Where parenting and politics meet, but don't always play nice.
And this is part of the reason why.
posted by kate @ 10:16 PM
6 comments
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6 Comments:
I hear a lot of what E is saying in a lot of areas, but one area that's a sticking point, for him and a lot of Dems, is this concept that we should somehow "bail out" dimwits who overborrowed for houses they knew darn well they couldn't afford.
Any lender greedy enough to say yes to a mortgage clearly over someone's ability to pay should suffer the consequences.
And any borrower who borrowed over their heads should be prepared to lose their homes.
Govt. bailouts are not the way to go here ... why should we foot the bill for people who made really horrible choices.
-- Chase
Chase, I'm with you on the bailout thing up to a point. I'm a licensed Mortgage Lender in the State of NC. Prior to that I worked with the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta.
The statement "Any lender greedy enough to say yes to a mortgage clearly over someone's ability to pay should suffer the consequences" is one in which I agree in principle. The only issue I have with that (and I realize you may already be aware of this but just didn't go into detail in your post)is that one would need to beleive that a lender intentionally loaned money to someone not believing they were going to be paid back. I've been in this business for almost 20 years and just have never found that to be the case. I fully agree they were offering loan programs that were, IMO, suicide. But they were calculated risks and I highly doubt they were made with the intention of "Boy, I sure hope these loans fall apart."
OTOH, this statement "And any borrower who borrowed over their heads should be prepared to lose their homes" is one in which I completely agree. Customers lie, and I can go into detail of how the type of thing that happened in the sub-prime market was supposed to be avoided at the retail loan level. But what it came down to was customers wanting more than they would afford, retail level loan officers coaching customers how to lie and customers going along with telling the lie, or customers fooling retail loan officers into believing things that were inaccurate by falsifying information, and that resulted in making loans that should never have been made.
I agree gov't bailouts for customers is crazy. And while it isn't preferable, sometimes the Federal Reserve has to step in as the lender of last resort in order to keep these holding companies solvent. In the current system under which we live there are simply some companies that are so large that if they were to go bankrupt and didn't pay off their creditors, then it starts an avalance of other businesses who, because they didn't get paid, now can't pay their creditors, and the dominoes tumble.
I'm with you, Kate ... F' em both.
-- chase
Not exactly sure where the claim of "innocent multinationals" came from since it certainly wasn't from me, but this system was in place long before any of us were ever born and will be here long after we're dead and gone. There are simply some companies that are so large that the gov't can't allow them to go broke. That's just the way it is.
And there are groups of individuals too large to let THEM go broke. The groups of people who are going under due to predatory lending practices will begin to affect our economy unless their issues are addressed.
We really are in this together. There are times for compassion and assistance. There are times when people have to pull themselves up. And there are times for both.
But we can't blow off entire segments of the population just because we'd like to see the assholes fend for themselves while we watch our plasma televisions and pretend we aren't affected.
Our entire society is affected by the underclass who make bad choices and get sick without insurance and go broke and need help. In purely selfish terms, we all benefit from helping them. And we all suffer if we don't.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070902/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_2
Today, Edwards came out with his plan for mandatory medical visits for everyone, including women being required to get "regular" mammograms.
I wonder what the individual cost will be for these mandatory visit's will be, and if there will be fines imposed for those who do not obey.
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