- Ebenezer Scrooge, the principal of the London hedge fund
Scrooge and Marley, was a mortgage lender. Scrooge's mortgage lending is
illustrated in one of the neglected episodes of Charles Dickens' A Christmas
Carol. The episode in question is reflected in the British 1951 version
with Alistair Sim, and in the US 1999 version with Patrick Stewart, among
others. At this season of the year, it is well to recall that one of the
crimes that had made Scrooge into a "squeezing, wrenching, grasping,
scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner" was this horrific attempt
to foreclose on a struggling young family during the holiday season.
-
- Here is the relevant excerpt from A Christmas Carol,
with Scrooge talking to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come:
-
- "If there is any person in the town who feels
emotion caused by this man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonized,
"show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"
-
- The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for
a moment, like a wing; and, withdrawing it revealed a room by daylight,
where a mother and her children were.
-
- She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness;
for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out
from the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with
her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of her children in their play.
-
- At length the long-expected knock was heard. She
hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn
and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in
it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he
struggled to repress.
-
- He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding
for him by the fire, and, when she asked him faintly what news (which was
not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
-
- "Is it good," she said, "or bad?"
to help him.
-
- "Bad," he answered.
-
- "We are quite ruined?"
-
- "No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
-
- "If he relents," she said, amazed, "there
is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle had happened."
-
- "He is past relenting," said her husband
"He is dead."
-
- She was a mild and patient creature, if her face
spoke truth; but she was thankful in her should to hear it, and she said
so with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was
sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.
-
- "What the half-drunken woman, whom I told
you of last night, said to me when I tried to see him and obtain a week's
delay; and what I thought as a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have
been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."
-
- "To whom will our debt be transferred?"
-
- "I don't know. But, before that time, we shall
be ready with the money; and, even though we were not, it would be bad
fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may
sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"
-
- Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were
lighter. The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what
they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for
this man's death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused
by the event, was one of pleasure. (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol,
Stave Four.
-
-
- This excerpt is offered as an encouragement to the gathering
movement to fight the growing world economic disintegration by a federal
law to outlaw and ban all foreclosures of homes, farms, factories, businesses,
hospitals, transportation companies, and public utilities for at
least five years, and for the duration of the present crisis. All other
responses to this crisis are totally inadequate, cruel jokes in comparison
with what is urgently required.
-
- DON'T BE A SCROOGE!
-
- STOP ALL FORECLOSURES NOW!
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