From who did Obama "inherit" the economic mess?

[Piscator]

Guys, does anyone think the people who signed up for these mortgages should be the ones to blame the most? I'm sick of hearing people saying they were mislead and they didn't know what they were signing up for. They are the ones most at fault. When you sign something, you have to do some due diligence and look into what you are signing. I bought my current house during the high peak of the market, I looked at what I made and what I could afford. Could I have bought a bigger house then? sure I could have but I didn’t get greedy and take a gamble on an adjustable rate staying where it was. I went with a fixed rate and a monthly payment I could afford (even re-financed since to a much lower fixed rate). Many people these days don’t take ownership for their actions and when things change (adjustable interest rates going up for example), they cry poor me and blame someone else (mostly looking to the Government to fix their problem). If they took 20 minutes to read about adjustable rates and how it effects monthly payments they should have been able to figure out the enormous risk. We wouldn’t need regulation and Government intervention if it weren’t for all these idiots running around buying houses they can’t afford. Since we have too many people in this Country without a clue, we now need the Government to step in once again and manage the rules. What a shame.
Am I being unreasonable here?

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Piscator

Guys, does anyone think the people who signed up for these mortgages should be the ones to blame the most? I'm sick of hearing people saying they were mislead and they didn't know what they were signing up for. They are the ones most at fault. When you sign something, you have to do some due diligence and look into what you are signing. I bought my current house during the high peak of the market, I looked at what I made and what I could afford. Could I have bought a bigger house then? sure I could have but I didn’t get greedy and take a gamble on an adjustable rate staying where it was. I went with a fixed rate and a monthly payment I could afford (even re-financed since to a much lower fixed rate). Many people these days don’t take ownership for their actions and when things change (adjustable interest rates going up for example), they cry poor me and blame someone else (mostly looking to the Government to fix their problem). If they took 20 minutes to read about adjustable rates and how it effects monthly payments they should have been able to figure out the enormous risk. We wouldn’t need regulation and Government intervention if it weren’t for all these idiots running around buying houses they can’t afford. Since we have too many people in this Country without a clue, we now need the Government to step in once again and manage the rules. What a shame.
Am I being unreasonable here?

I agree that the folks who took out these mortgages bear a big part of the blame. However, part of the problem wasn't just the mortgages themselves, but the complex financial instruments that were created to bundle and sell these mortgages (credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, really complicated stuff), and the homeowners obviously had no idea this was going on.

What ticks me off is that these people acted stupidly, and now there are govt programs to modify those loans so those idiots can afford them. I get no pleasure from seeing someone lose their house. That being said, it's not fair that those who did the right thing still have to work our fingers to the bone to stay in our homes, and those that acted stupidly get rewarded.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Piscator

Many people these days don’t take ownership for their actions and when things change (adjustable interest rates going up for example), they cry poor me and blame someone else (mostly looking to the Government to fix their problem).

You just summed up the liberal agenda in a nutshell. As long as someone belongs to a protected class of "victims", they are not responsible for their actions.

Instead, Democrats create massive entitlement programs for these "victims" that must be paid for by those who did absolutely nothing wrong. Then when the next election comes around, democrats (and the media, with the exception of one TV network) tell those victims that the scary republicans want to take away their welfare, so they better get out and vote democrat.

It's a very effcetive political strategy. It's so effective that our culture takes it for granted that liberals care more about the poor than conservatives. That's despite the fact that (1) study after study shows that conservatives give more time and money to charity than liberals, and (2) conservatives want poor people to become successful; liberals want the poor to stay poor, so that there is a permanent underclasss (of democrat voters) that's addicted to the welfare that liberals promise. The last thing that liberals want is for poor people to get wealthy, because if they did...they'd vote Republican!