Time's Person of the Year: The Protester

[Jamesw]

While I am a conservative at heart, some of the shit I've been through the past 3 years has moved me a bit more to the left.

I won't be voting republican in this election.

[Beastmaster]

Originally Posted by Goat

I have a bridge to sell you.


Personal responsibility, embrace it.

Come on. It goes both ways. Bankers are supposed to be the professional. They should have integrity. So you think they should be allowed to screw peole over for their own greed?

[gaspers04]

Still conservative.

Get a job, be an adult, don't rely on big brother to provide for you, get a job, etc. etc.

[Beastmaster]

most of the protesters have jobs. I guess it would be ok if they just hung tea bags off their hats....

[gaspers04]

We all have our opinions and mine is that I disagree with their reasons of "protest". That is the beauty of this country, we can give our opinion openly.

Nothing is free kids.

And as a side note, if most were gainfully employed they wouldn't have the opportunity to sit and cause the mild irritation that they have.

[bruteforce]

Doesn't much matter to me what people do as long as they stop leaching off my work. I work damn hard to put food on the table and it enrages me watching those who don't work buy unhealthy food with my tax money.

I became a fiscal conservative the day I began making enough money to have to pay taxes on it. Now the more I earn, the higher a percentage they take. How is that a fair share. I work harder so they can take more? Give me a break. Rather, give me a flat tax rate and stop punishing me if I have the desire and the balls to start my own business with my own money. And as a boss, anyone I see protesting certainly isn't getting hired by me as I know they would rather whine than bust their ass to get to where I bootstrapped myself to.

[Goat]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

Come on. It goes both ways. Bankers are supposed to be the professional. They should have integrity. So you think they should be allowed to screw peole over for their own greed?

Welcome to the real world son, People are out to get you.

Read the fine print, before you sign. But we all know that wasn't the problem. A bunch of irresponsible dreamers, tried to cash in and lost there asses (many stripping the houses as they left)

Not my problem!

Maybe you should go for a bankers position, might be that you can convince the board of directors and the stock holders to do things your way.

And maybe place some of the blame where it belongs, barney, fannie and freddie. Where are the protesters?

I am sorry that hard work and success doesn't compute for the Fleabaggers of this county, Its to bad we could be strong like we used to be.

[Shadowschmadow]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

The banks shouldn't have given out loans to people who couldn't afford them. They are supposed to be the professionals in the equation

It is your responsibility to live within your means.

Placing the blame on the banks is moronic to say the least. Just because they're willing to let you buy a million dollar home when you make 80k a year doesn't mean you should buy a million dollar home.

I just bought a house about a month ago. When I was looking into buying a house, I started with high expectations because I knew I could afford the payment. But could I have afforded what I began looking at? Hell no. Once I had kids, car payments and all that, I'd be under water. Or at the minimum not be able to put money away, or have money for that rainy day. So what did I do, stepped back and reevaluated my thinking. I lowered the price of the houses I was looking at, and started crunching numbers on every house I looked at - to make sure that I could comfortably pay for the house, and have a good portion of my money left over to put in the bank for when I do have kids, or want that sweet ass car, or the dreadful rainy day. <----- That is me taking responsibility for my actions, and making wise decisions.

For those who had jobs and lost their jobs, and had a hard time getting a job that payed the bills for the life they were accustomed to - I feel for them, and am truly sorry for their misfortune. But for those who like to gamble and live beyond their means - I have no sympathy.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by Shadow

It is your responsibility to live within your means.

Placing the blame on the banks is moronic to say the least. .

I do blame the bankers and I think that's far from moronic.

On a wider philosophical level, Alain deBotton has done a pretty trenchant analysis of this way of thinking. If you believe that the rich and successful succeed largely through their own efforts, then the inevitable corollary is that the poor and unsuccessful must be so purely as a result of their own moral flaws. This is a very comforting viewpoint, though without much foundation in reality. Without knocking the US in any way, no country in the world blames the poor for their own situation quite as much as America does.

But that aside, down to specifics. Were the borrowers or the lenders more culpable? A borrowers' beliefs about what is an affordable debt to take on is going to be shaped by the culture they're in and the advice that they're given. The culture was of massively increased borrowing. This was partly due to low interest rates, but also led by lenders.

Mortgage brokers were on commission, and under a top-down pressure, to sell the biggest loans that they could, any way they could. In a huge number of cases, this involved predatory selling and outright fraud. As the financial crisis inquiry commission tells us:

You will read about mortgage brokers who were paid “yield spread premiums”by lenders to put borrowers into higher-cost loans so they would get bigger fees, often never disclosed to borrowers. The report catalogues the rising incidence of mortgage fraud, which flourished in an environment of collapsing lending standards and lax regulation. The number of suspicious activity reports—reports of possible financial crimes filed by depository banks and their affiliates—related to mortgage fraud grew 20 -fold between 1996 and 2005 and then more than doubled again between 2005 and 2009. One study places the losses resulting from fraud on mortgage loans made between 2005 and 2007 at 112 billion

(p 22)

In many cases borrowers were flat-out defrauded by the lenders. They were missold mortgages through misleading them about interest rates. Ameriquest were prosecuted for their selling tactics and settled out of court for $325 million. Here's something about their selling tactics from former employees.

It's a pity, but not really a surprise, that the response to this ghastly mess is not to say 'there but for the grace of God go I' - but to villify the victims.

[MC]

Welcome to America, where the rich get richer off the backs of the poor and middle class, all the while convincing enough of said middle class that they (the rich) have their best interests at heart and are "just like them" in order to get everyone fighting themselves while they steal off with even more money and power.