Jul 30 2009
Debtor’s Prison
One of my friends, Robert ~ who just happens to be a staunch Obama supporter, got a first hand lesson in the reality of the Obama driven economy yesterday.
This real person and friend is an industrious individual, and works for himself. His income is consistent with other start up businesses and to say it is spotty is kind, but the truth is, it’s more like a long drawn out case of persistent feast or famine economics.
Typically, he falls behind on payments during the droughts and then catches them up when the feast economy rolls around; a situation that doesn’t always set well with his wife and family or his creditors. But, it’s a part of the price he’s willing to pay for owning his business. Like most of the self employed people that I know, his office is in his former dining room, he’s lives with a cell phone plugged into his ear, a laptop with mobile internet card setting in his lap and is constantly on the move in his SUV selling himself and his services. Break any of these links in his business chain and he stumbles.
Well, you can imagine his surprise when he got home a few days ago, and was in his office space billing his customers for recent service, when he heard a knock at the door. Two men were standing there with boxes that they said were recovered from his vehicle. Confused, he was left speechless while one of the men intoned on: it turned out that they had towed his vehicle while he was working inside his house. The bank had them tow it away until he caught up with his payments.
The bank evidently had been made aware of his situation, he’d raised the money to catch up the arrears but hadn’t billed for it or collected any of it, still they opted to strip him of one of his tools needed to continue earning money to meet his financial obligations. Prior to the collapsed economy, they never got to excited about the late payments, he always caught them up.
Is it just me or doesn’t this reek of a modern form of debtor’s prison or the public humiliation of time spent in the stockades at the center of town?
When our government tells us that the economy is improving and that we are in the midst of a jobless recovery; how are we to deal with that? Were, my friend Robert living in California and trying to keep his business going, how would his creditor’s share his Official State IOU for services rendered to them? Does his creditor’s repossess the rest of his property and home, replacing it with photos so that he can be reminded of what it is he’s working for? Metaphorically speaking, just when did sanity officially leave the building?
Giddy headed liberals like my friend Robert, were absolutely ecstatic over the election of the man of change, Obama. But suddenly, a few days ago, a look of consternation begin creeping onto his face. This situation alarmed him, and has impacted his life in a personal way that he never could have anticipated, not in a million years. His plaintive admonition is that, “we need to give the stimulated economy a chance, it hasn’t been in place long enough to be effective.”
The questioning should be along this line: What happened? And when can he get his car and kid back?
By: tlcorbin Category: fiction 2009 © all rights reserved
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