Not Everyone Defaulting On Their Home Mortgage Is A Victim
I’m shocked:
Memo to the media: Everyone who is defaulting on a home mortgage is not necessarily a victim.
I feel sorry for anyone in that situation. Losing a home is an awful thing. Some were undoubtedly pressured into buying by unscrupulous lenders. Too many greedy players on Wall Street got away with making shaky loans for too long. They sliced and diced mortgage debt into increasingly exotic paper and lost sight of the risks involved, figuring the Fed would bail them out if things got out of hand.
Of course, the way to protect against that sort of behavior in the future is for the government to deny everyone, from borrowers to lenders, any bailouts at all. They should all reap the consequences of their own bad decisions.
That’s not going to happen, though, because politicians are in charge. All politicians have constituencies, and they’re all going to pander to those constituencies by making them out to be victims and then working to get them a government payout.
