Quote:
Originally Posted by srmom
There was a ton of pressure put on lenders to open up lending to people who in the old days wouldn't have qualified for a loan, both by the higherups at the lending houses and by the government, as is shown in the fannie mae congressional hearings that are on cspan and youtube.
Those crazy lending schemes were a bi product, and it wasn't just Florida retirees and California yuppies that caused it.
My niece worked for Countrywide in the DC area right out of college about 5 years ago. She told me some pretty crazy stories about their lending practices and what sufficed as credit history - they were doing no paperwork loans there too. She finally quit (before the crash) because she was so sick of the cut throat competitiveness of the lending agents. Bonuses were contingent on closing deals, it didn't matter if the deals were legitimate or not - or if the mortgage would ever be repaid.
Could have been part of the SNL skit.
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Yeah, but I have a hard time absolving borrowers completely. It just seems like people should have had a little more common sense and realized that anyone willing to loan that kind of money with that little documentation of your ability to re-pay might not have your best interest in mind.
I'm not suggesting that you or Munchkin are absolving the borrowers, but at the time the lending scandals first broke in the news, I read a lot of coverage that was perversely sympathetic to borrowers as if in being loaned 100s of thousands of dollars they'd been victimized. These were legally competent adult people signing contracts. Except in the cases where the lenders committed fraud, how can you blame a lender for the terms of your loan?
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