Trouble at Home
Did Generation X’s nesting mania spark the economic meltdown?
by Susan Gregory Thomas
December 22, 2008
YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF
In hindsight, it seems obvious discussions like these were kindling for the HELOC inferno. In hindsight, it also seems obvious (at least to economists) that all those interest-only mortgages might not have ended up being so catastrophic either if people had put more money down on their homes to begin with because there would have been a greater variety of home equity in the whole system. And a lot of other stuff. But these are the technicalities. "This may offer a shot at learning to be an old-fashioned grown-up."
Much has been written lately about psychology's effect on the economic crash: low consumer confidence, even how traders in London are feeling after eating lunch when New York is opening. Again, as I sit in my dumpy, little house in Red Hook, Brooklyn — which I can just barely afford to heat — I wonder if it's all a little closer to home.
During the course of writing Buy, Buy Baby, I found out that my generation — myself included — were in large part responsible for triggering the baby genius industry, and the rampant consumerism that attends it, in spite of our very best intentions for our children and our beliefs as parents. Reviewing the Harvard, U.S. Census, and all the other housing statistics forces me to confront what I've been loathe to face ever since the mortgage-credit crunch choked me and everyone else: that it's déjà vu all over again.
Of course it would be ridiculously reductive, if not downright grandiose, to suggest that this whole messy monster can be laid at Generation X's back door. But belt-buckling times invite dark nights of the soul. And I'm looking at it, at the very least, because I can't afford to go shopping. But I'm also looking at it because I just turned forty, and I'm thinking this may offer an opportunity for me to at least have a shot at learning to be an old-fashioned grown-up.
The last time I had such an Angel Heart-like growth spurt was about twenty years ago, right around the time that the eponymous movie came out. It was at the height of the coke-crack pandemic, and there were a number of well-intentioned but very lame public service announcements circulating to combat it ("Just Say 'No'!"; "Get High on Life!"). But as a then-teenager of the Less Than Zero East-Coast flavor, there was one that got me at the critical juncture.
There was nothing unusual about the scene at the time: at a party, coked-up, in an upstairs bathroom of the house of someone's parents who were away. But on this particular night, the radio was on somewhere, and the announcement came through: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." For whatever reason, I happened at that moment to be looking in the mirror, and got it right in the face: They're talking about you. It was just true. I didn't exactly get high on life, but I got a job, worked my butt off in college, and got my act together in a way that I can honestly be proud of. And I knew I could never do drugs again.
