"underwater" mortgages

[classicman]

That wasn't the fault of the ARM was it?
And no one forced people to sign for them... they just WANTED it.

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

That wasn't the fault of the ARM was it?
And no one forced people to sign for them... they just WANTED it.

Once upon a time, bankers determined if you could afford the loan. It was called risk analysis. ARMs were always available. And almost nobody could afford them - once risk analysis was performed.

To corrupt that system for higher profits, responsibility was removed. Home owners told they afford homes because risk analysis was subverted to maximize profits. ARMs never existed (except in extreme exceptions) when the system was doing risk analysis.

Blaming the victim is political spin. Risk analysis was intentionally subverted so that elite financial greed could be rewarded. Once the political spin is stripped away, ARMs were dumped on unsuspecting consumers to only enrich the financial elite. It’s just not that difficult to understand once a political agenda is removed.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Using personal responsibility to excuse corporate crap is exactly WHY they do it. They knew ahead of time they could blame the victims.

Not everyone is a financial analyst. Some just want to try to make it in this stupid material world. Some are gullible and believe the liars. That doesn't negate the evil and the corruption. It just makes those who didn't "fall for it" feel superior.

Its both Shaw - They are both to blame. Neither ignorance nor greed are acceptable excuses.

Originally Posted by tw

Blaming the victim is political spin. Risk analysis was intentionally subverted so that elite financial greed could be rewarded. Once the political spin is stripped away, ARMs were dumped on unsuspecting consumers to only enrich the financial elite. It’s just not that difficult to understand once a political agenda is removed.

We are the victims. All. of. us. We are all paying whether we took out an ARM or not. Those that used them and those that were responsible borrowers - we all pay now. This is not political. It is about responsibility.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

Once upon a time, bankers determined if you could afford the loan. It was called risk analysis.

.....

To corrupt that system for higher profits, responsibility was removed. Home owners told they afford homes because risk analysis was subverted to maximize profits.

I've mentioned this on the Cellar before, but when we got pre-approval for a loan so we could go house shopping for our current home, the bank tried to convince us that we would be fine borrowing about 1.5 times more than what we thought we could afford. They thought we should be buying more house. We had to be the ones telling the bank we didn't want to borrow that much. But even then, they pushed us. Less than a year after the deal closed, they sold our mortgage to another company. I doubt they ever intended to keep it.

It would have been so easy to just listen to the bank and take the huge mortgage and buy the mansion. But we'd be in trouble now.