I never said it was lending to minorities. It doesn't matter where someone's family came from, or the color of their skin. If they don't have enough income to make the payments once the interest rate and payments jacked up, they should have never qualified for those loans.

Snax,

I'm having trouble following your logic. Maybe you can try to clarify it for me.

First you blame the brokers and say it's not the federal government.

Then you say "Deregulation is what got us here" Who deregulated anything? The brokers? Forgive me, I'm not an expert on this subject.

Then, out of the blue, you bring up minorities? What's that got to do with anything? BTW, my wife is a minority.

I don't get it.

Kevin

Kuripot,

beware of Snax, he'll put a curse on you such that you'll only be able to say "democrat, democrat, democrat!"

seriously tho, it's a matter of view. back even to the Carter administration i believe, democrats tried for "equal housing ownership opportunity."

then Clinton put a spin making it worse while republicans tried to warn of coming disaster. then came Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the "rescue." and the rest is history.

along the way the democracks and republicants filled their pockets and banks and investment firms made dirty money as well. and do not forget Mae and Mac executives. certainly even the home buyes are at fault.

BTW, people of many ethnicities were compromised financially as a result.

I've read that 1 in 6 people with mortgages owe more than the house is worth. That's a recipe for disaster.

As far as who is to blame, I blame the consumer. Whether it's totally their fault or not, I'm not sure. I don't own a house and am not totally sure on all the details of these mortgage brokers and everything. But Americans have become very materialistic and buy-happy. Everybody watches reality shows of the rich and reads fashion magazines and wants to be like them, or buy a great house to impress people. I was watching a homebuying show a few weeks ago and the couple were wanting this house a little out of their budget and they concluded that they could afford the extra $100 per month if they ate out one less time per week and she only got her nails done every month instead of every 2 weeks, or something like that. That's utter BS. If you have to crimp on your lifestyle to pay the mortgage, it's never going to work. You know as well as I do that they may cut back for the first month or two, but then they'll fall back in the old routine and start coming up short for their mortgage payments every month. And you know as well as I do that these two people were not the only ones to do this.

So I blame the consumer who stretches them self way too thin when making purchases just as much if not more than lenders or the government, or whoever. Ultimately, it's up to the homebuyer to say "what if the rates go up, we won't be able to afford it. We should look at something cheaper."

Well the other side of that story is the people who went into sub-prime mortgages fully aware of what they were getting into - and counting on the fact that their home value wouldn't plummet as much as 40% soon thereafter, or that they would get laid off, or that the cost of food would go up more than 10% in a year, or that they would not be able to even get refinanced due to the drop in property value despite improving both their credit rating and debt to income ratios to the point of being prime loan eligible.

Those are the folks who have been sold a dream. They were sold historical appreciation info for their home's value. They were sold the myth of being able to refinance into a fixed rate. They were sold into the idea that their mortgage was an 'investment' for the future, not a sink-hole for every last dime due to rising interest rates.

I'm not saying everybody got that kind of treatment, but many people did. (We did, but knew better.) And now they are floundering in what to do about it, and many of them are making the choice to let the banks sort it out.

I still think that it is fair to blame the consumer in that respect however, but to imply that the brokers and banks reselling the notes on the open market were not also responsible is ridiculous. They were all in a dreamland IMO, and now the crap has hit the fan. Regardless, it is still all just a symptom of the larger issue of trouble in our economy, where very little real wealth is actually being created anymore. Instead, we continue to provide tax breaks to corporations who outsource production jobs and export raw materials only to buy it all back at a markup. We continue to look the other way in massive ways when it comes to companies that knowingly employ illegal aliens at relatively low wages.

Our economy is broken by deregulation, pushed and enacted primarily by Republicans, that has allowed banks to gamble, and the mortgage mess is such a tiny slice of the pie.

Has anybody noticed the huge rebound in the stock market since the bailout bill was signed into law? As if.

Yea, but people also make like 20 cents an hour there...

It's kinda funny that you rag on the Republicans and then rag on the bailout bill, which was supported more by Democrats. But anyways, I heard it will take a few weeks for any effects of the bill to be felt.

Who said both parties weren't heavily responsible for different facets of the ****storm coming upon us?

I didn't. I don't care about either one. Which maybe snax doesn't either, I guess I don't know.

Personally I feel that a bank should not be allowed to immediately sell a loan they issued. There should be a period of time, maybe as long as 5 years before they are allowed to sell it. If a bank knew they would have to hold a note for at least 5 years they'd be a little more careful as to who they loan money to.

-Jay