On some TV talk shows they have people on who need help because they bought tons of mdse.,food, etc. ,some bought very expensive items, they didn’t really need and some never even used the items. These people need a smack in the face because that bought much of the mdse. on credit cards. Like, what average person needs 60 pairs of shoes, $2000.00 purses, etc. I believe these people are trying to live up with the Jones and the Jones are the the silly movie stars, etc. who make millions, do foolish things, and its considered to be OK by the TV media who push that stuff on us.
Is anyone else out there who is sick and tired of the shows on TV, like I am, while having to pay high cable bills and not really getting a choice of what to watch. However, there is not one person who can say they never made foolish mistakes when it come to spending money and I don’t care who they are. The only one who never did, on this earth, was Jesus and his mother.

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People need to stay in their homes. This is the only way. The simple plan that the government needs is to take mortgages made in the last few years – refinance them at a rate such as 5.25% no questions asked and keep the economy going. Don’t we have enough problems without making things more
difficult. People stay in their homes, the value of other people;s homes remain stable- because your neighbor is not selling at a loss reducing your home value. If they do not sell ( how could they the banks are not giving any loans! however that’s another story?) they will be foreclosed on. Another family distroyed. Foreclosures only hurt the economy and there goes Wall Street! Wake Up People -

At least with the plan Biden talked about, you only get your mortgage reduced if you declare bankruptcy, which is kind of a big deal, and the banks at least ostensibly take a hit for making irresponsible loans. McCain is saying that the banks should be let off the hook completely and only the taxpayers should be left holding the bag.

Of course, at the rate McCain is changing his mind about everything these days, the fact that he talked about this plan this week substantially lowers the chance that he’ll support it next week, let alone implement it.

I couldn’t have said it better myself

yeah, socialism is really really bad…just look at the great position we are in with capitalism…capitalism=greed…the rich got richer off this deal, and the dumb poor will be living in the streets when their house gets repo’ed…then what, they will be living on food stamps and even more government assisted living (aka chapter

big picture>small issue

one of the ceo’s of one of these firms was making 13.7 milion in 18 days….yes, look at those numbers…and please don’t tell me that they earned it…it was because of the whackass laws that allowed it to happen.

(plays the who’s won’t get fooled again)

The Biden/Obama campaign has been rife with these socialist, wealth-distribution ideas for a very long time. I don’t think Biden mispoke when he said he would allow the bankruptcy courts to reduce your principal. I think he and Obama actually believe that if you were “lured” into a loan by a lender and you can no longer pay, then the courts should be able to relieve you of your burden. They have no consideration for personal responsibility – in fact, I think they rely on people who dont believe in personal responsibility to support them. They have no consideration for what’s “fair” to the lender, or to any corporation because they believe corporations are inherently bad for society. If you read a short treatise on socialism, like on wikipedia, you will start to identify many of the altruistic things Obama and the left are pitching as nothing more than government nationalization of the private sector and government intervening/controlling a market economy. Again, socialist economies have been known to fail time and time again because the government does not always know what is best for the markets.

Even the current subprime mortgage mess was a result of government intervening in the markets “for a social good” (the idea of home ownership for all, including low income borrowers who clearly could not afford it). Organizations like ACORN, government regulated entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with help from the Democratic Congress (some of those guys are still in office…Chris Dodd, Barney Frank etc) got mandates and incentives to underwrite more and more subprime loans. Usually, when a lender lends to a risky borrower, they charge a higher interest rate (e.g. like credit cards…that is unsecured debt). BUT – these government rules about “fair lending” called charging a high rate “predatory” or downright “racist”. So the lenders hands were tied – they couldn’t underwrite debt that was priced appropriately. In comes Fannie and Freddie who gets the mandate from the government to buy more of these risky loans. So the banks and mortgage originators thought – great, the government is here to buy them. We don’t have any skin in the game – let’s keep underwriting these things and sell them to Fannie and Freddie and Wall St. Fannie and Freddie was a great gravy train for the Dems…the CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, who was ousted for cooking the books to increase bonuses, gave millions to the Dems and is now advising the Obama campaign. I don’t care if you are liberal or conservative – that is downright wrong and as an American I am disgusted.

Finally (sorry for my super long post btw – you bring up a good point about why you as a business owner would ever extend credit knowing it would be overturned on a whim. If this type of “it’s not my fault, I didn’t read the fine print, I didn’t know what I was getting into – save me” attitude continues in our society, I agree with you that it would be very difficult to do business in that environment. I think we need to start taking some personal responsibility and take the moral hazard out of our lives, constantly expecting the government to come bail us out.

I think the thing that you’re all forgetting is that in a bankruptcy, just because someone owes $X doesn’t mean that their creditors get $X. The principal remaining would need to be less than the amount the place would get in foreclosure sale – so probably more than 75% of the original loan. The only issue really that’s interesting is whether the loan forgiveness would be taxed.