Answer:
Many Americans, along with our friends and enemies overseas, routinely attribute our current predicament to our acquisitiveness. Lurking beneath the surface of this particular diagnosis is the conviction that the true source of America’s quest for global dominance, however chastened it may be at the moment, is the inordinate appetite of its people for material possessions and pleasures. But is this, as we so often hear, simply a matter of “greed”?
Explanation:
First, it must be acknowledged that Americans’ enormous consumer wants and our willingness to go into household debt to satisfy them distinguish us from most other advanced industrial democracies. But if we stop to examine the origins of the present crisis, it arises in part from otherwise laudable efforts to satisfy the aspirations of economically marginal African Americans and Hispanic immigrants to become homeowners. Indeed, the specific goal of increasing minority home ownership was a critical component of the rationale for the policies and institutional arrangements that got us into the present mess.
