Bye Bye Banks and Wall Street

[The Lovely Mrs. tod]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

Does whatever bailout they are proposing have any help for people who didn't fvck up and take on more debt then they could afford?

Or are us people who didn't get in over their heads expected to hold on for the dive.

A lot of people who went in "over their heads" didn't know they were doing it...there was a LOT of predatory lending and "pick your own payment" action going on out there.

The majority of foreclosures didn't have to take place. Most homeowners WANTED to pay their mortgage. But they were stuck in ARM's and neg am's and the banks, rather then working with them simply made land grabs. Wachovia sold homes without notifying their customers they were going to do it. Those houses are sitting empty now, and some guy is making a fortune painting dead grass green so they don't hurt neighborhoods plummeting property values any more than they already have been.

It would, most likely, take some sort of government intervention to accomplish it, but not to the tune of how many bazillion dollars? Take that empty house, put the owner back in it and give him a payment plan he can make for 12 - 18 months. THEN go back and see if the loan CAN be made workable. Call the terrified owner up and say, "okay, we don't want your house, we want your business. Let's see what we can do to save this."

And yep, I know there's WAY more to deal with than just that. But it's a jumping off point.