The Mortgage Crisis

I just read this story at CNN. Pretty typical of the kinds of stories we're hearing now, unfortunately. There was one quote that kind of pissed me off though -

David Downs, a professor of real estate at Virginia Commonwealth University, believes blame for the current quagmire falls on all involved. But he says the consumer should be held accountable first.

The consumer? I agree that the consumer bears some blame. We should all be very careful what we sign up for, especially when the stakes are so high. But David Downs, professor or not, sounds like a typical blame-the-victim asshole. Look, these lenders knew they were making bad loans. They didn't care because they were selling the loans anyway, so it was good, quick profit. Who cares about next year, right? In many of these cases, if there wasn't outright fraud, there was definitely very shady activity designed to cover up the inherent instability of the loan. The lenders are the experts on this, not the consumers. Mortgages are complex, and consumers trust people that are supposed to know better.

This seems very similar to the consumer financing industry as a whole. The banks give out money like candy to bad risks left and right, and then, thanks in large part to our asshole president and his party, aren't held accountable at all. So the consumer bears all the blame when money was almost forced into his hand. The banks just write it off because they expect a certain amount of default anyway. This doesn't even get into the borderline fraudulent practices they practice on servicing credit card accounts.

Anyway, to David Downs and all his ilk, fuck you.