Irish borrowers in arrears

Cheers, fellow heretic! I used that example as it would probably be the best universally understood. And I agree with you fully; the whole blame Eve thing seems to have been just a way to justify male dominance.

I found it funny we both assigned (literally) the lion's share to the opposite parties. I think what tips the scales for me is looking at the party that profited hugely off the issue, while the other is dealt mainly misery.

OneA, that's a very worthy perspective - I mean the profit thing you mention. I hadn't even considered that. So good for you; you have brought me a little way back to the center!
Have a blame-free weekend!

Interesting points. The Apostle Paul in one of his letters wrote that the serpent deceived Eve but not Adam, implying that Adam went along with Eve knowing full well what he was doing and the consequences.

And think about it this way: without the Bible story of Adam and Eve, we are left with few good choices for the problem of evil. The choices are 1) God is evil; 2) God is good but too small to do anything about evil; 3) good and evil don't really exist.

Fundamentalist, well, as you can probably guess, we disagree on your latter point. While I appreciate your perspective, I wonder who are the 'we' to whom you refer. Hindus, Buddhists, Daoists, Shintoists, Muslims, atheists and other non-Christians I have met on my travels all appeared to me to distinguish perfectly well between good and evil, but none of them based that distinction on anything from the Bible.
Still, everyone needs some standard; rest assured I do not begrudge you yours. It just doesn't work for me.
Best Regards!

I have exactly the same feeling - and do not worry; it's not schadenfreude. It is that sense of amazement for having made the prudent decision when you could have easily gone another way all those years ago.

I wasn't referring to the ability of people to distinguish between good and evil. Everyone has that, even atheists. I was referring to their ability to give a reason for their choices; to defend those choices with reason.
There are very few people who don't recoil at murder. Yet there are people who murder their infant girls and consider it a good thing. What reason can you give for that being evil, other than that you find it personally disgusting.
And the other question is why do we even have categories called "good" and "evil"? We don't call a lion a murderer when it kills an antelope. We don't call people who kill a cow to make hamburgers a murderer. So why do we call someone a murderer who kills people?
Of course, evolutionists have said that we evolved notions of morality as defense mechanisms. But that only means that they were appropriate for a time in the distant past and may not be appropriate today.
Others will say that morals are nothing but social contracts to enable groups to live together. Fine, but that means that they aren't universal, so if I don't agree with your morals you have no reasonable argument to support yours.
In many societies murder or theft against outsiders is considered virtuous and is only wrong if committed against insiders. How are they wrong?

Give it time.

There will be an article somewhere, saying that the best way to reduce those high costs would be to become smaller.

Do you want a safe financial system or one that is guaranteed to make a profit (even at the taxpayers expense)?

Regards

Isn't this why the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) was created?

"We have met the enemy, and they are us."

Regards

The only regulation that will prevent such woes is to make it illegal to borrow any money on anything.

Exactly! My son works for a regional bank and they are laying off hundreds because of Dodd-Frank.

I used to work for the mega banks, but for the past few years have worked for a mid-range credit union. Definitely a nice change of pace and perspective. The smaller (and "smaller" keeps getting bigger year after year) credit unions now are faced with the stark choice of either dissolution or being acquired.

That's such a shame! When TARP bailed out the big banks I read an interview with the president of a regional bank. He said that he had competed very hard with the national banks for years and now that the big banks had stumbled and he had a chance to win some of their customers the government steps in and rescues them.

Have big banks captured the government or what?!!!

I shudder to think of the liabilities of FDIC if bigger banks went under. I believe it's only required to have a little over 1% of its total liability (ie to covered depositors) on hand in the deposit insurance fund (and I believe it currently has less...).
To your point, though, I agree that the government should not have rescued them, and certainly not by TARP funds. As I understand it, FDIC can step in and essentially take-over a tottering bank, and auction its assets off (to competitors). But that might still leave a huge liability to depositors of the failed bank.
And to think that when I first came to the US in the late 80s, I complained that each of its hundreds of banks were too small... Citibank was the only one that had branches nationwide. By contrast, the UK, Australia, and Japan all had a small number of big banks operating everywhere.

Was this a joke? To say we should "regulate individuals"? It makes no sense and I give you more credit than that.

But to take the idea as written, if we regulate what a person can borrow, as in Texas, then we obviously regulate lenders. And that works backwards as well: if we had no multi-layered securitization structure, the supply of subprime loans would have been lower and the terms and credit requirements would have been higher. That takes us part of the way, but we can't regulate a person in regards to risk levels versus the bank's capital base or with regard to derivative instruments and tranches of securitized obligations. There are no individuals involved in those.

No question. Just look at the growth of their profits, size, etc. It's too much concentrated money and power. The financial sector went from a significant portion of total corporate profits to the majority of it in the past few decades. That's a broken system; they're supposed to be efficiently allocating capital and earning a return on their risk, not making massive rents because of their gatekeeper status.

"But Joe they havent collected me rubbbish....tis terrible Joe"

It's not unfair, but there are always guys around making a mint giving out bad advice. For every book Wells Fargo published, I bet 1000 sermons were delivered about how God wants you to get rich if you just give Him the chance. There are just too many implicated for a solution without we all need to get just a wee tad smarter. But it's good to know what line of work you're in. Sacramento is one of the places I'm looking for a job. Think you can get me into the Governor's mansion with a 2k/month payment?

Well Jerry's got a 1BR loft in Sacramento, could probably get you in there for $2k/month, but it will be a bit crowded.

Actually between the market being in the dump and seeing a lot of shady practices, I only lasted about 5 months on the mortgage side. Fraud and compliance on the other hand, I'm guaranteed to have work until I'm dead. I'm out in the Bay Area now, but I have a family member in Sacramento who is actually looking for work as well, in a similar field. (Non-profit public health/social work, correct?) Good luck, it's not a good time for that field in this state.

Well said sir. Predatory Liar Loans were the fuel
for the property pyramid/ponzi scams worldwide:
The whole issue of Liar Loans is the Greatest Fraud
in all history. It's the Elephant in the Room:
No one dares to point to it. Especially in the UK --
where Liar Loans were [and still are] endemic -
and they're trying to pretend they weren't/aren't.
They had a terrible, terrible effect on the lives of millions.
Once the scam got going, EVERYONE, including very normal people,
were FORCED to MATCH THE PRICES WHICH WERE INFLATED BY LIAR LOANS.
The result has been catastrophic. Unless and until property
prices match REAL incomes - and come
down CONSIDERABLY - we will be in a state of economic limbo for years and years.

OneAegis,

Thanks for your testimony - I thought it was very powerful. I agree that fraud and liar loans were a big component of this crisis. And you're probably right that the incentives were broken.

But those factors alone do not explain everything. For example, the incentives only worked because those institutions did not accumulate the risk they created and were able to throw it "over the fence" to someone else. That destroyed the incentive to do proper due diligence on the loan applications.

Misconceptions about financial innovation played its part. We all thought (including the loan originators) that all that risk was being pulverized through the system through securitization. In hindsight, we've learned that risk is not destroyed; it just accumulates elsewhere.

The political class - so fond of blaming 'greedy' bankers and all - played a huge part pin ressuring for lower interest rates, cheaper credit and lax standards - and passing laws to facilitate all that.

But the biggest contributor to the collapse has to be the borrower. While I share your empathy for these people, we cannot give them a free pass on personal responsibility. Ultimately, you are responsible for your decisions and actions - there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no broker who is your friend, no banker giving money away, and no politician who wants what is best for you. Don't open e-mails for hot chicks who say they love you or from unknown people in Nigeria who say they want to share USD 10 million with you. Don't believe that the job you have today (thankfully) will cetainly be there tomorrow to cover your expenses. In a word, be prudent - none of us is excused of that obligation.