Quote from giles117:
Being poor is sort of cyclical problem because as you say, why not just read the paper? How long did it take for professionals to decipher Enron's filings? Can you pull apart Haliburton's financials and understand them?
I'm not sure what you said in the rest of your post because of this sentence. This, in my opinion, is the one thing that makes me have a lot of sympathy for people.
Have you ever had family that almost went into a stupid financial deal or asked your advice and you instantly knew it was terrible? If your folks were one of these people would you just say they got what they deserve?
On some level, yes, I agree. On another...when you have a poor and uneducated old lady in Oklahoma who has been poor her whole life but saved money to buy a house, or got a little money when her husband died recently and is thinking about buying a house.
Either she can rent her whole life....or she can do what I would have to imagine everyone in the world dreams of, buy a house. Most people don't just think, "nah, i don't need to own my house and will just rent until i die." I think it's usually a product of circumstance.
Well...imagine, like you said, trying decipher Haliburton contracts...is that easy to you? Is it easy to follow the money flow through these companies and their subsidiaries? If so, Goldman Sachs might want to chat to you...because I can pretty much guarantee you those guys get a little brain dent trying to do so.
So imagine this poor woman who can't afford a lawyer and is probably working with a local bank or broker to get a house..she find a house and they tell her she can afford it. If they never explain what a recast rate is, does this woman know how to compound new interest rates? Does she know how to figure out what she will owe on a 2year ARM loan?
In my opinion...while I don't think that anyone is wholly to blame...I'd be happy to see brokers and lenders get screwed the most. The loans they made were made knowing that 50-70% of people wouldn't qualify for the recast of the loan! That's insane! They knew that in 1-5(mostly 1-2) years the borrowers wouldn't be able to afford the loans anymore!
I wouldn't mind seeing most of these lenders going BK for that reason.
I see no great solution...but I'm going to be really fucking pissed, as a taxpayer and someone who has purposefully chosen not to buy a house yet(i'm 25) because I saw that prices were out of control, if they use taxpayer's dollars to help lenders or the people who bought houses and need assistance.
I'd rather see them liquidate some of these lenders and other firms that were complicit in screwing people and find a solution with that money and then let IndyMac and Freddy handle the loans from here on out.
It's harsh but the lenders are real fuckers and while the people were ignorant to sign those loans without fully understanding them I think that's sad that some people think that poor uneducated people should never be able to buy houses because they can't fully understand contracts and should be weary of banks and lenders lying to them.
Hopefully there will be a solution that won't hurt...but unless the government infuses a couple hundred billion I don't see any way that they're going to save these people.
The ones I don't have sympathy for are speculators and those with high credit who took shit loans so they could still afford the Mercedes to go with the house...California and Florida is loaded to the gills with those types...not stupid, just stupid!
