Children were given the choice of eating a marshmallow immediately or waiting 15 minutes for more marshmallows.  In tracking the subjects during the subsequent years, it was discovered that the children who deferred gratification and didn't gulp down the first marshmallow had better SAT scores and more success later in life.

Separate studies of adults also have shown that self-restraint is key for success—that those with higher self-restraint tend to have successful careers, good marriages, better health, low debt, and money in the bank.  The opposite is true for impulsive people.

In modern America, the impulsive face endless temptations:  credit cards, payday loans, tuition loans, subprime auto loans with 72-month terms, casinos, lotteries, cheap food, drugs, 40 commercials per hour for products of every description, sex without marriage, children without personal responsibility, and a cornucopia of free government stuff, including a hollow promise that the government will take care of you in old age if you don't save for retirement.

That's a lot of marshmallows.

Oh, let's not forget two of the biggest marshmallows of all:  easy mortgages and HELOCs (Home Equity Lines of Credit).  

These were major causes of the housing bubble and subsequent collapse in the first decade of this century, an economic catastrophe with financial consequences that still linger today.  Yet, as we shall see momentarily, mortgage marshmallows are making a comeback.

During the first housing bubble, the marshmallows took the form of subprime mortgages, variable interest rates, small down payments, and no-doc loan applications.  With the government's blessing, the mortgages were bundled into securities and sold as rock-solid investments to unsuspecting investors, including widows and orphans. 

Consumers without much self-restraint couldn't resist the mortgage marshmallows.  Instead of deferring gratification, they bought houses they couldn't afford or took out a HELOC to buy granite countertops, cars, ATVs, big-screen TVs, or whatever.

My home state of Arizona was the epicenter of much of the mortgage meltdown.  The vast majority of foreclosed homes that I observed over the years had one thing in common: a huge SUV or pickup with huge chrome wheels parked in the driveway, bought with borrowed money by a big-shot wannabe in a backward baseball cap.  Oftentimes, the truck shared the driveway with a boat, camping trailer, ATV, or all three. 

In upscale neighborhoods, a BMW or Mercedes took the place of a truck, and Viking appliances and granite countertops inside the house took the place of boats, campers, and ATVs.

During the subsequent collapse, the monopoly media and Hollywood followed the same tired, shopworn, and sophomoric script—namely that the villains were bankers who offered the marshmallows, er, mortgages, and not the devourers of the marshmallows.  Because of either an ideological bias, or a lack of inquisitiveness, or a reluctance to offend their audience, the script writers did not question why the vast majority of Americans had not eaten the mortgage marshmallows. Had the fiction writers asked this question, the answer would have been obvious: the non-eaters had self-restraint.

A case in point is the critically-acclaimed movie "99 Homes." Following the tired, shopworn, and sophomoric script, it shows home "owners" being evicted from their homes by heartless bankers, realtors, and sheriff deputies, after being given only minutes to collect their valuables.  It does not show the gorging of marshmallows that led to the evictions, or the months and even years that people were allowed to live in homes rent-free after they stopped making mortgage payments.

Meanwhile, clueless conservatives wonder why socialist Bernie Sanders is getting so many votes.

Hypocritically, the movie industry thrives on impulsiveness.  Upon entering a theater, theatergoers are met with brightly lit candy displays and the aroma of popcorn, which is sold in containers the size of washtubs.  No doubt, the same people who design casinos design theater lobbies.     

Alarmingly, the amoral mortgage industry is bringing back mortgage marshmallows, in the form of home equity lines of credit.

Last year, HELOCs totaled $156 billion.  That's a 138% increase over 2010 and a 24% increase over 2014.  The average HELOC amount per borrower was a record-setting $119,790 last year.

A recent Wall Street Journal article spotlighted a HELOC couple, Mike and Vicky Body.  Apparently proud of what they had done and thus desirous to share it with over a million readers, they said that they had taken out a $125,000 HELOC from J.P. Morgan on their house, which has an appraised value of $447,000.  The money will be used to renovate their kitchen and other parts of the house.  This will allow them to use savings for a vacation.

Naturally, the reporter did not ask them how much they have saved for retirement.

Most HELOCs have variable interest rates, with principal payments deferred for ten years.  Monthly payments will skyrocket when principal payments kick in, and will skyrocket even more if interest rates increase during the loan period.  Having devoured the marshmallows, borrowers like the Bodys could end up over their heads and lose their homes, at which time Hollywood will drag out the same tired, sophomoric, and shopworn screenplay about evil bankers and realtors—and the country will continue its leftward and downward trajectory.

Karl Marx said that capitalists will sell the rope to hang them.  He should have added that the fatal flaw of democratic capitalism is that it produces too many marshmallows.