When The Wall Street Journal published my op-ed, “The Case Against 30-Year Mortgages,” I expected disagreement. What I didn’t expect was the flood of thoughtful, funny, and occasionally fiery responses from readers across the country.
Some wrote to debate, others to commiserate, and a few to wonder aloud whether the entire financial system is already too far gone. Together, their words form a fascinating snapshot of how Americans think about debt, wealth, and the dream of homeownership.
Here’s the next installment of those conversations: proof that when you challenge a century-old financial myth, the interest compounds quickly.
“A Plumber and an Analyst Walk Into a Bar…”
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your article — concise and well stated. While I sense a bit of disdain, I absolutely relate.
But your article only points out the facts and offers no solution. It fell flat with me for that reason.
Me personally, I can find no solution. This ‘sleight of hand’ is terminal for our society with no way out except collapse. The financiers that have benefited are many and range from the ultra-wealthy to our friends and neighbors in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. The latter don’t have any real wealth to survive the collapse but more than the average Joe for sure.
The inflated price of housing isn’t solely due to the systematic effects of long-term government-backed loans. What about materials and land prices? And utility installation prices? Today’s costs to build are high.
You don’t have to understand the problem just to sit and watch it fail. It’s sadistic in a way actually to analyze it first — like watching a dam fail while the town below can’t get out of the way. The world needs more plumbers, not analysts. Maybe you should go learn the trade?
If we are to benefit from learning from the past, we actually have to change it or fix it before we are dead. People can analyze it when it fails and come to the same conclusion you or I will now. Probably better with insight, to be honest.
So what’s the rest of the story? Don’t leave us hanging! Otherwise, we are just a footnote 100 years from now.
–M.P.
My Reply
I have to say… M.P.’s email really was one of the most entertaining I’ve received so far. I appreciated both his humor and his candor, and said so.
Hi Mr. M.P.,
I have to say… Your email was one of the most entertaining responses I’ve received so far. Thank you for that, and for taking the time to write such a thoughtful note. I appreciate both your humor and your candor!
You’re right that I didn’t present a grand solution in the piece, and that was deliberate. My target wasn’t the mortgage itself so much as the metric that distorts every conversation about it: the Annual Percentage Rate (APR). The 30-year mortgage simply provided the perfect example of how APR hides the truth. It makes long-term debt look cheap, short-term debt look expensive, and buries the real price of a product behind a meaningless annualized number.
The problem isn’t that Americans borrow: it’s that we’ve been trained to misunderstand what we’re paying. If we replaced APR with transparent, total-cost disclosure, showing borrowers the actual dollars they’ll pay over time, we’d have genuine financial literacy and honest pricing. That’s the reform I’m after.
So while I share your skepticism about fixing everything before the dam breaks, I’d argue that the first step is simply calling out the crack in the wall. I may not be a plumber, but I’m doing my best to make sure people can see the leak before the water hits their ankles.
Thanks again for the engaging and memorable message. It made my day!
–Patrick
M.P. later wrote back:
Great response. Thank you. Glad to put a smile on your face. APR is a joke you are right. Reform on that alone would be a huge leap forward.
–M.P.
Reflection
What struck me most about this exchange was how M.P.’s frustration mirrors a national one: a sense that the system is too big to fix and too entrenched to question. Yet the moment he names APR as “a joke,” he also points to the simplest fix: truth. Sometimes the first step toward reform isn’t rebuilding the dam; it’s admitting that it leaks.
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