Foreclosures
Let's pretend America is a big 'ole corporation. A happy family of 300 million employees. You're a Republican, you'd like that analogy, wouldn't you? Okay, great.
Now, our company has a problem. It seems we have a large number of employees--many thousands--who have gone over-budget, and started projects that they cannot afford to maintain. Namely, they purchased houses that they couldn't make the payments on. What do we do about this?
Now, you might say "fire the bastards", but that's poor management style! A good manager will tell you that people aren't to blame (certainly not for a single mistake), processes are. This is a problem with the corporation's processes. It has to absorb the loss, not dock it from those employees' pay.
So what aspect of the process here went wrong? Specifically, what can we do to avoid the problem again in the future?
My suggestion is to change the process that allowed people to buy homes that were out of budget. If this were a corporation, we'd tell finance to provide a more accurate picture of each of those employee's budgets, wouldn't we?
So maybe we shouldn't be allowing banks to tell people they can afford a $500,000 home on $70,000 a year. That would keep the problem from happening again, wouldn't it?
Now, our company has a problem. It seems we have a large number of employees--many thousands--who have gone over-budget, and started projects that they cannot afford to maintain. Namely, they purchased houses that they couldn't make the payments on. What do we do about this?
Now, you might say "fire the bastards", but that's poor management style! A good manager will tell you that people aren't to blame (certainly not for a single mistake), processes are. This is a problem with the corporation's processes. It has to absorb the loss, not dock it from those employees' pay.
So what aspect of the process here went wrong? Specifically, what can we do to avoid the problem again in the future?
My suggestion is to change the process that allowed people to buy homes that were out of budget. If this were a corporation, we'd tell finance to provide a more accurate picture of each of those employee's budgets, wouldn't we?
So maybe we shouldn't be allowing banks to tell people they can afford a $500,000 home on $70,000 a year. That would keep the problem from happening again, wouldn't it?
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