Some good news about the economy for once

Zag, you are right, but we do need some form of credit to buy things in this country. People just cannot save up a buy a car. You do need some credit companies to do this, and if their balloon of mortgages popped, then I think they would go away.

Just thinking though...

What if everyone just said "fuck it" and everyone's mortgages just went away. No one had another payment and the extra money you now have in your budget could buy more goods and do so many other things.

Who really loses if we stop paying mortgages? Honestly. Where does this money go and what does it support?

I know it's not fair, but what would really happen?

 

All well and good but what do you propose for people in that situation to get them back on their feet.

 

See Boom's response.

It's nice that Obama saved so many jobs for the unions that delivered him votes. Would have been nice if he had worked as hard to save a few more. But that's water under the bridge at this point.

Those jobs are gone and they aren't coming back any time soon.

 

Who loses? Those who need money to buy a house/car/business in the future. If everyone stops paying on loans and banks go under, then everyone in the future will have to just save up to buy that car you're talking about.

 

You know that something like 3 million people lost their jobs since Dec. 2007, right? I'm guessing at least a few of the foreclosures out there are a result of lost jobs.

What may very well have been an affordable mortgage when it was signed was likely not quite as easy to afford without a job.

 

If you asked a bank if they could just rid themselves of their mortgages, would they take it?

I dunno, this whole thing is so fucked.

 

You do what I had to do about 12 years ago when I went through a divorce - you let the bank foreclose on the house you can't afford any more and can't sell. You move into an apartment you CAN afford and you start over and work your way back to where you need to be.

Nobody helped me, nobody bailed me out and you know what, nobody in my house got emotionally scarred from having to move from a nice house with a pool to 1/2 a duplex with a tiny slice of yard.

We survived, we got back on our feet and that is the way you are supposed to do things. There is no easy, quick solution - it was a long process of a few years but guess what, we survived it.

 

Wall Street did that and that is how we got into this mess.

 

I understand - see my response above. I've been at the bottom of the barrel before, I know what it is, I know how hard it is to dig out but I also know excuse making and whining about your lot in life is a waste of emotional energy you can't afford to spend. If I told you some of the bullshit side jobs I've done along the way, you wouldn't believe it, but you do what you have to do.

The problem is we have too many people who are used to a certain standard of living and have no ability to cope or deal with it when life's trials and tribulations forces it to change.

 

But you did something dishonorable according to metfan

 

I'm not proud of letting my home go into foreclosure - but it was my fault it did -- nobody else signed on the line, I did -- and I paid dearly for it in the form of higher interest rates and poor credit ratings for at least the next five years. But I didn't make excuses, I started over. Sometimes you have to do that.

 

There's a difference between looking at it as a put option as someone else said, and saying fuck it, and legitimately having circumstances (life) kick you in the teeth.

Either way you do the best you can, but you never just give up because in some twisted world "it makes business sense."