You forgot about telling us the proper way to sneeze the next time an animal flu pandemic is about to decimate our population.
What about people who would be denied student loans? Most college kids have no credit, and many have parents with bad credit. So if loans were harder to get, how would the poor get the money to go to school? Only the rich should have the ability to get a higher education.
See I don't believe in using my tax dollars to pay for your Grade School education, which in America is doubly worthless, either.
I couldn't get any student loans because my parents are idiots who abused credit cards and thus have no credit. I still managed to put myself through school, with no parental help, by working. I value my education much more because of it. Some of us actually want to earn what we have instead of accepting a handout.
No, not really. The problem was that banks were giving out loans to anyone. You can't blame the people who couldn't afford the loans, it was entirely the fault of the banks for giving them out in the first place.
Why not say its a wash, and its both our fault for getting loans we can't pay, and the banks giving out loans to anyone?
No it was definitely not entirely the fault of the banks and yes I absolutely can blame the people who accepted loans they couldn't afford. Nobody twisted their arms. People are ultimately responsible for themselves. If you buy a car or a TV you can't afford and it gets repo'd, is it the store's fault? If you run your credit card up to an amount you can't hope to repay, is it the credit card companies' fault? If you write checks you can't cover is it the bank's fault? Not at all. These are businesses that exist to make a profit. They're not babysitters or caretakers. Lack of personal responsibility and pointing fingers at everyone else for stupid greedy decisions by the consumers is/was the problem.
But you aren't addressing or looking into the ROOT cause of said problem. Sure, people share some blame but why was the cheap credit/easy money available in the first place? To me, that is what Kylesa is pointing out. The banks and insurance companies were able to act as recklessly as possible (trying to maximize profits) thanks to the Federal Government, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, etc. Moral Hazard? They (banks/insurance/investment firms) certainly want to maximize and privatize profits but heaven forbid their house of cards collapses - they will want to socialize the losses. And, they did.
I don't disagree with any of that but what he said was: ...and I completely disagree with that. Since when are bad choices someone elses fault?
The banks made the bad choices in the first place. If they weren't so greedy, they wouldn't have handed out loans to anyone. If I give out a loan to someone, regardless of whether they're qualified, it's my fault. I gave them the money. I was consumed by my own greed. Blaming the people who 'couldn't afford' the loan is silly, it's like putting candy in front of a baby, and then complaining the baby ate it. Poor people usually aren't given low-interest loans, because banks KNOW they can't afford it. In the case of real estate, they were more than happy to hand out loans, because the banks mistakenly thought that real estate prices would continually climb, so it was impossible for these people to default on their loans. Banks are the ones you should be blaming, not the people who signed the loans.
For the life of me I can't understand how you can completely excuse the folks who made bad decisions. People buying homes are not babies so I'll return the dig and say that's silly. I think we're talking about two different things here. I'm talking about the people who took those loans complaining and you're talking about the banks complaining (which I couldn't care less about. They operate under the same rules of accepting responsibility for their decisions). While I'm sympathetic to anyone suffering because they signed for a mortgage they couldn't afford, I still believe they have nobody to blame but themselves.
If you're the next Einstein, you don't pay for college whether you're poor or not. Anyone here ever heard of scholarships? If you've shown that you're capable of higher learning, the schools and the states don't mind lending you extra money to help out. Growing up, my parents didn't mind reminding me that I had no college fund to draw money from. They never attended college, and they said if I wanted to attend, I had to do well in school and earn my education. I'm starting my first semester studying aerospace engineering in the fall, where my school awarded me a $60,000 scholarship to attend, and I also had to draw out $14,000/yr in loans. Sometimes the poor are just ignorant, no matter how much education you throw at them.
I agree, it is called "personal responsibility". I haven't taken out a loan I couldn't afford because it doesn't seem logical to me. It was all about people wanting more than they can afford, because that's what America is all about. . . materialism.
If someone told you tomorrow they would sell you a 10 million dollar home and finance it, interest free, for 30 years, would you purchase it? I wouldn't because I couldn't afford it and I wouldn't need to learn that the hard way.
Yes, actually they are. Unless you are an attorney (or work in the mortgage/banking industry) there is really no way the average person has any clue what they are looking at in regards to their mortgage. When you apply for a mortgage you are sent upwards of 40 pages, most of which is legal-speak jargon thanks to the big banks and the Federal Government. The customer is asked to sign and return all of them. I can promise you that they have no idea what the documents say and are solely relying on the mortgage broker, or banking representative to be telling them the truth. And, I can again promise you that that wasn't always the case - commissions > * . Pressure sales, great rates and easy money combined with a lack of fundamental understanding of the banking and mortgage industry combined with the fact that it was all just a giant bubble created by the Fed in the first place - it's hard to pin even a majority of the blame on the individual.
If the broker/ mortgage company I was working with and trusting showed me that I COULD afford it, who knows. The average person knows very little about banking/mortgages.
If you're stupid enough not to educate yourself on the matter of borrowing money, then you deserve to have your thumbs broken. My Grandparents barely have a HS Education, and they owned a home for years, and never borrowed more then they could handle. They have some of the best credit I've ever seen. I know American people are stupid in general, but you don't have to baby them because that makes it worse.