Bankers, who get rich and cause problems

[Working Man]

Should these guys/gals be held accountable for the colapse in the housing market, by the manipulation of loans, and the rules that made this fiasco possible?? I don't see why the public has to pay, and be negatively effected by the mortgage scandals... It was not done in the best interest of the public, but for the enrichment of the players who stacked the deck. Make them pay, and pay hard.. Carelessness and greed should not be rewarded.. These MONEY men are "professionals", so, they should be held accountable to much higher standards.

Now, do I feel bad for the dopes who bought homes, expensive homes, who couldn't afford them to begin with? Hell no!!! They are at fault too.. If they didn't understand the small print, then they shouldn't have entered the contract. Their lawyers who ok'ed the deals should be disbarred as well..

Inflated property taxes don't come back down easy. In the mean time,, WORKING MEN, and WORKING WOMEN, who do try to live within their means are being hit from multiple angles. The REASONABLE working class should not be bled of their savings in order to bail out the rich and stupid.

 

[Toro]

Basically, what you're saying is that we should collapse the financial system, and jack up interest rates to punishingly high rates then?

I say yes. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm shorting the market and will profit handsomely if this happens.

 

[Paulie]

I agree about the financial system collapsing.

It's probably what this country needs, to wake us the fuck up.

I'll probably be called a liberal for saying that. But then again, Toro's signature sums up why that is.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Should these guys/gals be held accountable for the colapse in the housing market, by the manipulation of loans, and the rules that made this fiasco possible?? I don't see why the public has to pay, and be negatively effected by the mortgage scandals... It was not done in the best interest of the public, but for the enrichment of the players who stacked the deck. Make them pay, and pay hard.. Carelessness and greed should not be rewarded.. These MONEY men are "professionals", so, they should be held accountable to much higher standards.

Now, do I feel bad for the dopes who bought homes, expensive homes, who couldn't afford them to begin with? Hell no!!! They are at fault too.. If they didn't understand the small print, then they shouldn't have entered the contract. Their lawyers who ok'ed the deals should be disbarred as well..

Inflated property taxes don't come back down easy. In the mean time,, WORKING MEN, and WORKING WOMEN, who do try to live within their means are being hit from multiple angles. The REASONABLE working class should not be bled of their savings in order to bail out the rich and stupid.

the only thing that caused the "mortgage meltdown" is the idiots who signed the dotted line an a mortgage they couldn't afford. It was just plain old stupidity and greed on the part of consumers and nothing else. CAVEAT EMPTOR buddy.

 

[Dr Grump]

the only thing that caused the "mortgage meltdown" is the idiots who signed the dotted line an a mortgage they couldn't afford. It was just plain old stupidity and greed on the part of consumers and nothing else. CAVEAT EMPTOR buddy.

BS. The bankers are professionals. If they can't tell a layman like me who is no financial expert, that I can't really afford the house, they shouldn't be in the business. Those tossers get paid bonuses for the number of sign ups they get per month. So instead of giving you both the up and down side, they sugarcoat it all. Highly unprofessional and now coming to bite EVERYBODY in the arse. I don't think it's too much to expect a bank officer to be up front and honest about things. But they don't. Shit, down here, they'll throw money at you to get you to sign up...

 

[jillian]

the only thing that caused the "mortgage meltdown" is the idiots who signed the dotted line an a mortgage they couldn't afford. It was just plain old stupidity and greed on the part of consumers and nothing else. CAVEAT EMPTOR buddy.

Caveat emptor? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Some yutz is given the opportunity to get funding to buy a house by some loan officer who doesn't tell him what Adjustable Rate Mortgage really means. Dude thinks he's going to pay $900 a month for his dream house. Two years later, it's at $1,800 a month and he can't pay his bills.

Yeah, he should have known.

Frankly, banks have no business giving money to people they know can't meet the freight. That doesn't absolve the people who can't pay from responsibility, but they'd have had to understand what a sub-prime mortgage is and what an ARM is. I doubt they understood either.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Caveat emptor? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Some yutz is given the opportunity to get funding to buy a house by some loan officer who doesn't tell him what Adjustable Rate Mortgage really means. Dude thinks he's going to pay $900 a month for his dream house. Two years later, it's at $1,800 a month and he can't pay his bills.

Yeah, he should have known.

Frankly, banks have no business giving money to people they know can't meet the freight. That doesn't absolve the people who can't pay from responsibility, but they'd have had to understand what a sub-prime mortgage is and what an ARM is. I doubt they understood either.

STOP WHINING.

When i got my mortgage, i was given all kinds of literature to read that explained EXACTLY what an ARM was. Didn't these idiots even bother to read the contracts and info available to them? Obviously not.

And if you can't figure out if you can afford payments on a mortgage by yourself, you deserve to go bankrupt. My god an adjustable rate mortgage is just that ADJUSTABLE. Of couse he knew the payments would go up if he was too stupid to figure that out it's not my problem.

 

[Dr Grump]

STOP WHINING.

When i got my mortgage, i was given all kinds of literature to read that explained EXACTLY what an ARM was. Didn't these idiots even bother to read the contracts and info available to them? Obviously not.

And if you can't figure out if you can afford payments on a mortgage by yourself, you deserve to go bankrupt. My god an adjustable rate mortgage is just that ADJUSTABLE. Of couse he knew the payments would go up if he was too stupid to figure that out it's not my problem.

Yep, some people are too stupid and they get taken advantage of. You think it cool that people who are dumb get taken advantage of? I don't. Not only that though, the loan officers purposely undersell the bad side. Just because YOU can read doesn't make you're King Shit on the subject. It just means you can read.

As for not being your problem, guess again buddy. IF - and it is an IF - there is recession in the near future like some predict, it is directly related to the sub-prime mortgage fiasco - and that'll affect the average folk. If you're some multi-millionaire, then you'll be fine..

 

[jillian]

STOP WHINING.

When i got my mortgage, i was given all kinds of literature to read that explained EXACTLY what an ARM was. Didn't these idiots even bother to read the contracts and info available to them? Obviously not.

And if you can't figure out if you can afford payments on a mortgage by yourself, you deserve to go bankrupt. My god an adjustable rate mortgage is just that ADJUSTABLE. Of couse he knew the payments would go up if he was too stupid to figure that out it's not my problem.

Who's whining? Besides you that is. You do understand that the subprime market was targeted at people who already had credit issues and were generally lower income and not sophisticated, right? I don't think I said they had NO responsibility, but it certainly isn't only theirs. Banks don't lend money without assessing risk. They assumed the market would stay high and they'd foreclose and get the property to sell. They also figured they wouldn't take too much of a big hit because the interest is front-loaded.

When con artists target someone, you don't blame the victim of the con.

 

[Toro]

the only thing that caused the "mortgage meltdown" is the idiots who signed the dotted line an a mortgage they couldn't afford. It was just plain old stupidity and greed on the part of consumers and nothing else. CAVEAT EMPTOR buddy.

It was a lot more than that. It was the greed of Wall Street for creating all these shitty structured products. It was the morons at the likes of Countrywide Credit who stuck all these shitty mortgages on their balance sheet so its sleezy CEO could cash out $400 million in options before it collapsed. It was unscrupulous mortgage brokers who lied to clients, and who, along with the mortgage providers, sold products to their clients that clearly not were in their best interests, which is covered by the law. It was the ratings agencies who rated the structured products AAA that are now collapsing. It was the mortgage bond insurers who backstopped these AAA rated structures. It was the Federal Reserve that cut rates to idiotically low levels and failed when it came to their roll as the regulators of banks. It was the greedy investors who bought the rotten structured products so they could earn an extra 0.40%. And it was the failure of the belief in rationality, and the myopia of people who have no understanding or chose to ignore economic and financial history.

 

[bennylava]

I think part of it is that even people who had fixed rate mortgages still have to contend with things like home insurance and taxes going up. I used to be a loan processor, and they never take that into consideration when figuring out what a person can afford. But it happens all the time, property values go up, or a disaster happens, or a certain area is considered a higher risk and suddenly everyone's home insurance goes up.
Consider also that a lot of things have gone up in price like gasoline and food, while a lot of people's wages have gone down or stayed the same.

Regardless of why it happened, we need to consider the social cost of letting millions of people lose their homes at the same time. Foreclosure is so stressful that something like half of all marriages end. Consider all the kids who are going to have to change schools because they will be living in a different area.
Losing your home is just such a traumatic thing. I think that it's going to cause a lot of social problems that we'll end up paying for later on.

I also think that a lot of people are going to end up declaring bankruptcy and will be able to save their homes that way.

 

[Steerpike]

Should these guys/gals be held accountable for the colapse in the housing market, by the manipulation of loans, and the rules that made this fiasco possible?? I don't see why the public has to pay, and be negatively effected by the mortgage scandals... It was not done in the best interest of the public, but for the enrichment of the players who stacked the deck. Make them pay, and pay hard.. Carelessness and greed should not be rewarded.. These MONEY men are "professionals", so, they should be held accountable to much higher standards.

People are free to contract in this country, including the freedom to enter into bad contracts and make bad decisions. Unless something illegal was done the only people to blame are the buyers who entered into these stupid contracts in the first place.

 

[jillian]

I think part of it is that even people who had fixed rate mortgages still have to contend with things like home insurance and taxes going up. I used to be a loan processor, and they never take that into consideration when figuring out what a person can afford. But it happens all the time, property values go up, or a disaster happens, or a certain area is considered a higher risk and suddenly everyone's home insurance goes up.
Consider also that a lot of things have gone up in price like gasoline and food, while a lot of people's wages have gone down or stayed the same.

Regardless of why it happened, we need to consider the social cost of letting millions of people lose their homes at the same time. Foreclosure is so stressful that something like half of all marriages end. Consider all the kids who are going to have to change schools because they will be living in a different area.
Losing your home is just such a traumatic thing. I think that it's going to cause a lot of social problems that we'll end up paying for later on.

I also think that a lot of people are going to end up declaring bankruptcy and will be able to save their homes that way.

The problem is they also tightened the bankruptcy laws, so that's harder to do, too. Although, presumably if at least some of these people got rid of their consumer debt, they'd be more able to afford their homes.

 

[Paulie]

The problem is they also tightened the bankruptcy laws, so that's harder to do, too. Although, presumably if at least some of these people got rid of their consumer debt, they'd be more able to afford their homes.

Yeah, this economic problem we're facing isn't just about the housing market. It's not just because mortgage lenders were shady while doing their business.

We've become so financially irresponsible as a people. Our government certainly isn't setting a good example for us, either. People on average, are up their necks in credit card debt. Also, people just HAVE to have the coolest car in the neighborhood, along with whatever else they feel they need to keep up with the Jones'.

Our own stupidity is being used against us.

 

[Skull Pilot]

the problem here is that the consumers who bought houses got in over their heads. it's not rocket science and you don't have to be sophisticated to understand it.

you seem to think that sub prime loans are a bad thing. the loan industry was actually trying to help more people buy a home. the fact that some lenders were willing to take a risk on this was a good thing. the fact that a lot of people made the wrong choice and picked the wrong mortgage product and are now introuble is beside the point.

the failing here is not the banks and it's not the selling of mortgage backed securities either. historically those securities have been some of the safest securuities ever.

its not that the housing market slowed down either. housing goes through cycles as any other market. it's been down before and it will rise and fall again.

the problem here is that when the housing market skyrocketed everyone and their brother refinanced their homes to the hilt and pulled out all their equity (STUPID move). then the market took a turn and now all these people are upside down on their mortgages. again it was a bonehead move but now we're all supposed to bail them out?

as far as ARMs are concerned all anyone has to do is a little research. An ARM is perfectly suited for anyone who will only be in a house for a few years or for those who flip houses fast. you're still taking market risk here but that's the nature of the beast.

and again if some mope buys a house without crunching the numbers it is NOT the responsibility of the government and certainly not the problem of the idiot's fellow tax payers to bail him out. the fault rets squarely on the shoulders of the one who signed on the dotted line and nowhere else.

 

[Psychoblues]

So,,,,,,all those hard working yet relatively uneducated house buyers are at fault? The contracts were and even remain difficult for lawyers to understand. And you want to blame the good people that just wanted to buy a house and home for their families?

You suck, seriously, you suck.

 

[Skull Pilot]

So,,,,,,all those hard working yet relatively uneducated house buyers are at fault? The contracts were and even remain difficult for lawyers to understand. And you want to blame the good people that just wanted to buy a house and home for their families?

You suck, seriously, you suck.

yes.

hey I'm not one to ask the government for help if I fuck up. And i certainly don't expect the tax payers to bail me out of a jam that is entirely my fault.

and mortgages are not hard to understand.

let me break it down for you.

you want a mortgage your income is 4000/mo a fixed mortgage will cost you 1500/mo for 30 yrs taxes and insurance anothjer 400/mo that leaves you with 2100/mo to pay your bills etc


you either can or can't afford it


now a 5 yr ARM will cost you 1300 per mo plus the same tax and insurance BUT the maximum payment the ARM can rise to is 2800/mo can you afford that if not go with the fixed.


but i guess that's too complicated for most Americans to understand.

Are you really that stupid that you can't figure it out and if you are is it my responsibility to bail you out?

you are all making this a lot more complicated than it is and you're all whining how unfair it is


PUHHHHLEASE

 

[eots]

– Towards Liberty –
A COMMENTARY ON CURRENT EVENTS
– by Jarret Wollstein –


DEATH OF THE DOLLAR?


– 03-07-05 –

2005 may witness the beginning of the end of the U.S. dollar as the world?s reserve currency. That could mean skyrocketing prices, major business failures, and recession. However, by acting now, you can protect your assets and make large profits from the collapse of the dollar.

Is a dollar crash now inevitable? It looks more and more likely.

During the past three years, the dollar has fallen over 25% against major currencies like the euro and Swiss franc.

If that isn't enough cause for concern, in just the last few months America's major creditors – Chinese and Japanese central banks, which together hold $906 billion of the $1.1 trillion in treasury notes held outside the U.S. – have made it clear they will not continue their support of the dollar.

In the future they'll keep assets in other currencies such as the euro or in gold. That could strongly depress the value of the dollar. OPEC has also been slowly moving out of the dollar and into euros and gold.

For many reasons, the dollar will almost certainly fall rapidly during the next few years and could even crash suddenly – with little or no warning – at any time.

That will have severe consequences for stocks, real estate, pensions, gold, and even U.S. foreign policy, which runs on dollars. Thousands of companies and millions of families could even be financially wiped out.

The recession that followed the dot.com and telecom crash and 9/11, was just a warm-up. The crash following a dollar collapse, would be much more severe, and could cause stock and real estate prices to fall by 50% to 80%.

At the same time, everything we import – from oil to computers to fruit – would go up in price two- to five-fold. That means the 32" TV you can now buy for $500, would cost $1,000 to $2,500; and a gallon of gasoline would cost $5 to $10 a gallon.

In this article, you'll learn how we got in the situation where a dollar crash (fast or slow) now seems inevitable. I'll also show you what that crash will mean for your investments, savings, and real estate. Most important: I'll also show you how to protect yourself from a dollar crash and even turn it into a personal financial windfall.


The U.S. Credit Bubble
The falling dollar is not a recent phenomenon. Between August 15, 1971 and December 31, 2004, the dollar fell by a staggering 80% against major hard currencies like the Swiss franc.

What happened on August 15, 1971? That?s the date when President Richard Nixon closed the so-called "gold window," removing the last shred of gold backing for the U.S. dollar. Up until then, the dollar had been at least partially backed by gold, restricting the ability of our central bank, the Federal Reserve, to inflate our money supply. But with gold backing completely removed, all internal limits were gone, and the dollar decline began.

The bitter truth is that without gold or some other real commodity backing, there is nothing to stop any paper currency from becoming worthless. Indeed that has been the ultimate fate of every unbacked paper currency in history, including the first U.S. currency, the continental, and the renowned Confederate dollar. Governments are always tempted to create lots of currency, since it?s easier and more popular than raising taxes. Only gold or silver backing can restraint them.

Removing backing from currency facilitates virtually limitless credit expansion, initially creating the illusion of prosperity. Indeed, in the 34 years since Nixon closed the gold window, the U.S. has been on an unprecedented credit and spending binge, and during the past few years, the Federal Reserve has been issuing new currency at the rate of $1.5 trillion a year (mostly electronically), or about $10,000 a year for every working American.

This enormous credit expansion has enabled people to buy bigger homes, cars and TVs, and enjoy lavish vacations and lifestyles. But it has also created unprecedented – and unsustainable – debt. The only reason we have gotten away with credit expansion for this long without a crash is because the U.S. dollar has been the world's reserve currency since the end of World War II. That has allowed the U.S. to export our inflation overseas, and get cheap goods in return.

So how low could the dollar go?


An 80% Drop in the Dollar?
Peter Schiff – CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital – summarizes the present dollar problem well. In his recent Forbes "Doom of the Dollar" (1-10-05) he writes:

"The basic problem is that Americans don't produce enough and don't save enough."

"We are using dollars that we print to exchange for goods that we don't produce. We have to borrow from abroad as there are no domestic sources of savings, so the value of those dollars will continue to fall."

"The dollar will fall a lot lower than it already has – dropping by perhaps 50% against the Japanese and Chinese currencies? Americans will have to consume a lot less and save a lot more. Spending on cars, clothing and electronics will all drop dramatically."

Other analysts believe the dollar will fall even further, perhaps as much as 80% or 90%.

If this dollar drop takes place over many years, it may be manageable. The problem is that any one of a number of events – such as foreigners dumping the dollar, another major terrorist attack on the U.S., or a U.S. or world recession – could cause the collapse to occur rapidly, even in a matter of days.

That would result in a stock market crash, skyrocketing oil (and other commodity) prices, massive recession, widespread bankruptcies, massive layoffs, bank failures, and a real estate implosion, rendering millions of Americans virtually penniless overnight.

In fact, the crash will likely be global, for the simple reason that we are now experiencing the largest-ever, global financial bubble.

http://isil.org/towards-liberty/death-of-dollar.html

 

[Toro]

I own a fair amount of gold but the death of the dollar is vastly exaggerated for reasons you can read here.

http://runningofthebulls.typepad.com/toros_running_of_the_bull/2007/11/has-the-dollar-.html

 

[eots]

man..that was not very reassuring read a little between the lines and it sounds like a wealthy investor trying to get you to hold on to your dollars and for the masses to keep there nose to the grindstone... mabey work longer hours to make up some of the loss