Posted by
Playful Walrus on Thursday, February 21, 2008 1:13:20 PM
When I hear a Dem POTUS candidate bash “predatory” lenders because someone is going to be “forced out of their home” it makes my blood boil. Those lenders are the people who have allowed those people to live in those houses. Without those lenders, those people wouldn’t be in those houses in the first place. Those people willingly took out loans they could not afford.
I used to get calls every day offering me refinance deals. I would hang up. Do I have some magical power that these other people don’t have?
Yes, those lenders should not have given loans to those people. But what would we be hearing if they didn’t? We’d be hearing about how the poor and “minority” populations were being denied loans!
In this case, the “victims” volunteered to participate in these loans, because it got them into a home they couldn’t really afford. Some of them hoped that their home’s value would continue to increase at a rate that would allow them to replace the loan with another one. Others just didn’t think about it. Either way, it wasn’t a sound financial decision.
Both the companies that offered these loans and the people who signed on for them are responsible for driving home prices up too much too fast, leaving people like me to live more modestly than I’d like, because I refuse to upgrade into a better home until I can truly afford one.
Above all else, it isn’t the President’s job to get involved whether someone can make their mortgage payments or not. Government should not bail out the lenders, and it should not bail out the people living in the homes.