I so feel where you're coming from on this. I had a similar reaction today when I heard a guy on the radio whining about how the bank "wasn't doing enough to help him with his mortgage."

Now don't get me wrong, I like Obama's idea to help people who are in bad mortgages--not on principle, but I think its a necessary thing that will do a good amount of overall good.

This guy, though, almost made me change my mind. When did it become the bank's responsibility to "help" people who took loans and mortgages they knew they couldn't afford? I mean, I'm sure some people were genuinely lied to or had shit misrepresented to them, but not THIS many people. I mean, my mom waited until she could afford it to buy a house (and that was until she was almost 50). I'm waiting. And the student loans I have taken, I have never missed a payment on. Fuck this asshole for thinking he deserves a handout just because he's a moron.

Like I said, I approve of the 'mortgage bailout' as it were, and I think it will help a lot. But on principle, it kills me that assholes like him are feeling ENTITLED to it. If I was in his shoes I would take the help, but I'd fucking be curled up in shame over it. And I DAMN sure wouldn't be on a radio station talking about it.

Dr. Jeebus wrote:

Blackout wrote: SoldierHawk wrote: I so feel where you're coming from on this. I had a similar reaction today when I heard a guy on the radio whining about how the bank "wasn't doing enough to help him with his mortgage." Now don't get me wrong, I like Obama's idea to help people who are in bad mortgages--not on principle, but I think its a necessary thing that will do a good amount of overall good. This guy, though, almost made me change my mind. When did it become the bank's responsibility to "help" people who took loans and mortgages they knew they couldn't afford? I mean, I'm sure some people were genuinely lied to or had shit misrepresented to them, but not THIS many people. I mean, my mom waited until she could afford it to buy a house (and that was until she was almost 50). I'm waiting. And the student loans I have taken, I have never missed a payment on. Fuck this asshole for thinking he deserves a handout just because he's a moron. Like I said, I approve of the 'mortgage bailout' as it were, and I think it will help a lot. But on principle, it kills me that assholes like him are feeling ENTITLED to it. If I was in his shoes I would take the help, but I'd fucking be curled up in shame over it. And I DAMN sure wouldn't be on a radio station talking about it. In my opinion it's one of the downside of consumer culture, people want what they think they need so bad they're willing to take all sorts of ridiculous risks for it. Example working at a call center I've had to at times answer the phone for loan companies. During these calls you (the applicant) answer a slew of Y/N questions I (representing loan company) ask you which I then run through a program which checks your answers and decides if you pre qualify or not. People routinely are declined for a multitude of reasons based on their answers, and many MANY of them call right back and change their answers to see if they can slip through and get pre approved. Now is it just me or is lying during a loan application kind of STUPID? They don't care about the consequences, they just want whatever the slick commercial led them to believe is the next big quick fix answer to their problems, be they perceived or real. In all fairness, it's not ENTIRELY the people who took the loans faults. They were being flat out lied to by the people giving them the loan. What happened was these people were giving out ridiculous loans and then were selling them to larger loan companies (The larger companies were doing this in such high volume that they didn't bother to actually review any of the loans before buying them to see that they were completely impossible to repay). They didn't care if the loans could ever be paid because the agent had his commission and he company had its money back. A coworker of mine was looking at buying a house when all this was happening. He and his wife had done all the math and knew that the absolute maximum they could afford was a $225,000 mortage. They were approved for up to $450,000 and when he explained that there's no way they could possibly do that, they just tried to convince him that he was wrong. The people who fell for this are still idiots for not actually checking any of this information, but the companies were also flat out lying to them. Funny, because it's those two groups of people that were wrong, and yet I'm the one who has to suffer for it to save them from their stupidity and/or corruption.

I do understand its not totally their fault. I wasn't mad at the guy for his situation as much as I was pissed as his whiny, entitled tone. (Although after thinking about it a bit more, I am a lot more sympathetic to why he was so pissed off.) I was just irritated at the story in general, and this guy really set me off.

I agree with Usa, though. As bad as it is propping those companies up, it would be worse if they tanked and dragged us all down with them. Remember that they employ tons of people outside the US to, so its not even just our country that would be affected. Bailing them out, as much as it grates me to say it (and as much as I'm fucking SURE they're using this as leverage to extort every last penny out of taxpayers they can get) is about the only shot we have right now I think.