There goes the neighbor…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 10:41 am by Matt Davies.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: 
| 
| 
Loading ...
Leave a Reply
It is a condition of your use of the comment features associated with the blogs that you do not: Use the site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law. You alone are responsible for the material you post or send. Refer to the
Terms of Service.
(10 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)
So true.
I think it's amazing how when talking about helping people out, the conversation always seems to go about being worried about hurting or making the banks have some responsibility in all of this. This was predatory from the beginning. People who couldn't afford mortgages were given them with some of the most ridiculous terms possible. These people were not financially savvy to begin with, how was this allowed to happen?
I don't know Jim. Banks are in business to make money. Why
would they want one of their customers to have a loan the bank knows they can't handle and have their customer foreclose on the mortgage? Now the bank makes no interest
from the home owner and now the bank has to sell the house
for alot less money than it would have made if the people
paid off the mortgage. The home owner has to take some of the heat on this one.
Bull,
If your thinking is correct, why would the Federal Reserve clamp down on lenders with a new package of restrictions like it did yesterday?
practices were predatory largely on the part of brokers associated with the banking institutions, not necessarily the banks themselves. the brokers made money on commission by suckering the lendee and lender, both.
in this sense, the banks are doubly at fault—they not only propped-up scavenging thieves in their associations with these predatory brokers, they managed to lose money while they were at it.
Because McGriff we have alot of irresponsible and stupid people in this country that we now have to protect. Everybody in this country is living way beyond their means
and don't seem to care that they are heavily in debt. Live
for the moment now and worry later. Had this happened to
50,000 people instead of millions it would not even be an
issue. The government wouldn't help the 50,000 so why help
2 million.
Hey Bulldog…That's the point of the cartoon. Stupid people happen. And there are also some unlucky people. That's life. But if ENOUGH of them all get together and default on mortgages and find themselves in foreclosure, it then becomes everybody's problem, in the form of a faltering housing market and economy. Which is why while we're wagging our finger at the financially unscrupulous, we have to simultaneously figure out a way to prevent the whole thing from melting down – and taking us cautious, old-school 30yr fixed-rate guys with it…
This cartoon, to me, applies to much more than the subprime fiasco. This country is divided among those who try to solve problems before they get out of hand and those that can't see the possibility of a problem. The latter see no role for the oversight of government; they just want lower taxes and less government. But when you see government as the problem and the solution as allowing Big Business to do whatever it wants, you are going to end up in trouble – not just the stupid people but all of us. It always ends up costing more at the end than fixing it from the start.
I agree with your statement Matt. We must learn from our mistakes though. Now the Government is putting in new laws to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. It's to bad it
always happens after the fact. Like a smoker who quits after
he learns he has cancer.
Correct McGriff on the two different types of people. I like
to refer to them as the pro-active or in-active and responsible and irresponsible. Nip it in the bud before it
blossoms into a huge problem.
Mentioning banks I read in the Wall St Journal a few days ago that some tens of thousands of community and regional banks have had few or none of the sub-primes. They have plenty of capital and are in fantastic shape.