As We The People take over

I'm just wondering -- at what point does the blame for the current rates of both foreclosures and bankruptcies go to (a) the idiots who signed for a mortgage before they read it fully or had someone with half a brain (like a lawyer) read it and explain it to them (b) the idiots who bought too much house and then couldn't afford to keep up (c) the idiots who signed on for "interest only" loans or "balloon payment" loans apparently in hopes of hitting a pot of gold in three or four years when the price of their mortgage jumped up?

I mean, I know it is fashionable to blame "greedy capitalists" and "predatory lenders" but does personal responsibility fall anywhere in this equation or are we -- as some on here would suggest -- truly powerless to make our own choices and do things on our own without the government stepping in and holding our hand and protecting us from ourselves?

Yes, I know there was some shady mortgages offered --- but guess what? Someone had to agree to them. And before I signed on the line for mine -- I spent the $150 bucks to have a lawyer read it over carefully to make sure I understood all of the fine print.

Now -- $150 bucks may sound like a lot -- but if you can't afford that to make sure your purchase of $50,000, $100,000, $150,000 whatever it is -- is economically sound, well, maybe that should be a red flag that you can't afford to purchase the house you are looking at........

 

I think ending up bankrupt, having your house taken away and your financial future in shambles is punishment enough.

 

I'm not talking about punishment -- I'm talking about taking responsibility for your actions.

I can't think of one time that I have heard since this crisis began that PEOPLE MADE BAD AND/OR UNIFORMED DECISIONS.

No, again, we've become a country where everything bad that happens to us is the fault of someone -- usually some mean greedy capitalist -- else.

I know there are a lot of tough cases -- people who lost their job, people who were disabled -- but there are also -- and I'd say the overwhelming majority -- a lot of people who bought something they could not afford.

 

The folks who stretched to buy too much house because they thought the housing market could never, ever go down -- and find themselves in a box?

There are millions of them.

I harbor considerable personal empathy for them.

But leaving yourself too narrow a margin for error while in the process of making a major
financial commitment is sheer insanity.

 

Who said that the borrowers didn’t share in the responsibility? However, it has long since been demonstrated that the lending industry itself has not had much oversight and normal loans that would be classified as subprime were lumped in with legitimately good loans for sale on the market. Had these loans not been lumped in with the rest of the good loans it is unlikely that the problems would have extended to the point that they have.

 

Five,six years ago almost anybody could get a loan for various reasons.

Being a mortgage broker was an unbelievably lucrative field.

That doesn't mean everybody had to TAKE the loan and that is where my issue is when I hear the government talking about "bailing out" home owners who are headed for foreclosure.

Sorry -- being irresponsible in your purchases does not merit a government bail out.

And to those who were responsible but just the victim of bad circumstances, there are already programs in place which can help them.

 

Yes, government programs. Good thing we have them, huh?

 

No, I was actually talking about the many nonprofit organizations that have programs designed to help people in crisis.

And I have no problem with government programs that (a) do as they are designed to do (b) are cost-effective and efficient and (c) are not essentially "middle class job creation programs" which are heavy on employees, benefits and wages and light on actually helping the people out they are supposed to help. I haven't seen one yet, but I'm sure it exists somewhere.....

However, I get a kick out of all of the grandstanding that politicians due about how irresponsible "greedy capitalists" in places like "banking" and "big oil" are - yet those same politicians are overseeing the most fiscally irresponsible, debt-ridden, horribly managed corporation in the world.......

 

Yes, giving bad loans formed the base of the problems however it would never have gotten to be as bad as it is now if those very loans weren’t repackaged as good loans.

Those mortgages are bought and sold daily on the stock market. The loans are supposed to be marked for risk factors involved with purchasing them. The subprime loans were not marked as subprime loans. Thus, they were packaged in with loans that were perfectly fine. This means that people purchasing them on the open market were unaware of the actual risk involved with owning them.

When people ceased being able to pay for them, the market went belly up. A lot of the financial institutions lost a lot of money buying up bad debt when they didn’t realize how bad the debt was. The eventual slide was inevitable.

 

The mortgage industry catastrophe is just the latest scandal with roots in a lack of government oversight: Arthur Andersen, Enron, day trading, the S&L scandal, the Nifty Fifty. Given an inch, felons will take a yard every time. And taxpayers pay the bill every time.

 

And it never ends.

Free market's great, when the big players win, eh?

When they lose, they go crying to Mommy.