1. Home
  2. Electronics Design
  3. OT: Deadbeat nation
  4. Page 4

OT: Deadbeat nation

Hi Keith,

Well, yes, but there are elections in November...

The aproach there is hand them a relatively low credit line (say, $500-$1500 or so) so as to limit your own downside. Your analysis is correct, though -- there are still some people who even today aren't going to get unsecured credit cards, it's just that those people are a lot fewer and further between than it was 25+ years ago.

That doesn't completely absolve them of responsibility, in my opinion. A classic example here would be drug regulation: It's very clear that if a drug pusher manages to get someone to try heroin, it can turn even the most upstanding individual into the kind of monster who'll spend all the food and mortgage money on more heroin and even revert to theft to maintain the habit. Now, there's quite the gulf between a drug pusher and a banker and I do realize this is a slippery slope argument and that the issue of personal responsibility comes into play as well... but the fundamental premise is the same: Any time one person engages another in a manner that has a reasonably foreseeable and significant chance of encouraging bad behavior, at the very least the person doing so bears some moral responsibility for the outcome -- and it should come as no surprise then, that as a society we've decided there often ought to be some legal repercussions as well.

(Terms like "foreseeable" and "significant" up there being subject to endless debates, of course.)

Oh, and I do think you should be able to smoke all the joints you like and buy all the handguns you want. :-) Heroin and howitzers... mmm... not so much.

I'm saying that I think Arthur is correct, but also that I don't think a lot of defaulters even realize that they're stealing from society as a whole (rather than just "sticking it to the man" -- the bank)... and that I Want To Believe that if more defaulters realized this, well, they wouldn't actually be defaulting quite so often.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner
Loading thread data ...

It's only June.

The debt crisis isn't caused by people with a $1500 balance on their credit cards. Are you saying that banks shouldn't trust anyone with credit?

Bad example. Pushing drugs is illegal. Entering into a financial contract is not.

Not a slippery slope at all. One is a legal activity and the other is not.

Lending money is legal. Your point doesn't hold water.

You're the one advocating slippery slopes. ;-) ...and then whine because someone's slipped.

Ok, I read that "too many in society as a whole, didn't realize that they were being stuck". True, and worse.

You may want to believe this, but shame is dead. ...time for the Prez to kick some ass.

Reply to
krw

But its a precondition. So some of the 10% who are behind may catch up. Some intend to walk away from the loan. As this latter group is a subset of the

10%, it could be a lot less than 10%.

The problem is that the law doesn't recognize a middle ground. Once the bank decides you have missed too many payments, you are out on your butt. And they are sitting on an abandoned piece of property in a poor market that may get vandalized and never be sold to recover the principle again.

Smart people negotiate to minimize their losses. Crazy people stand their ground in the face of doom. I don't want crazy people running my bank.

--
Paul Hovnanian  paul@hovnanian.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have gnu, will travel.
Reply to
Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Hi Keith,

Time flies when you're having fun? Mention to your boss that there's lots of untapped market in wireless systems outside of 2.4GHz? :-)

True, it's the people with the $150,000 mortgage balances.

No, I'd just prefer that they go back to a system where they tended to end up with greater risks on their own part when they made loans and therefore they were forced to establish realistic criteria regarding whom they were going to loan to.

Ah, but it hasn't always been, now, has it? It wasn't until the early 20th century that is was effectively outlawed completely in the U.S. Laws tend to be made when people engage in questionable (but legal) behavior, and arguably the banks have done so in the past few decades here and are hence we're now implementing banking reform.

So I think it's an OK example still.

Lending money is (generally) legal, but it's not always moral. (And see, e.g., usury for when it's not even legal...)

Yeah, you're probably right there. Other than raising your own kids responsibly (which I guess you've already done, to the best of your ability :-) ), I'm not sure how culturally we'll see many changes in this regard.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Stay tuned. ;-)

Have you ever listened to Dave Ramsey?

They seem to make money on their current model.

All of my lifetime, yes.

No, we're not. That's the problem.

No, it's a crap example.

Moral legal.

Reply to
krw

r
o

But that's exactly the opposite of their mission. Their _charter_, from _Congress_, is to do what they did. This is what politicians do, that's my complaint about them.

It's not going to happen. Congress just addressed it, and did nothing. The Wall Street "reform" bill being reconciled there as we speak--the bill that's supposed to address and prevent all the failures of the crisis--does nothing to Freddie or Fannie. NOTHING.

The audacity is simply amazing. (sorry for shouting)

So, naturally, it won't help at all--they don't address the root.

om

ver*

t's

t -- =A0

t

ryone's

I think similarly, that it's slimy to urge people without much money into buying crap on credit. In my day they taught you that in school-- only fools had credit cards, and poor people knew better.

I know. Even smart people fall for what's being sold as a free lunch, or some sort of fuzzy justice. That makes it all the more insidious.

Let's not be fooled--money doesn't materialize from nowhere; any money the government has, they took from someone else.

Meanwhile, a society where people must compete to steal from one another to prosper cannot long survive. Getting the government to do it for you and proclaim it righteous doesn't make it so. It hurts all of us.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Gee, James, we have so much more common ground than I thought. :-) I completely agree with your response there!

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Admirably succinct.

Reply to
JosephKK

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.