Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth
As always happens during discussions about personal responsibility.
Stacy has come down squarely on the banks in the issue of the U.S. mortgage crisis.
Being self-employed for many years; having employee after employee after employee after employee through these years . . . things happen. Phone calls from their debtors asking me for assistance in collecting a debt. My response has evolved from passing on the phone message to now me stating, “Look, you’ve seen their credit report, you knew what their salary was, and you chose to give them credit anyway. Seems to me that you’re having to lie in the bed you made.”
This is kind of a touchy subject with me, because I am one of those po’ folks who should not be given credit. And to make matters worse, I recently lost my job. Sweet, huh? In my case, I can’t actually blame the banks, because unlike some of the uneducated Mexicans and whatnot, I was fully aware of what I was doing, and the consequences of my actions. But yeah, I guess a lot of people can blame the banks - immigrants, the terminally poor… why get their hopes up with a mortgage, only to foreclose on their house in a couple of years. Better just to turn them away, no?
Don’t forget the rest of it. Not verbatim.
There are cases where people have lost their jobs and cannot find another one that pays their bills. But rather than renegotiating with the borrower, the banks instead kick them out on the street and receive ZERO funds on that financed home.
Common sense says, if someone owes you $100 and says “hey, I can only pay you a dollar at a time now”, do you take the dollar at a time, or nothing at all?
Comment by Stacy — April 24, 2008 @ 1:58 pm