I truly believe that until people realize that when they are buying on credit or borrowing money for a home, car or whatever, that it is a reflection of your character that you don't feel you need to repay it when things get bad and solving our problems will be hard to do until it is realized.

It is not just government that needs to cut back but we need to look at what we can AFFORD, not what we want.

I know some have been sucked in over the years to just borrow what you need but that was a choice not a right nor where they forced to do so.

I think the saying goes something like this,

Poor planning on your part,
does not constitute an emergency on my part.

Or something like that.

The problem is it has affected us all, even those who have made the right choices and avoided the credit trap.

If you want to fix things get rid of the credit reporting, the way it is now.

If you don't borrow you have no credit or bad credit. If you do borrow you have credit and have set yourself up for bad credit. Really a bad system.

if the government had to play by the same financial rules and obligations as we do there would be no problem because they would most certainly be deemed an unacceptable credit risk.

They would be cut off at the knees with the debt to income ratio.

I am an advocate of you spend what you can afford and that only. And if one cannot afford it they should be DENIED. Somehow, very many of us made to where we are today following those rules.

btk

Originally Posted by rubicon

notlongnow" You are spot on. My wife and i also started from humble beginnings. we have been together since age 13. We have always been fiscal conservatives. We avoided paying interest and so were slower than others to get some things. We never owned a new car until we were both working good jobs and then we drove them to the ground. We carried our lunches to work and put away as much money as we could. At age 46 I lost my job and was able to care for my family for a very long time until I gained employment. My goal was not to be forced to collect unemployment.

I have a silling and her husband earned more than my wife and i together yet they spent reckless and hence didn't save for a rainy day. Sad situation indeed.

So while I believe some hardship are not entirely a person's fault many are because of poor financial planning and all of us have a legal, moral social responsbility to accept the responsbility of our acts.

A European style welfare state is simply not acceptable nor is it beneficial to our democratic way of life.

BRAVO.....Well said!

Originally Posted by notlongnow

This is where either I failed to make my point or you don't know what you are talking about.

My point is, and your situation is what I am talking about, that you decided to buy lots of stuff. Maybe you needed it or thought you needed it. You borrowed money, used credit cards or what ever finacial device to get the money and the thing.
You then lost your ability to pay for it. Something many people either don't think about or plan for. It may not be your fault you lost your job but it is something one must think about. That is why I started my own business, I am last to go!

WRONG!!!!

I PAID ALL MY BILLS AND IT WAS FRADULENT ACTIVITY WITH A BOGUS ENTRY IN MY CREDIT REPORT THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM!

Tell the people who were illegally foreclosed upon that THEY don't need someone looking out for their interests.

THAT'S THE VERY PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT - TO PROTECT IT'S CITIZENS FROM ILLEGAL ACTS!

And just to let you know..

I've lived in my house for 21 years. The only reason I'm mortgaged out at the moment is because of my divorce. Even so I managed to hang on to this house and continued paying the bills even when I'd lost contracts.

My car is 10 years old and runs like new. Yeah, I *do* have a new cell phone but part of THAT is because I'm saving $50/month on my new plan (3 lines with data).

I could have walked out on my obligations. According to the wording in my divorce decree, I could have taken the things I wanted out of the house and started anew. My house was in DEPLORABLE condition for reasons too numerous to go into here. Suffice to say that, if you've ever seen the show "Hoarders", I can tell you my house was about two stages away from being like that. To keep my house, I had to pay my ex a certain amount of money. I could have just walked away and let the place be sold for a pittance that would have probably barely covered the mortgage balance. My ex would have gotten nothing and I would be in pretty good shape.

What did I do? I went to work, in more ways than one. It was a point of pride with me to hang on to the house (I'd inherited it and it's problems from my adoptive mother). I managed to get some credit to start hiring some guys to get to things fixed (now that my ex was out of the way - shw wouldn't let people in the house). I fixed it up some, refinanced and fixed up more. One 2nd mortgage later, I had the money to pay her off.

During that process I worked to get a more secure job. Although I'd lost a contract in that time frame, I was unemployed for all of about 18 hours. I'm lucky enough to have the skills that can be in demand and I've worked hard enough to make them valuable.

Rather that go through the contract market again, I was looking for permanent employment. Yeah, if I was contracting again, I could be making more money - but the stress levels would be through the roof and the commute would be hellish compared to what I have now.

I'm making a little less - but enough to make progress on the bills that are outstanding. I just finished paying off the note on my car so that's one less payment. Sure the mortgages seem like they'll take forever but I know it's a matter of time.

And that's the thing I'm talking about. I knew the rules when I started into these loans. Fortunately my credit union has been fair with me. When the bogus stuff showed up on my credit record, they didn't hike my payments or call in my loan. I didn't have to fight like crazy to get things restored - and not everyone who tries manages to succeed like I did in getting things put back to normal. Later on, when the new credit card law passed, some companies hiked their interest rate on me. I called them asking if that was how they believed they should treat their best customers. Those that basically said "yes", well, my balances with them are ZERO. Those that were reasonable, I still do business with. I didn't even really complain when two of them cut my credit limits in half - I had no intention of ever borrowing THAT much money.

The things is, and I know this'll sound arrogant but I hope you'll take my meaning, not everyone is as smart as I am. Not everyone has my skills. And it's been myexperience that not every bank officer is on the up and up. Not every credit offer tells you the whole truth. In another case I dealt with, not every financing company even wants to abide by their own contracts (I was cancelling a club membership according to the terms of the contract and they kept refusing to do so and demanding more money).

THAT is why having an agency to protect consumers is needed.

I apologize for going on a bit too long..

WRONG!!!!

Not sure what I am wrong about?

I still think you misunderstand my intent and meaning.

First of all I always enjoy your thoughtful posts on here and look forward to reading them. I was not meaning to talk about YOU in particular. I have never been divorced so I have no experience in that area so I won't go there.
I never meant to imply that YOU did not pay your bills.

What I mean to say and seem to be very bad at it is.

Before all of this that has happened to you and others, choices were made that set you on this path. You did what lots of people did and it came back to bite you. Not saying it was your fault, it's just what people have been taught to do.

I have never got myself into this position because it just did not feel right. I would decide between baloney and bread or just bread. I made a decision to only buy what I could pay for so when it got bad, really bad, I lost nothing.

This is not how it happened for you.

IT WAS FRADULENT ACTIVITY WITH A BOGUS ENTRY IN MY CREDIT REPORT THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM!

I don't think the government will stop this from happening.
With all the fraud in this government, we are going to put them in charge of stopping it, REALLY!

When it comes to illegally foreclosed homes, I am sorry for those people but more than half of them should have never been given a loan in the first place.
Again, the government forced these types of loans and now we need them to protect us????

I want to repeat, please don't take this as a personal attack on you, although I think you already have.
It was more a statement of were I think we are today and some people have protected themselves against these problems and some have not.

I need to add that bad things happen to good people but that does not mean that we ne a new agency to protect us from everything. Sometimes s#*T happens.

Originally Posted by notlongnow

What I mean to say and seem to be very bad at it is.

Before all of this that has happened to you and others, choices were made that set you on this path. You did what lots of people did and it came back to bite you. Not saying it was your fault, it's just what people have been taught to do.

That makes a lot more sense.

But the fact is that enough people are being defrauded and there are enough market forces working against them that I think it's a perfectly reasonable idea to set up an agency who's purpose is to protect the PEOPLE instead of pandering to lobbyists.

It's a worse version of the old-time crooks who used to just send invoices to companies to see how many would pay just because they didn't check up on things and paid every bill they got. They were being defrauded.

When people are having their mortgages foreclosed or, worse yet, having banks foreclose on houses that have NO mortgages then, yes, that's what government is supposed to do - protect the people.

I agree a lot of people were never taught discipline and there are a lot of forces out there working against it. Heck, in my 20s I got into serious (for the time) debt trouble but I worked my way out of it. *That* was my education.

Originally Posted by notlongnow

When it comes to illegally foreclosed homes, I am sorry for those people but more than half of them should have never been given a loan in the first place.
Again, the government forced these types of loans and now we need them to protect us????

I partially agree with you here. The banks had no business making some of those loans but I don't think the government is entirely to blame. Remember a bank's first loyalty is to it's SHAREHOLDERS and they were demanding higher and higher returns - so the banks went to riskier and riskier loans. People were raised believing that the bank could be trusted. The very process of *applying* for a loan meant you were asking them to 'bless' your situation. You went to an authority figure and depended on their discretion - after all THEY were the professionals.

If I go to a butcher and he gives me bad meat, am I the one at fault for getting sick? I know the metaphor doesn't hold 100% but I think you get my meaning.

Originally Posted by notlongnow

I want to repeat, please don't take this as a personal attack on you, although I think you already have.
It was more a statement of were I think we are today and some people have protected themselves against these problems and some have not.

And I was a more than a bit animated in my response because of personal experiences.

Originally Posted by notlongnow

I need to add that bad things happen to good people but that does not mean that we ne a new agency to protect us from everything. Sometimes s#*T happens.

And our government is supposed to be there punish the people who do those bad things.

It's like I've said a lot recently. If corporations are people, then why aren't their boards arrested when crimes are committed by them? They have all the benefits (free speech) without the responsibilities. They can do what they want and know that the worst that can happen to them is a fine -so they bake that into their risk calculations.

It's like I've said a lot recently. If corporations are people, then why aren't their boards arrested when crimes are committed by them? They have all the benefits (free speech) without the responsibilities. They can do what they want and know that the worst that can happen to them is a fine -so they bake that into their risk calculations

This is where someone or many on here might say I don't know what I am talking about but this is what I think about this.

I would imagine that corporations who give money to the politicians to get what they want have convinced congress to pass laws that protect the corporations in the same way as congress in protected from having to be bound by the same laws that "WE THE PEOPLE" are bound by.

I am sure that the legal eagles in the halls of "WE THE LOBBYIST" have help craft the rules for corporations to protect the source of their money.

But the fact is that enough people are being defrauded and there are enough market forces working against them that I think it's a perfectly reasonable idea to set up an agency who's purpose is to protect the PEOPLE instead of pandering to lobbyists

It sounds right but I have had it with government expanding. That seems to be all they know how to do. If they would just get out of the way in many areas, the economy would come back and the market would weed out many of these corporations.
As for many of the people that have been defrauded, I fear that this is just the first in a long life of them being suprised by life. I think they just don't and won't get it!

Originally Posted by djplong

......The banks had no business making some of those loans but I don't think the government is entirely to blame. Remember a bank's first loyalty is to it's SHAREHOLDERS and they were demanding higher and higher returns - so the banks went to riskier and riskier loans.....

This part is all about government....oops....glad-hand members of Congress pressuring banks to make sloppy, risky loans to unqualified buyers, to appease those who used and misused the Community Reinvestment Act to buy votes.

"'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/bu...ted=all&src=pm

And a closer look at the Community Reinvestment Act:

"Shortly afterward, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac addressed bank fears that the low-income lending with relaxed standards would unduly increase risk by beginning to securitize “affordable” mortgages. This was the beginning of subprime lending. It was the “pull” factor that complimented the “push” factor of the CRA.

The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which opened the door for interstate banking and encouraged a new wave of banking M&A, made the ratings under the CRA a test for determining whether acquisitions would be allowed. That same year, the Fed refused to allow a Hartford, Connecticut bank to acquire a New Hampshire bank on fair housing and CRA grounds.

This was the first time the Fed had ever taken this kind of action, and it had profound effects through the banking sector. It sent a strong signal to the banks that the Fed would closely scrutinize lending practice, limiting the ability of banks to grow or make acquisitions if they were found to have insufficient low income or minority lending. Banks immediately responded by lowering down payment requirements and using more flexible income criteria......"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-p...#ixzz1jpQCTWnZ

That's why I said not *entirely* to blame. There *is* blame there, but there's more than enough to go around.