Mortgage Mess Who To Blame
by Joshua Busser
(Marietta, Ohio, United States)
The Mortgage Mess is (sub) primarily the banks' fault. The whole mess in the credit markets is the fault of the individual lenders and banks that made the subprime loans leading to the current foreclosure crisis. Banks were too quick to bend to the temptation of trying to administer these loans to appease the profit hungry investors that decide their market activities that they jumped into this high risk, mostly high level of failure market of loans, and have ended up (unsurprisingly) coming out as huge losers.
It's primarily the banks' fault that the credit markets are full of undesirable loans that no institution wants to take, but the government has to answer to its lack of accountability, as well. The SEC should have been in on the spot once they saw the market for these kind of loans growing as quickly as it was and put some kind of limitation on how many and to whom these loans could have been made. Some sort of preventative safeguard would have been really nice for the market at the time, even if there would have been criticism of Alan Greenspan and Co. at the time for stepping in where it didn't seem like they were needed.
A government bailout is better late than never, but it doesn't work to help the people who need the help the most - those lower middle class consumers who got in over their heads a little bit, buying bigger homes when they should be renting or owning smaller places. The majority of the help is going to the banks, not to the consumer, in the end, and at the end of the day, these offending institutions will still be around to make loans while 15% or more of the US population will be looking for new places to live. The money needs to work to either get consumers out of these loans and into different homes that they can manage to pay for, or getting those consumers who have no business owning a home (due to false credentials, far too many cosigners on the loan, or the simple fact that they were pushed into a loan they couldn't afford by profit hungry or incentive hungry bankers) into other places and out of these loans, not without repercussions (either a default payment option to get out of the loan and the property or a one time "get out of loan" free card that absolves them of their criminal falsification in return for a fine and a loan-opt-out fee.)
Your Home Your Mortgage
Dear Joshua,
Thanks so much for your brave comments. I couldn't agree more. In addition, I believe mortgage borrowers need to do whatever they can to educate themselves on the mortgage process in order to determine what they can afford, regardless of the amount they receive in a mortgage pre approval.
How Much Mortgage Can I Afford addresses this important issue of borrower responsibility...
"Here's the answer...but probably not the one you expect. You and only you know how much you can afford for a mortgage payment...not your mother, not your accountant, not your co-worker, not your real estate agent and certainly not your lender."
As I say...It's your home and your mortgage. No one cares more about it than you.
Sincerely,
Kate
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