Till mortgages do us part

From the toilet paper that prints all the news that's fit to print, we have A Surge in Foreclosure Filings.

AFTER 20 years as a lawyer, David Volman has handled enough divorces to know that many marriages collapse under financial strain. So when his practice, in Shelton, began receiving an unusually large number of divorce cases last summer, Mr. Volman took it as an omen. “Divorces go hand in hand with foreclosures and bankruptcies,” he said.

Sure enough, in the first two months of this year, Mr. Volman took on some 50 bankruptcy cases, an “enormous amount,” he said, given that in all of 2006 he handled 19.

Many of the cases involve working-class couples in the Lower Naugatuck Valley who can no longer afford their mortgages. “People are walking into my office and saying: ‘Here are the keys. Do whatever you have to do. I just want to get out of this so I can sleep at night,’ ” he said.

That's going to be the new wedding vow. Entirely accurate in my opinion since the etymology of mortgage is from mort (Latin mortuus -- dead), and gage (Germanic origin -- pledge.)

This is going to be the hidden story of the great debt-binge of the last few years. The forces of economic destruction are not limited to jobs and companies. There will be a severe human toll -- broken marriages, destroyed children's lives, more crime.

And there's not a goddamned thing anyone can do about it now because the damage has been done. The horses have fled the stable a few years ago. Shutting the barn door now is a bit useless.

Here's another "safe" set of predictions: a rise in arson (people would rather burn their house for insurance than pay the mortgage,) a disastrous retail environment (broke people don't buy stuff or eat out,) the rise of populism ("do something, Mr. Politician, anything",) and a corresponding rise in both nationalism and intolerance (blame the foreigners/jews/black people/hispanic immigrants, etc,) and economic protectionism ("free trade is a bad idea", Smoot-Hawley, etc.)

All of these are hallmarks of deflationary times. Every single one of them occurs repeatedly in history.

Personally, I'm waiting for the first "pensioner forced to eat dog-food" story (and rest assured, it will appear in the press in less than 5 years.)

In the words of Keynes, "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."