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“Greed is good.”

To start this week’s column, here are two personal revelations, one slightly less significant than the other.

First revelation: I worked in the mortgage industry for six years from October 2002 to September 2008. I say that now with more than a bit of a pained expression on my face. I was “only” involved in data entry and file setup and was not an underwriter or decision maker on any loans being granted and the three companies I was employed by over that span of time were wholesale, meaning we did not work directly with the borrowers, but had the real estate brokers as our client base. At the risk of sounding ingenuous, the people I was lucky to work alongside were ethical, good at their jobs, and responsible.

But as a microcosm of the housing bubble that was carrying along the US economy during that time, my experience has some relation to the bigger picture and to my feelings about this week’s film. I made a ridiculous amount of money for the job I did from the time I was hired as a temp until about a year before I left the industry (when I was making only a slightly ridiculous amount). During my first nine months on the job, I got two holiday bonuses - both while still a temp; flown in to Sacramento for the annual company party, as were all 1,000-odd employees from across the US; and regularly made more overtime in a two week period than my base wage was worth. I bought a house I had no right buying simply because rates were unbelievable, closing and other costs were taken care of, and my wife and I only had to come in with $100. I paid on that house 11 and three-quarters months longer than I lived there, as part of the alimony deal I struck with her after we divorced.

I stayed in the industry so long, at least early on, in order to afford a housing payment, rent, a car payment, credit card bills, etc. but after first one company and then the next went bankrupt and the years kept adding up, I faced the truth that I was: 1) thankful my boss kept finding me (and a few others) a new place to hang our hats; 2) scared to jump off into the unknown - because I knew I had to get out of the business for the sake of my soul; and 3) unwilling to deal with the harsh truth that I would be making significantly less wherever I went. Eventually, I did take leave, heading back into the slightly less treacherous world of non-profits, which I had prior experience in. I may not have defaulted on my loan or been foreclosed on, or had to declare bankruptcy, but through my actions I threw myself into the insane cycle, taking advantage of a deal simply because it was too good to be true, rather than asking myself if it was the best thing or the right thing.

Second revelation: Being an unreconstructed English/cinema studies graduate, I tend to be a bit obsessive-compulsive about matters of grammatical accuracy in general, and particularly in relation to movie titles and quotes. Stray or additional articles of speech or mangled lines of classic dialogue send my spell-checking brain into overdrive. Every time Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Oscar-winning western has been referred to as The Unforgiven or David Fincher’s 2002 home-invasion thriller is tagged as The Panic Room, I bemoan the lack of good copy editors (and simultaneously wonder if it’s all part of some outreach program to find good homes for wayward words).

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