Economic crisis is our own fault

Both presidential candidates are busy blaming each other's party and greedy Wall Street for the current economic disaster and certainly they carry part of the blame. But the candidates can't publicly blame the real culprits that caused the problem because it is unpopular to do so. We the voters are the culprits and we caused the crisis.

Every generation has warned its children to live within their means, save for a rainy day, and to avoid debt whenever possible. Certainly many of us baby boomers had grandparents that survived the depression and saved used tissue paper who stressed those prudent values.

But instead of listening to prudence, we went crazy buying bigger houses, more expensive cars and more expensive vacations than we could afford. But we wanted them. So we borrowed money that we should have never borrowed and then borrowed some more money from the false equity on our homes to buy more things that we should not have bought. We are now deep in debt with very limited savings as a nation.

Deep down we knew it was wrong and we knew that our parents and grandparents would have called us foolish and irresponsible. But we did it anyway and acted like spoiled adolescents. And now it is time for a spanking. The only questions that remain are how tough will the spanking be and will we learn our lesson for the future.

Randy Rossi

Grayslake