USA Today disgusts me today. They put this front page bleeding heart piece out on how hard it is to get a loan these days. Like it's some kind of entitlement that all Americans should be able to just borrow money whenever they like, regardless of means to pay it back. This is exactly the kind of "human interest" piece(liberal whinefest) that GOT US INTO THIS MESS!!! I want to know how anyone can honestly say they want to loosen credit restrictions after the huge mess we are in today because of personal debt and people welching on their loans, short selling, walking away because they were stupid enough to believe the appraiser. If an Appraiser came to me in 2006 and said the home I paid 90k for was suddenly worth 150k.. I'd tell him to get bent and come back with a buyer but I sure as hell wouldn't go into hock on HIS WORD. America dug this mess with credit cards and financing undeserved lives of luxury on cheap credit and now society has the nerve to cry and whine because it's gone now? (*)(*)(*)(*) this country is getting worse by the week! We have learned NOTHING as a society from this garbage. People still want to live their impossible vision of "The Good Life" that is completely unsustainable and looks NOTHING like "the good life" envisioned by our parents and grandparents, which was far more spartan in nature. Americans need to adopt a more spartan lifestyle.
Like it or not, most homeowners are dependent on loans. When people can't afford houses or wind up needing to refinance and can't, and it happens on a large scale, then we have severe economic problems as a nation. The problem is that it doesn't just affect a couple people and end there. Nothing is less productive than reacting to such a problem with "Oh! Those people feel so entitled!"
Then go get a second job at Wendy's for 8 bucks an hour.. a 20 hour work week will provide almost half the cost of the typical mortgage over a months time. Boot your fat ass 16 year old off the couch and make him get a job to help pay the family mortgage, like American kids used to do for 200 years until someone had the bright idea that kids should sit around and get fat on McDonalds and PlayStation rather than learn to work for a living.
When banks started offering incentives to those who give out loans based on sheer volume... It's one of the main things that got us into the housing bubble, and thus the housing crisis, the financial meltdown and finally the great recession. Have you wondered why banks were knowingly giving out millions of crap loans? Because people, bankers, loan officers, bank managers, and on up, were making tons of money from it. It was all about short-term gain.
When I bought my house a few years ago the bank approved me for a loan that was about a quarter of million dollars more than I could afford. I couldn't believe it. I don't know why the banks were doing this, but a lot irresponsible people made purchases based on what they were approved for instead of what they could afford and it's caught up.
Knowing that America has serious unemployment issues, knowing that this is a large scale problem, your suggestion is for all people involved to go out and get jobs? This is what you're going with? And then the policy question is... what if they don't? Society still gets stuck with the costs. I get sick of hearing conservatives accusing liberals of not thinking, only using emotion, when most of what I hear from the right is empty populist outrage.
Where? This article clearly showed a spin where the person seeking the loan is a downtrodden, innocent person in bad straits and the "evil" bankers with their "unfair" loan standards are denying them their fair share of the American dream! ITS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF LIBERAL THINKING THAT LED TO THE COLLAPSE OF THE HOUSING MARKET. There is nothing contradictory about that.
It's part of a larger, cultural problem. We overvalue homeownership. Why do we go out of our way as a society (both government and non-government entities) to foster home ownership but put little-to-no effort into helping out renters? Our society believes that homes are the best investment you can have, a myth held up by the effects of past inflation that cannot hold up in the future. Many people would be better off renting and putting the extra money into something else. Also trying to subsidize loans and such, we've done less with policy to focus on keeping the costs of housing, whether houses or apartments, affordable without such a need. There are a lot of directions to attack the problem from, but it has to be looked at systematically.
lol "liberal thinking" did not crash the housing market. If you think Goldman Sachs, which played a larger role than most was being 'oppressed' by CRA regulations then I think you need to go back and review some of your facts.
Everything is an entitlement today in America. There are no such things as luxuries anymore. If one person has it, everyone else is entitled to it. I'm waiting for the day when every American has the "right" to have the internet in their house at the taxpayers' expense. I don't expect it to be that long, to be honest.
The problem is that loans are now an institution in our culture and economy. Wealthy people with a million in real assets were able to act as though they had many millions in credit. This practice trickled down (not much else does) to the middle class, and then it suddenly became a problem. Houses aren't supposed to cost as much as they do. But since wealthy people can multiply their practical income through credit and loans, the price of everything is greater than it should be, so now you almost have to take out a loan in order to buy a home, start a business, or do pretty much anything that costs a lot of money. It's considered standard operating procedure. When I started my bookstore, everybody told me I was crazy for not taking a loan from the bank to get things going. You can't start small and build the business up -- you have to start big in order to compete with the other businesses already existing. I decided it was better to smart small and work my up from there. People told me it was nuts, but fortunately I have the advantage of being me, which makes a lot of things much easier. Well ... not easy ... but inevitable. But normally, you have to have the funds on hand to be able to operate at a loss for at least three years. That's the standard business model these days -- you have to have so much money to start with that you don't even need to make a profit for your first three years of business. That's not even remotely practical for most people without a loan from the bank. And y'know, I agree that Americans will need to adopt a more spartan lifestyle. But as a whole. Wealthy included.
It's not an entitlement -- it's an institution. And that's the fault of the banks. I don't see how you could see it as a right. It might eventually be considered cost-effective and practical for society. Sort of like roads and libraries. But if that ever happens I think it'll be a long way off.
It became law with the Cranston Act in 1979. The question should be why do Israelis have more entitlement than US citizens?
