Posted By:
David Atkatz"The people really getting screwed in the whole deal are people who lived within their means, put money aside when they could, and tried to be responsible. Many of those people are now going to see their taxes go up in order to bail out the orgy of spending over the last decades - that on top of seeing their home values diminish and retirement plans lose substantial value."
You're talking about me, Greg--and most others here.
But I still hold responsible those who lent the money--and whose profession it was to know a good loan from a bad one.
My "ten-year old"' analogy was not the best. But the point was that the banks are supposed to know better. That's what we trust them to do.
(That's why we put our money in banks, and don't make mortgage loans ourselves.)
They didn't lend money to the poor risks before they decided that a good "financial product" would be high-risk mortgage-backed securities, and they are once again not lending to them. (Or anyone else, for that matter.)
Making those loans, and then packaging and selling them, was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme--no different than Madoff's.