Thursday, February 7

Do i qualify for a home loan?

I've recently read some articles on the sub-prime loan situation in the US, and i couldn't tell if they were intended to be serious or what, but the were just terrible. basically sub-prime loans are made to people who have a sub optimal chance of paying back the loan, people with bad credit/low income/etc. But if they are willing to pay a higher percentage the bank might be willing to take on the extra risk of giving them a loan that might not be payed back. The first article was talking about how many people were losing their homes all because the banks hadn't done their due diligence in determining who could pay back the loans. There were people who were unemployed but lied and said they had job, and it's the banks fault for giving them money they could never pay back. The bank has ruined their lives by giving them money. It's obviously not the fault of the person who borrows money and then can't repay it. There was another one that described the financial apartheid evident in this situation because blacks are three times more likely to have a sub-prime loan (or something i don't remember exactly.) So basically the banks have gone out of their way to ruin the lives of the black people in this country by loaning them money and allowing them to buy houses. The only reasonable conclusion to draw from this article is that in the future banks should stop giving money to blacks, or at least give far fewer loans to blacks because not only will they not repay the loans they will be much worse off for having gotten the loan. These articles make it seem as if these banks are preying on low income people, as if the banks are taking all these people's money and then their homes too. Banks aren't making any money here, they have lost 10s of billions, maybe already over the 100 billion dollar mark in this sub-prime snafu. Nothing in america is ever somebody's fault. It's always some corporation's fault because they make for good villains. I don't know when this mentality started, but this is where the road leads when a person can spill coffee on themselves and successfully sue because there wasn't a warning that the coffee was hot. Now people are talking about suing banks for giving them money that they then couldn't pay back.

6 Comments:

Blogger Aras said...

so take out a loan and sue them! you've got nothing to lose, besideds everything, i guess...

8:57 AM  
Blogger Trashcan said...

I think it's too late for that now. Banks are going bankrupt left and right so they aren't going to be giving credit out to anyone any time soon. I don't know if anyone follows this stuff at all, but the fall of bear stearns is truly shocking. Worth over 150 a share a year ago, and a leading financial institution just got bought for 2 a share a couple days ago pending shareholder approval. That's the penalty for giving out these loans. The president/major shareholder of this company had his stock worth over a billion dollars a year ago, now it's worth 13 million. quite a fall i'd say.

2:30 AM  
Blogger Aras said...

wow trashcan, you must be having alot of conversations with tete to take such an interest in the financial news.

3:58 AM  
Blogger Trashcan said...

I know people who took jobs at these investment banks. I even tried to interview for jobs at a couple of them, so it's interesting to follow what's going on. Plus if another bank collapses, then maybe another will follow, and another. Before you know it we could be in a whole new depression.

7:37 PM  
Blogger Aras said...

gee, that's depressing!

3:34 PM  
Blogger Aras said...

This is like that: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/how_not_to_save_housing.html

5:02 AM  

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