I witnessed lenders, brokers, dealers screwing people. They said they were & if I did not someone else will. I & most others refused to screw our customers. But that did not stop the few from taking advantage of the many as fast as possible including my customers. I was not aware at the time how many people were actually falling for this & got fleeced by these con-men claiming to have their best interest at heart. I also did not know how many con-men were out there around the country doing the same thing. Now I know it was enough to be systemic. Many of my customers went under because someone else fleeced them. So I may as well have done it myself & benefited from their misery instead of simply losing their business as they went under.
Yes this crap really happened. Most people are not financial wizards & actually trusted their financial advisor's. Most people have jobs like construction workers, nurses, diesel mechanics etc. What do they know about Wallstreet? That is why they go to financial experts to advise them. Even the experts can be tricked by complex shady dirivatives. When experts are not required to act as fiduciaries they get screwed & called Muppet's behind their backs. Now most do not trust financial advisor's who do have their best interest at heart. This kills investing, the economy & jobs. The few screwed the many & got away with the cash.
Laws, checks & balances keep vulture people in line. Then if someone breaks them they are removed from the system & jailed. Otherwise they take all they can because hey it' legal, so why not? Who cares government will take care of them when they lose their home & their retirement.
I'm sorry but the concept that people were "tricked" by their financial experts into buying houses that they couldn't afford is laughable. When you sit across the desk from someone who's telling you "In order to qualify for this loan you need to make $80,000 a year...how much do you make?" and you only make $40,000 but lie and tell them that you DO make $80,000 then you are fully cooperating in your own "trickery".
We got into this mess because lending institutions were not using due diligence when they were writing loans. They wrote "liar loans", relying on people's word instead of verifying income. That's bad banking...something we as a nation encouraged with the notion that EVERYONE should be able to buy a house. Bankers wrote bad loans because they no longer apt to hold those loans but instead bundled and sold them to third parties. If you're not going to hold a long term note then obviously you're not going to be all that concerned about it's stability. THAT'S bad banking as well.
Then our legislators dropped the ball by allowing those bundled loans to be classified as something other than a loan so that the financial institutions holding them didn't have to keep as large a cash balance in reserve to pay them off in case of a default. THAT is bad legislating.
So if you want to start putting people in jail for financial stupidity...which is what this was...then you better start building lots of new prisons because the people that lied on their loans are at fault...the bankers who didn't follow good banking procedures are at fault...and the legislators who decided that everyone should be able to buy a house are at fault.
Some did straight out lie. The ones I am talking about were talked into lying or the lender actually changed the numbers or they did not lie at all. I am talking about people who had equity, low debt to income ratio, good credit & made their payments. They give them a presentation of how stupid it was to have good credit & not leverage it & have their equity trapped into just their home. They could max out their home equity credit & invest into the tax free insurance & investment product that returned more money. It would set up a tax free "charitable remainder trust" they could use to fund their childs education, protect them from lawsuits, get them a larger mortgage interest tax deduction plus their home would still go up in value for them covering the 'Negatively Amortizing Loans' they were sold.
People were also told to sign a Accredited Investors form waiving their SEC protections.
When someone "talks you into lying", does that make you any less of a liar? You know as well as I do that the majority of the people signing liar loans knew exactly what they were doing when they falsified those loan applications. This push to exonerate that bad behavior, excuse the politicians for their part in this debacle and make this all the fault of the "mean ole bankers" is ridiculous.