French for not joining in the Iraq debacle because they were called "soft" and "outdated" but try and take away the hard fought rights of French citizen's and you'll see the strong character of the French as they stand up proudly for those rights. It seems American's are the ones who have grown fat and soft. You have lost the ability to stand up for your own rights, because you've abdicated them to K-Street and in the process you have foolishly had your pockets picked. It's time to grow a backbone America, if not you will go down in the history pages as a country with seemingly unlimited potential, a potential lost by indolence and the greed to a political criminal class unheard of or unseen ever before in the planet's history. Now wake up and start fighting for your rights, there are those of us around the world that still look to the great American experiment with hope.

Sincerely,

Ron McAllister

[Mara]

Barbara writes: "Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too."
Hmmm, not according to the Buddhists, though. For them, I think, anyone who dies this way will have to be reborn into a life of even greater suffering to really learn they can come up with a better solution to their woes than self-destruction. Well, maybe the Buddhists are wrong. Still, I don't think death offers any easy way out, although Atheists like to think so. As for the Religious, is listening to a heavenly choir singing for eternity truly an easy way out or the fast track to eternal tedium? Even pitchforks have to get old, after a while. Think about it.

[Mara]

In terms of the "deeper" reasons for suicide, sometimes it's a more impulsive act than we realize (the NYTimes had a great article about this). Have a gun lying around or live by a high bridge, and you (or a family member) just might one day decide to shoot or jump to a quick death. Motto: troubles come and go but death often takes a holiday anytime the means for a truly lethal end presents itself.

[roger]

i have all sympathy for the family. suicide is an exasperating and tragic event. the pressure and strain were authentic.

the family pursued, negotiated and agreed to a mortgage plan with an established financial institution.

" I had no clue," said John Balderrama explaining that his wife handled all the couple's finances. "I'm just lost. I tell you I'm beside myself."

" He said Carlene had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company and shredding them without his knowledge. He had no idea she hadn't paid the mortgage in 42 months. "

given the signed contract that the family entered into, and the apparent circumstance in which the contract was not met for 42 consecutive months; i must pose the question: what action, other than foreclosure did you expect from the finance company.

it is suitable to discuss the relative merits of working outside of a system which manipulates the populous; to wit:

" and especially hard not to get sucked into the system and become like it and part of it. Hence I go about preaching the gospel of collective autonomy. "

that said. i would find it difficult to conceive that the mortgage company is responsible for this death or that society may expect the mortgage company to do much more than notify the authorities when someone received the fax of the pending suicide.

again all of this reasoning is couched in terms of sympathy for the family at this tragic loss.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1445599

http://www.mahalo.com/Carlene_Balderrama#guide_note-TOP-0

[Heather]

I agree that people do turn to suicide far too often than the public would like to think. Faced with an unfair lawsuit at the age of 19 (by an elderly couple in their 70s), I spent my remaining college years in therapy for PTSD, too close to suicidal thoughts for comfort. Sometimes you just want to get away, and you see no other choice. You feel yourself a burden to the world and everyone that loves you. As a college student, I was lucky enough to get easy help through a university program. Non-students aren't as lucky.

Three years later and the lawsuit went away. I'm three months out of college with no luck in the job search, slowly drowning in new debt without health insurance (thanks to a pre-existing condition). Not only does the economy need a serious overhaul of ethical and reasonable standards, but I must attest to the same for health care. Money and health are the two things a person can't live without, and unfortunately, the two things people will continuously use against each other in an attempt for overall power.

[Monica]

Provided that one can at least have the basics, such as food, and not necessarily at the unreasonably high level that many Americans find normal, debt is largely a state of mind. If it is really huge, it might as well be zero, because it will never be paid, and at least some of it will be discharged or written off. There are even laws saying that after a certain number of years, debt "expires". And one's efforts to at least pay something may just reset the clock.

Many people cannot afford home ownership in the first place. If the bank takes the house, people will end up living somewhere, probably as renters.

The real problem is the idea that if there is no money, debt must be paid, and this is a shame and a burden to others. No material goods are worth one's life.

And I don't know what happened in the case of the person who was only 19 when sued, but at that age, many people are judgment-proof. Speaking of judgment, the law may actually protect a certain amount of assets that simply cannot be taken. And at 19, life is full of opportunities (and not necessarily where those old folks live), whereas the old people may not even have many years of life left.

Be a burden or beg for food if you must, but by all means, people, protect your life first. In the current economic climate, it would not be surprising if the whole economic system collapsed and money lost nearly all its value. In some areas, houses are simply blown away by some flood or hurricane. Life is more important than material things and the ability to pay, which could disappear or become totally irrelevant.

[Anarcissie]

In the social order of contemporary liberal capitalism, where all respectable people are employed and work constantly, you are your money. It's not surprising that people introject -- mentally aborb and incorporate -- this kind of thinking, since they are surrounded by it and it has so much power over them. In this scheme of things, if you lose all your money, you're worthless and should die. But if you gain your sense of self-worth from the global work machine, however successfully, you're already sort of dead.