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QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry winter

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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby dolanbaker » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 20:16:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '
')It's the banking sector and those behind it that (mainly) caused this mess in the first place.


You can't have a speculative bubble unless you've got people driving up the price of an asset by speculating and purchasing the asset.....this is true even for houses.

The banks didn't buy the overpriced houses.......millions of people bought the overpriced houses and even refinanced their existing homes to take out cash...and every single one of them bought on the assumption that housing prices would continue to rise.


And who gave them the (rope) money!
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Plantagenet » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 20:18:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'S')o, I hear you own 5 miles of riverfront?


I've got several nice parcels of land. The river land fronts on a beautiful fly fishing river and has some nice ponds for duck hunting and is also prime Moose Hunting land and it borders on hundreds of miles of undeveloped state and federal land.

How about you? Have you done anything to preserve some land from development, or do you spend all your money on buying gas for your SUV and going to McDonald's? 8)
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Plantagenet » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 20:32:07

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '
')It's the banking sector and those behind it that (mainly) caused this mess in the first place.


You can't have a speculative bubble unless you've got people driving up the price of an asset by speculating and purchasing the asset.....this is true even for houses.

The banks didn't buy the overpriced houses.......millions of people bought the overpriced houses


And who gave them the (rope) money!


The "fair housing laws" require banks to loan money for house purchases. Freddie Mac and Fannie are quasi-Federal agencies created by liberal legislators to provide money and push rules that would made home ownership available to "anyone." If banks don't loan they can get sued for discrimination, even if the buyer clearly isn't qualified. For instance, a clever Chicago lawyer and community organiser named Barack Obama once filed a civil suit against a bank for racial discrimination when it wouldn't give a loan to a black man who who didn't qualify for a loan. Obama's civil lawsuit resulted in a large cash setttlement and a housing loan for the unqualified buyer (and opened the door to other similarly unqualified buyers).
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby dolanbaker » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 21:04:24

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '
')It's the banking sector and those behind it that (mainly) caused this mess in the first place.


You can't have a speculative bubble unless you've got people driving up the price of an asset by speculating and purchasing the asset.....this is true even for houses.

The banks didn't buy the overpriced houses.......millions of people bought the overpriced houses


And who gave them the (rope) money!


The "fair housing laws" require banks to loan money for house purchases. Freddie Mac and Fannie are quasi-Federal agencies created by liberal legislators to provide money and push rules that would made home ownership available to "anyone." If banks don't loan they can get sued for discrimination, even if the buyer clearly isn't qualified. For instance, a clever Chicago lawyer and community organiser named Barack Obama once filed a civil suit against a bank for racial discrimination when it wouldn't give a loan to a black man who who didn't qualify for a loan. Obama's civil lawsuit resulted in a large cash setttlement and a housing loan for the unqualified buyer (and opened the door to other similarly unqualified buyers).

A law that cancels out commonsense, no wonder the US is fúcked!
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Fiddlerdave » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 21:37:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The "fair housing laws" require banks to loan money for house purchases. Freddie Mac and Fannie are quasi-Federal agencies created by liberal legislators to provide money and push rules that would made home ownership available to "anyone." If banks don't loan they can get sued for discrimination, even if the buyer clearly isn't qualified. For instance, a clever Chicago lawyer and community organiser named Barack Obama once filed a civil suit against a bank for racial discrimination when it wouldn't give a loan to a black man who who didn't qualify for a loan. Obama's civil lawsuit resulted in a large cash setttlement and a housing loan for the unqualified buyer (and opened the door to other similarly unqualified buyers).
Complete hogwash. This pervasive lie is repeated as gospel, but has zero truth or reality.

Fair Housing laws were placed into effect to stop practices like cutting a fair value sale real estate appraisal in half if the house was in a a "redlined" (minority) area. Practices like dismissing good long term credit and job references from minority workers. Practices like just simply turning minority and female loan applicants away at the bank door!

See the full analysis and numbers, along with other recommendations, at the site. http://www.clevelandfed.org/Community_D ... N_V2_1.cfm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has come under scrutiny as one of the suspected contributors to the current financial crisis. Enacted in 1977 to address the lack of access to credit in low- and moderate-income communities, the CRA encourages regulated financial institutions to meet credit needs in the communities they serve, consistent with safe and sound lending practices. Critics of the CRA suggest that banks were forced by the legislation’s requirements to lower lending standards and provide loans to low- and moderate-income individuals regardless of their creditworthiness. This, in turn, pushed non-CRA-regulated banks to adopt similarly lax underwriting standards and apply them to all borrowers in the market.1 Such criticisms have prompted many to take a closer look at this landmark legislation.

...snip...

What have we learned from this analysis, and how might this knowledge be applied? As the data show, CRA-regulated institutions provided only a small percentage of the high-cost [subprime] loans in our district, a finding that is consistent across all income groups. Independent mortgage companies [which are NOT subject to the CRA], in contrast, provided a large share of the high-cost lending specifically to LMI areas and borrowers.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Plantagenet » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 21:52:28

Obama was part of the legal team who sued Citibank in a "class action" lawsuit to require banks to issue "sub-prime" loans to people who weren't qualified for normal loans

Obama defends laws that forced banks to give "sub-prime" loans to unqualified buyers

Thanks, liberals, for pumping up the housing bubble. Now would you please get out of the way so we can fix the problem?
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Revi » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 22:22:38

You can blame the liberals for the mortgage mess, but I think that almost everybody behind it wasn't one of them. The bubble came about during the Bush administration and was already popped by the time Obama got in there.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Plantagenet » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 22:36:26

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'Y')ou can blame the liberals for the mortgage mess, but I think that almost everybody behind it wasn't one of them....


Sub-prime mortgages were a liberal policy designed to allow poor people who couldn't qualify for normal mortgages to buy houses.

Fannie and Freddie encouraged banks to issue subprime mortgages by buying every sub-prime mortgage the banks could issue, bundling them into mortgage-backed securities, and selling them to other banks. Fannie and Freddie then took the money they got and turned around and bought more sub-prime mortgates from the banks. This went on for years.

Thats why they are called "sub-prime"----they are loans made to poor people who couldn't afford normal mortgages.

The whole mess---the sub-prime mortgage market and the bundling of mortgages and their reselling as bundled securities by Fannie and Freddie was the result of well-intentioned liberal policies designed to enable poor people to buy a house.

Image


Check out my link in the preceding post.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby dixonge » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 22:54:14

Arguing that only one party was responsible for the housing bubble and sub-prime mess is like arguing that Republicans want smaller government, or that Democrats hate war. The federal budget has been in the red for decades, while the House and Senate and Presidency were controlled by either party in as many combinations as you can come up with. And some have said that Democrats start more military actions that Republicans. The fact is that they all share one thing in common: they are politicians.

To act as if the two parties take drastically different actions is to miss the big picture entirely
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Livewire713 » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 22:58:50

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'Y')ou can blame the liberals for the mortgage mess, but I think that almost everybody behind it wasn't one of them....


Sub-prime mortgages were a liberal policy designed to allow poor people who couldn't qualify for normal mortgages to buy houses.

Fannie and Freddie encouraged banks to issue subprime mortgages by buying every sub-prime mortgage the banks could issue, bundling them into mortgage-backed securities, and selling them to other banks. Fannie and Freddie then took the money they got and turned around and bought more sub-prime mortgates from the banks. This went on for years.

Thats why they are called "sub-prime"----they are loans made to poor people who couldn't afford normal mortgages.

The whole mess---the sub-prime mortgage market and the bundling of mortgages and their reselling as bundled securities by Fannie and Freddie was the result of well-intentioned liberal policies designed to enable poor people to buy a house.

Image


Check out my link in the preceding post.


These people should have been given honest fixed rate loans. Not interest only loans with a adjustable interest rate that would balloon after a few years. They we're setup to fail.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby diemos » Sat 06 Nov 2010, 23:00:38

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')Sub-prime mortgages were a liberal policy designed to allow poor people who couldn't qualify for normal mortgages to buy houses.


For those who would actually like to know what happened and why I would recommend perusing Doris "Tanta" Dungey's complete Uber-Nerd collection.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2007/ ... rnerd.html
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Plantagenet » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 03:02:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Livewire713', '
')
These people should have been given honest fixed rate loans. Not interest only loans with a adjustable interest rate that would balloon after a few years. They we're setup to fail.


Get real. They couldn't qualify for fixed rate loans. They could only qualify for government subsidized sub-prime loans with adjustable rates and balloons.

People who bought homes with adjustable rates and balloon payments assumed house prices would continue to rise so they could flip the houses and make a profit before the balloon came due. They speculated and they lost.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Fiddlerdave » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 03:28:43

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Livewire713', '
')
These people should have been given honest fixed rate loans. Not interest only loans with a adjustable interest rate that would balloon after a few years. They we're setup to fail.


Get real. They couldn't qualify for fixed rate loans. They could only qualify for government subsidized sub-prime loans with adjustable rates and balloons.

People who bought homes with adjustable rates and balloon payments assumed house prices would continue to rise so they could flip the houses and make a profit before the balloon came due. They speculated and they lost.
It is so amazing that EVERY asertion yo make is baseless or wrong.

But let's just look at your ultimate assertion, that the loans to the poor are what defaulted and crashed the economy. In fact, it is the loans to the rich that have been dumped. Of course.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')OS ALTOS, Calif. — No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 05:36:55

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fiddlerdave', '
')Fair Housing laws were placed into effect to stop practices like cutting a fair value sale real estate appraisal in half if the house was in a a "redlined" (minority) area. Practices like dismissing good long term credit and job references from minority workers. Practices like just simply turning minority and female loan applicants away at the bank door!

Retrospectively one can argue that such discriminatory practices were keeping those concerned (females and minorities) out of getting into financial troubles and in fact it was beneficial for them.
Perhaps there was a good reason for such discrimination:
After giving birth female is at risk of losing income far more likely than her male partner.
And if marriage collapses such female is easily becoming to be a *welfare bum*.

So the benefit of fairness was only a temporary one.

Now we have plenty of indebted females and also minorities, which otherwise would remain financially healthy.
And as we all know, debt is a slippery slope to slavery.

So if you want to avoid financial collapse or/and a debt slavery it is important to make sure that debt is only available to those who can pay it back.
Unfortunately those which are trying most to get a loan are those who are the least likely to be in position to pay it back.
So it is important to have plenty of discrimination in place.
Liberal political correctness policy certainly lost this point.
Now those initially protected groups (females and minorities) are on receiving end of economic collapse more than would be otherwise.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Cog » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 06:42:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'I') will be happy if there is no significant legislation that passes from either the Repubs or the Dems over the next two years. Unlike some others on this board, I prefer local solutions and people figuring out for themselves how to build their own personal lifeboat.



So basically "paddle your own canoe or die" is your philosophy?

I also like local solutions but folks don't post much about them here on po.com. :|


I would say that my paddling skills are superior to someone trying to paddle my canoe from 1000 miles away. :)
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Revi » Mon 08 Nov 2010, 10:26:00

We created this mess, rich and poor and dwindling middle class.

I would agree to that.

We paid off our mortgage, which we got before all this stuff.

If I had to make payments on a house that was underwater I might make the same decision that many others came to.

I wouldn't have bought into it in the first place, but it's hard to judge people.

We were victims of a mass delusion. Kunstler calls it the consensus trance.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby Fiddlerdave » Tue 09 Nov 2010, 03:32:30

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fiddlerdave', '
')Fair Housing laws were placed into effect to stop practices like cutting a fair value sale real estate appraisal in half if the house was in a a "redlined" (minority) area. Practices like dismissing good long term credit and job references from minority workers. Practices like just simply turning minority and female loan applicants away at the bank door!

Retrospectively one can argue that such discriminatory practices were keeping those concerned (females and minorities) out of getting into financial troubles and in fact it was beneficial for them.
Perhaps there was a good reason for such discrimination:
After giving birth female is at risk of losing income far more likely than her male partner.
And if marriage collapses such female is easily becoming to be a *welfare bum*.
Unbelievable! I presume this particular post is facetious, but I have heard people say somethings similar, so here goes.

Such a "retrospective" argument and attitude remains just as racist, paternalistic and arrogant as these practices where in the past.

Posting this response to an extremely reliable source pointing out it is the wealthy owners of high-end homes who have defaulted on far more debt than the poorer low end end of the market.

Retrospectively, this suggested argument is absurd, ridiculous and totally contrary to ANY evidence. And points out the reason why we must have regulations like the CRA to insist everyone can get loans by the same criteria as the wealthy so at least we will get some lower income borrowers who have enough decency to at least TRY to pay their bills.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o the benefit of fairness was only a temporary one.
The "benefits of fairness" are what allow everyone to participate in our economy and our country, and are essential to a common goal. It is because we lack the "benefit of fairness" because our society becomes ever more unfair by the rigged and one-sided laws favoring the wealthy in every respect.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ow we have plenty of indebted females and also minorities, which otherwise would remain financially healthy.
And as we all know, debt is a slippery slope to slavery.
Well, yes, many of the lower classes remain indebted because they are being suckers who, unlike the wealthy who abandon their obligations at the slightest indication of losses, are struggling instead to pay their mortgages.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o if you want to avoid financial collapse or/and a debt slavery it is important to make sure that debt is only available to those who can pay it back. :lol: What the evidence and examples CLEARLY point out is that we need to make sure that debt is only available to those who are WILLING to try to pay it back. Our wealthy, our largest banks, financial houses, and major corporations not only do not honor their debt, they have made an art of modifying the laws of the country so they can't even be held responsible to the slightest degree, and in fact DEMAND their bonuses, profits and everything else as they avoid ANY responsibility for their obligations.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nfortunately those which are trying most to get a loan are those who are the least likely to be in position to pay it back.
Sure. :roll: That is how we have 300 trillion in toxic debt instruments our financial elite manufactured while clearly knowing as they did it they will never be able to pay them off. And they continue to make these impossible obligations to this day.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o it is important to have plenty of discrimination in place.
:lol: Sure, if we want our country to crash and burn economically, while the lower half of the population starve!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')iberal political correctness policy certainly lost this point.
:roll: Yeah, Those Darn Liberals! ["TDL"] So foolishly believing that fairness is important when it is obvious we have to get the most money and protection from consequences to our wealthiest citizens!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ow those initially protected groups (females and minorities) are on receiving end of economic collapse more than would be otherwise.
Absolutely unbelievable! Females and minorities did nothing to create this collapse. Massive leveraging, just as in 1929, except up to 150 to 1 instead of 10 to 1 back then. crashed our economy. Responsible financial practices would never support this kind of leveraging, this kind of lending (never required by the CRA), this kind of fraud and irresponsibility. There is NOTHING to support this assertion that "females and minorities" are the cause.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-m-a ... 27688.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here must be a Republican playbook circulating widely with a chapter entitled, "What to say if asked who's to blame for the foreclosure mess." Because an awful lot of Republican candidates are all suddenly yelling "Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae" whenever plunging home prices and the housing crisis comes up. John McCain runs ads trying to tie Obama to Fannie Mae, John Sununu points to his legislative agenda on these GSEs a central campaign theme in New Hampshire, and the RNC website plays up every Fannie Mae political contribution it can find (to Democrats only, of course.)

Today, almost 1 out of 10 Americans with a mortgage loan is in serious financial trouble, anywhere from a few payments behind to standing on the brink of foreclosure. And this is after several million families have already lost their homes.

So their plan seems to be to chant Fannie Mae often and loudly enough, and hope the public will get confused about who really caused this huge national calamity. It is always a good political story to just blame a bad guy who has something to do with the same topic. After all, invoking "Iraq" every time this administration talked about who attacked us on 9/11 worked pretty well for a while.

The problem is, blaming Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac for the millions of foreclosures and trillions in lost home value is just plain wrong, and in fact has the story pretty much backwards.

How did we get here? It is a complicated story, but a quick summary goes like this: When the Bush administration took office in 2001, most home borrowers got conventional ("prime") loans or they could not buy. Subprime lending was still a relatively small part of the total mortgage market. But a combination of a hands-off regulatory approach to the mortgage industry, a low interest-rate environment maintained by the Greenspan Federal Reserve, a president cheering on an "ownership society", and Wall Street firms rushing in to pool together prime and subprime loans and challenge the dominance of the existing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac home mortgage securitization system, set the stage for an explosion of higher risk lending.

Mortgage companies capitalized on pent up housing demand among many moderate income and minority borrowers. The subprime lending market soared, becoming nearly half of all new mortgage loans by 2006, and fueling huge bonuses among Wall Street investment firms like Bear Stearns.

But as has become apparent, these subprime loans were almost designed to go into default in massive numbers. Interest rates on adjustable mortgages spiked as low teaser rates rolled over and borrowers could not refinance their way out of trouble. Foreclosures started to come in waves in late 2006 and early 2007, so widespread and prevalent that the housing appreciation bubble burst, prices dropped sharply in dozens of states, and the epidemic spread.

When prices drop in a neighborhood, they don't just fall on homes with subprime loans. Everyone gets hit hard. For the first time since the Great Depression, American home values nationally fell nearly 20% since their peak, and in some places much more. Plunging prices trigger more foreclosures. The infection is still spreading even today. Even for those staying out of foreclosure, home equity has been wiped out -- and with it the equity to pay for a college education, or a new car, or to fall back on when medical bills come due.

Now, as even Wikipedia will tell you, "the term 'subprime' refers to loans that do not meet Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac guidelines." So how can Republicans point to Fannie and Freddie to lay blame when asked about the current housing crisis? Only to change the subject and point away from the inevitable outcome of pervasive underregulation.

The shoddy, even predatory mortgage lending that led first to the sub-prime meltdown, then to the national foreclosure crisis and loss of trillions of dollars in home value, was brought to American families primarily by private investment companies, not government sponsored ones.

There were plenty of laws and regulatory tools on the books which might have prevented this, if the current administration had wanted to use them. Just this past July 14th, the Federal reserve finally cracked down on "unfair, abusive or deceptive home mortgage lending practices and restricts certain other mortgage practices." Under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994, they finally prohibited practices which they had allowed for years, like making a loan without verifying a borrowers' ability to repay from income and assets apart from the home's value, or charging exorbitant prepayment fees.

Of course, many of the same Republicans today blaming it all on Fannie and Freddie stood by, or even applauded, when in 2002 the Fed rejected most of these same protections urged by many consumer groups. For example, a coalition of advocacy groups in 2001 implored the Fed to use the power of HOEPA to protect borrowers, pointing out that "access to predatory lending is not a benefit to consumers. Destructive credit is worse than no credit at all. This is evident in light of the increase in foreclosures, the disintegration of many low income and minority neighborhoods, and the erosion of the tax base of cities due to foreclosures."

Other regulators, and the Republican Congressional oversight committees charged with looking over their shoulders, sat on their hands as new and risky products were rolled out. Wall Street stampeded into the home lending market with pools of mortgage-backed securities that ratings agencies stamped blessed as AAA. The SEC did nothing to police the spread of risk.

When the Senate held oversight hearings on ratings agencies in 2006, well into the era of massive subprime securitization, Senator Sununu among others was for holding off greater oversight with statements such as " I don't see the problem as being one of a lack of regulation or need for additional regulation in the area of particular business practices as much as it is a question of a lack of competition, and I think that competition is lacking in part because there are a number of barriers to entry and one of the most significant barriers to entry are regulatory, and they're the barriers that have been created by -- unintended but have been created by some of the existing regulations and we need to look carefully at those."

To be sure, for years there has been much to criticize about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- issues with transparency, misstated earnings, aggressive lobbying, and more fundamental questions about whether the public was getting full benefit in how they carried out their mission in exchange for an implicit governmental guarantee -- and commentators across the political spectrum have raised such questions. But laying the blame at their doorstep for today's boom and bust turmoil that is devastating hundreds of previously stable communities around the country, and spreading instability worldwide through the global financial markets?

Then again, if just mentioning their names change the subject away from the Republican record of "deregulate here, deregulate now", maybe Fannie and Freddie can't be all bad.
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Re: QE2 may sentence 60 million in US to cold and hungry win

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Tue 09 Nov 2010, 04:13:34

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fiddlerdave', '
')Such a "retrospective" argument and attitude remains just as racist, paternalistic and arrogant as these practices where in the past.

Nevertheless in the past, when such policies were in place debts were usually paid back.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')osting this response to an extremely reliable source pointing out it is the wealthy owners of high-end homes who have defaulted on far more debt than the poorer low end end of the market.

Well...
This should also be discouraged.
I am certainly against bailouts and for some particularly reckless behavior there should be an option of debtor prison.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'e')veryone can get loans by the same criteria as the wealthy so at least we will get some lower income borrowers who have enough decency to at least TRY to pay their bills.

Wealthy have more assets to provide collateral, so it is not strange or unfair that they are getting loans easier.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he "benefits of fairness" are what allow everyone to participate in our economy and our country, and are essential to a common goal. It is because we lack the "benefit of fairness" because our society becomes ever more unfair by the rigged and one-sided laws favoring the wealthy in every respect.

This excessive participation resulted in unsustainable growth and leads us to societal collapse.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ell, yes, many of the lower classes remain indebted because they are being suckers who, unlike the wealthy who abandon their obligations at the slightest indication of losses, are struggling instead to pay their mortgages.
And this is why they should not get a loan in the first place.
Troubled wealthy would abandon payments and surrender collateral but poor hardly have this option.
If they have done just that, they are becoming homeless.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')What the evidence and examples CLEARLY point out is that we need to make sure that debt is only available to those who are WILLING to try to pay it back.
Too idealistic.
You don't know the future.
One can be *willing* now, but no longer willing once he/she found a mistress/new boyfriend.
So it is better to look for credible collateral while making loan decisions.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ur wealthy, our largest banks, financial houses, and major corporations not only do not honor their debt
And this is sufficient reason to make these institutions bankrupt and lock their managers in debtors prisons or for fraud.
I am all for that.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hose Darn Liberals! ["TDL"] So foolishly believing that fairness is important when it is obvious we have to get the most money and protection from consequences to our wealthiest citizens!
Obviously Liberal lalaland is crumbling as we speak.
Fairness didn't help...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')assive leveraging, just as in 1929, except up to 150 to 1 instead of 10 to 1 back then. crashed our economy. Responsible financial practices would never support this kind of leveraging, this kind of lending (never required by the CRA), this kind of fraud and irresponsibility. There is NOTHING to support this assertion that "females and minorities" are the cause.
So from where this damn *subprime* crisis came?
I doubt, it was the wealthy who was getting subprime loans...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oday, almost 1 out of 10 Americans with a mortgage loan is in serious financial trouble, anywhere from a few payments behind to standing on the brink of foreclosure. And this is after several million families have already lost their homes.
Irresponsible borrowers should get what they deserve...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o their plan seems to be to chant Fannie Mae often and loudly enough, and hope the public will get confused about who really caused this huge national calamity.
1. Suckers of *subprime* scam (poor).
2. Reckless lenders (rich).

It seems that as a nation Americans are morally bankrupt across the spectrum.

NB
I grossly agree with description of origins of *subprime* mess which you presented in final part of your post.
However without these helpless suckers there would be no such a mess.
Banksters would not create this money, if there was no customers willing to borrow regardless of poor chance to pay back.
As I have said Americans as a nation are morally bankrupt across the spectrum, poor, rich, regardless.
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