We keep coming back to the adage, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Everyone should have taken a deep breath, stepped back and known better. It’s basic math. If you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it.

Report comment to moderator

No, we can’t. Any more than we can say that about the “middle” class — and if you really look at the foreclosures, the middle class people are the ones who messed up the most. Poor people know how to get by on less, but middle class people feel they need to compete with other middle class people. Poor people are more honest about their situation, in my experience. Middle class people don’t want you to know they can’t really afford what they just charged.

We’ve told people in our society for the past 40 years that they can have whatever they want. Well, that isn’t true. The poor don’t have the credit card problems because they don’t have the credit cards. The middle class, on the other hand, is in deep doo doo. And while some people want to blame advertisers and mortgage brokers, what you really have to blame is the INDIVIDUAL who doesn’t want to face up to the fact that the bill will come due.

Report comment to moderator

I’d agree that advertisers can be annoying, and frequently they make their living by selling us things we don’t need, can’t afford, and/or don’t really even want. But can we really say poor people aren’t responsible for their own bad choices–that they aren’t, perhaps, really adults? I think some business practices should be illegal, and I think it’s unethical to try to talk someone into a home he can’t afford. But I also think that poor people are responsible to make their own choices, just as much as rich people are–partly because the consequences are greater for the poor.

Report comment to moderator

Which was exactly my point — the advertisers, TV programs, mortgage brokers etc all take advantage of the poor’s desire to live rich. When reality comes crashing down, people turn on the poor for daring to think it was possible to live rich.

Report comment to moderator

Are you saying everyone “deserves” a house whether or not they can afford it? Otherwise what you are saying makes no sense. (Well, if you are saying that, it doesn’t make any sense either.) Nobody here said anything about some people being “better” than others. (I’m on the poor side of the fence right now, income wise, and come from people who at times barely had anything at all. I don’t think all the people on here are “better” than I, and I doubt they think so either.)

For the record, poor people can afford debt less than rich people can, so it’s definitely not being anti-poor to dislike seeing poor people getting into debt they cannot afford. What is bad is encouraging poor people to think of others as “their betters” and encourage them to try to live as though they had the same income richer people do! That’s anti-poor, and you might not have noticed, but all of us are against that.

Again, having come from a family of seven kids whose father had such jobs as school janitor, if you think I’m sticking up for the wealthy, you’re mistaken. But my less-than-rich family never took government handouts (not even reduced-price school lunches), and we paid all our debts. And we always had a meal on the table. It really is possible for poor people to live within their means, generally.

Report comment to moderator

Report comment to moderator

The sub prime market, as I understand it, doesn’t do Fannie Mae loans. The problem came in with “no docs” loans — the mortgage companies lent money without verifying income; then the loans were bundled and sold. Banks couldn’t do no doc loans. If the government screwed up in the past few years, it was with the sub prime market, and I’m even willing to join you in that I think if I saw it coming, they should have, too, and they should have passed new regulations for the sub prime market. You know I don’t know economics, but as I say, if I saw it coming, it had to be obvious! Congress screwed up.

Report comment to moderator

I have no difficulty with your argument about greed.

I do find it odd, however, that the government explicitly did not provide any where near the regulation on the mortgages but more importantly the martgage backed securities than they do for much of the rest of the financial industry.

Now it is possible that the government did not understand the risks that were developing.

But it is equally plausible that the government explicitly chose to stay out of this market in an effort to keep a weak economy afloat.

I do note that most of these loans do not appear to meet say the standards for Fannie Mae loans. the inconsistency here does sound telling to me.

Report comment to moderator

I love to watch TV shows about people looking for a new home, it’s almost as much fun as model home visiting. However, one thing I’ve noticed is that the show often will end with the buyers choosing the beautiful house that was over the budget they set at the beginning, then giving no, or a very low, deposit and getting an interest-only loan. These people have no business buying something they can’t afford. Then, when they can’t make the payments we see them on the news, whining about how unfair life is and how the government [that's you & me, folks] should do something to make it easier for them.

BTW, when I bought my first and only house, I was 53 years old and had more than half the cost safely in the bank. I made a concerted effort to pay it off before I retired, so now I only have HOA and relatively low taxes to contend with.

I do buy a lot of books, but books are the expression of someone’s ideas, so I never think of them as something I don’t need.

Report comment to moderator

But you’re completely right. I thankfully do not own property at the moment, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from NYC living, it’s that you really need very little stuff to get by. Shrinking wardrobes, less furniture, fewer appliances and toys, it’s all kind of nice, once you get used to it.

I’m starting to wonder, with the price of gas, if what I pay in rent is going to actually undercut what it would cost for a mortgage and a car if we lived elsewhere.

(Ok, I confess, we do buy a lot of books. Somehow I feel ok about that. For now.)

Report comment to moderator