We cannot bail out homeowners who made unwise choices...

but large financial companies should get all the money they need to stay afloat, no matter how they behaved.
Have I got that right?

Corporate welfare.

It's the Republican way; socialize risk, privatize profits.

"large financial companies should get all the money they need to stay afloat, no matter how they behaved.
Have I got that right?" You wonder why Edwards is being silenced by the media. Corporate America is just putting the fininshing touches on fleecing America.

If a company behaves in a fiscally irresponsible manner, it should go down and its financial officers ought to be personally liable. If a homeowner ends up with a ridiculous ARM that they can't afford, they should sell and move somewhere they can afford.

do ya?

because no one should be bailed out.

Yes, perhaps most of those that got ARMs should be responsible. However there are many that got ARMs with verbal misleading understandings and now need help. I have purchased two homes in the last 6 years and shopped many lenders. I was soooooo encouraged to get an ARM. Did end up with an 80/20 with 10 year interest only loan. However I managed to get that changed two weeks ago to a flat 30 yr fixed @ 5.625% with Countrywide.

Its the FUCKING predatory lenders !!!!!!!

I speak from experience. I managed, through idiocy and borderline psychopathy, to get myself into 40k worth of credit card debt. I had to do the debt counseling thing and now, after 5 years have finally managed to pay it all off by being responsible and living within my means.

My wife bought a house in 2000. She saved up 20% of the purchase price for a down payment and limited herself to a $120k house, ultimately getting a $100k mortgage. 30 year, fixed interest. At 5 or so percent interest, and without fees, that's a whopping 550 bucks per month. Honestly, if you can't afford at least $1000 per month for a mortgage, you shouldn't be trying to buy a house. Renting is probably what you should be considering.

And if you can't find a big enough house for cheap enough. Move. I live 75 miles away from work because a one bedroom apartment near work costs around $1 million.

do ya?

instead, we'd like to cavort around hitting each other with brickbats over the ARM debacle and the housing bubble.

Most people who get laid off are finding work (if at all) at a much lower salary than before.
Is it any wonder that a lot of people can't pay their mortgages?

Those who took the more cautious approach of renting have had other problems.
Rental units were being converted to condos and sold off at a dizzying pace during the peak of the real estate bubble.
Many people were whipsawed into ownership simply to avoid being evicted.
Others were forced to look further and further afield for housing they could afford. Then gas prices went though the roof.

Or move some place cheap (usually a red state) and find out that it's cheap because there aren't any jobs there.

Long on corporate welfare and cronyism, short on compassion and common sense.

We can bail out the homeowners who where exploited, some of us were offered 30yr fixed rates only to be presented with ARMs on closing day when there was no way to back out. I don't think that $158K was too much for for a $63K salary. But then there's 3.5K in taxes, High home owner's insurance and mortgage insurance that results in a monthly payment of $1700 plus 35K in consumer debt @ 27% apr that's killing us...

to do anything else.

I've seen it happen several times.

Bake

"You're gonna need a "little bit" more cash this afternoon"..

$1575.00 more, in fact.. We were lucky we had it, but , could YOU come up with that much cash in 2 hours??

People who are pressed to their last penny, are ambushed by these "last minute" extras, and then they get sweet-talked into a "better deal"..just like they do at car dealerships:grr:

streets over this issue. Predatory lenders should pay for their crimes and the people hurt by them should be helped.

same ole same ole

If people who got mislead into this fiasco were previously renters, they have been paying a huge amount during their adult lives to the govrnment for not having a mortgage deduction. Now they aren't getting bailed out, but the jerks at the higher end, who well may have not paid much in taxes,
are going to get bailed out.

On DU, waee've had several discussions about how things were in the 1950's and one thing that made it work was that the dads in those days were paying little in terms of Federal taxes.

Back in the fifties, My dad probably made about $ 4500 a year, yet never ever had less than $ 1500 in savings. But he probably never had to pay more than $ 250 in taxes either.

Nowadays some young schmuck (of either sex) has to make $ 45,000 just to have food on the table, a car with its monthly payments, and a roof overhead. And this person is probably going to pay about $ 9,000 in taxes. (At least.) This end of the tax table has yet to really be adjusted.

or maybe it's a tisk, tisk force. Anyway, they're going to figure out how to educate the public. President clueless thinks that's the problem. Well, it might be a part of it. But it was the Republican party's dismantling of regulations that allowed the crook class to run boiler plate operations to sell this shit to the public. The public might be forgiven if they got the impression that everyone was doing it since even Greenspan said that people weren't leveraging up to their potential if they didn't have a variable rate mortgage. These bankers made lots of money selling what they knew were worthless mortgages. The people are left with the houses they can't afford and the investors are left with the bad loans. The bankers get bailed out, while the republicans bitch about poor people. In fact, there's a whole new class of rich corporate bastards that need bailed out: now some of the insurers of this paper need it. They're talking trillions, but god help some working stiff that hopes for a better life and gets in over their heads because they bought into the consumption - our way of life the repos call it - or went shopping like that idiot president told them to.

I was shocked to hear on news today that the average ARM has gone up to 9%. I had no idea mortgage interest had gone up that high, thought they were in 7 to 8% range. Also heard on news that Hillary proposes some kind of interest rate cap on ARMS.

They give you the loan, bury the details in the microfine print, then steal the shirt off your back by skyrocketing the payments. Sharking at its worst. The banks get bailed out, but the consumers who were mislead are left out in the cold.

Welcome to BushCo's America. :eyes:

Edit - for those of who who might have missed it several days ago, the city of Baltimore, Maryland is now going after Wells Fargo for deceiving borrowers:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/08/news/companies/wellsfargo_subprime.ap/index.htm?section=money_topstories

Cleveland has also taken similar action this month:

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/01/cleveland_sues_21_investment_b.html

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