tru dat!Stephen
To be honest, it is just another day. Some up, some down, some just days. I look at all discussions as just that. Sometimes we learn sometimes we do not.
In the end, it is the end.
Walk Aways
Moderator: Jim O'Bryan
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Stephen Eisel
- Posts: 3281
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:36 pm
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Ryan Salo
- Posts: 1056
- Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 3:11 pm
- Location: Lakewood
- Contact:
Sharon,
The whole problem with your argument is that many of these irresponsible "walkers" are very educated. They bought too much of a home with high expectations and life changed on them. I am sure my neighbor knew exactly what he was doing. He deliberately walked rather than trying to sell.
Lenders don't want to foreclose in this market. I know plenty of people that are short selling. The lenders will take what they can.
Some people are victims but more and more are just greedy people with no respect to contracts or to their neighborhoods.
Shame on people who enable them by making it more socially acceptable to ever walk without trying every other option.
The whole problem with your argument is that many of these irresponsible "walkers" are very educated. They bought too much of a home with high expectations and life changed on them. I am sure my neighbor knew exactly what he was doing. He deliberately walked rather than trying to sell.
Lenders don't want to foreclose in this market. I know plenty of people that are short selling. The lenders will take what they can.
Some people are victims but more and more are just greedy people with no respect to contracts or to their neighborhoods.
Shame on people who enable them by making it more socially acceptable to ever walk without trying every other option.
Ryan Salo
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sharon kinsella
- Posts: 1490
- Joined: Fri May 18, 2007 7:54 am
- Contact:
Ryan -
I certainly hope that you are not saying shame on me because I am asking you to look with compassion on people who MAY (not absolutely) but may be in untenable circumstance.
The mentally person is to blame because they did not take their medicine, the sufferer from damage due to agent orange should have known to stay upwind. And every person who runs from a problem knows better? I don't think so.
But, and here's where I agree with you. Some people are unscrupulous. Some live beyond there means and don't take responsibility for the messes they create. The credit industry as a whole has taken a huge hit because too many people have lived off projected future income.
People are using one credit card to pay another. Some are not paying their bills and then taking vacations in the Bahamas. That is wrong. Those are the people that I have no compassion for.
It's the person who really didn't understand what they were getting into with supremo loans that I care about.
The ones who have played the system and lost, then cut and run I feel no compassion for whatsoever.
I'm not a fool - but I truly feel for those people who have been chewed up and spit out.
I certainly hope that you are not saying shame on me because I am asking you to look with compassion on people who MAY (not absolutely) but may be in untenable circumstance.
The mentally person is to blame because they did not take their medicine, the sufferer from damage due to agent orange should have known to stay upwind. And every person who runs from a problem knows better? I don't think so.
But, and here's where I agree with you. Some people are unscrupulous. Some live beyond there means and don't take responsibility for the messes they create. The credit industry as a whole has taken a huge hit because too many people have lived off projected future income.
People are using one credit card to pay another. Some are not paying their bills and then taking vacations in the Bahamas. That is wrong. Those are the people that I have no compassion for.
It's the person who really didn't understand what they were getting into with supremo loans that I care about.
The ones who have played the system and lost, then cut and run I feel no compassion for whatsoever.
I'm not a fool - but I truly feel for those people who have been chewed up and spit out.
"When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." - Audre Lorde
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Stephen Eisel
- Posts: 3281
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:36 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4kxTkhwR_Q
A bit off topic but answers why the perfect storm is happening now
A bit off topic but answers why the perfect storm is happening now
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sharon kinsella
- Posts: 1490
- Joined: Fri May 18, 2007 7:54 am
- Contact:
Bryan -
Good for you and that 4.0 wonderful. Both my youngest kids had 4.0's. My daughter was top of the class at OSU in her accelerated masters program. Whoopee.
The young woman next store to me was on the deans list and is looking for a job as a career counselor. She graduated in June, it is now December. Career counselor material, I think not.
Both my college graduates had their jobs, in their fields before they graduated. They knew how to go about doing that. Why? Because they had the life experience that taught them these skills.
You have those skills, I have those skills, many of us have these skills.
Many people do not.
Does that make them wrong, immoral or lazy, no. It means they are uninformed and uneducated in the skills they need to reach their goals.
"Mama may have,
Papa may have,
God bless that child that's got his own"
Good for you and that 4.0 wonderful. Both my youngest kids had 4.0's. My daughter was top of the class at OSU in her accelerated masters program. Whoopee.
The young woman next store to me was on the deans list and is looking for a job as a career counselor. She graduated in June, it is now December. Career counselor material, I think not.
Both my college graduates had their jobs, in their fields before they graduated. They knew how to go about doing that. Why? Because they had the life experience that taught them these skills.
You have those skills, I have those skills, many of us have these skills.
Many people do not.
Does that make them wrong, immoral or lazy, no. It means they are uninformed and uneducated in the skills they need to reach their goals.
"Mama may have,
Papa may have,
God bless that child that's got his own"
"When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." - Audre Lorde
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Stephen Calhoun
- Posts: 208
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2005 6:51 pm
- Location: NEO
- Contact:
From my researcher's perspective this is an interesting discussion mostly for the implications given by people's self-reports about the impact another person's behavior has on both their self and on the web of connectness, (or lack thereof,) writ to the scale of a Lakewood street.
There are two dimensions I'd like to contribute as food for thought. One is the cognitive and the other is the moral.
Here's a schema for considering the former.
1a. believes future circumstances will be the same as today,
plans to accomodate to them, even given that they aren't going to change
1b. believes future circumstances will be dynamic,
plans to accomodate to them, plans for future possibilities
2a. believes future circumstances will be static, "whatever!" lives in the now
2b. believes future circumstances will be dynamic, does not plan ahead
Okay: the person who plans ahead so that their household economic model can accomodate itself to either static (steady-state) assumptions, or, to changeable assumptions (ie. possible alterations in contingencies) which underlie a dynamic view of future changes, we would characterize as likely possessing a skills set able to deployed for the sake of planning ahead.
For example, a person can know ahead that it is merely possible that they could lose their job, their family could suffer an illness that causes extra costs, their car could be totaled by an unisured driver. Etc. In other words, the assumptions underlying the current sense of security, making a go of it, can be subject to being abruptly and radically altered.
Similarly, another person might not be concerned with or skilled at taking these possibilities into account.
From a psychological perspective, it's a hallmark of practical smarts to be future-oriented and possess the mental skills to be able to manage this dynamic 'tomorrow.'
It's also the case that to not plan ahead whether one assumes not much can befall one or one assumes that one needn't plan for that which hasn't happened, constitutes a different mental functioning and skills set.
For me the question begged here is: Is it more moral to plan ahead than it is to not plan ahead?
I don't doubt, aside from this question, that it is more prudent to plan ahead. But, since I can think of kinds of examples where the lack of planning ahead doesn't penalize one's self or one's neighbors, (and this is irrespective of potential changes in future conditions,) then I have to wonder what morality really has to do with planning.
What kind of example? The broadest example is anyone who through no work of their own has come upon the necessary resources that mitigate any need to plan ahead at all. One might well hope for such a kind to move into a house on their street but this wouldn't have anything with this newcomer being prudent or a great planner. Their rich; they have the money to withstand any future shock, and they keep their lawn mowed and property ship shape.
I can think of all sorts of other examples.
As for morality, Ryan wrote, I am so sick of people with no respect of others. He is willing to let the house fall apart and sit empty and ruin a neighborhood because he is too lazy to try.
This strikes me as a rich expression of frustration with a lot of important assumptions woven out of sight.
Although I would consider from the view of behavioral economics, (not worth detailing here,) that a situation of abandoning ahome to go rent is worth investigating in terms of unknown yet crucial complexities, I would assume that one can only reduce those complexities to likely explanatory factors only after knowing what devils actually are in the details. I'm not here letting anyone on or off the hook.
Still, the introduction of the idea, respect for others, is critical. There is the implication: if we respect each other, given the example on the table, we will plan ahead to not lose the house for a reason that trumps any self-serving reason. In other words, the moral principle is that respect for one another is a principle superior to principled respect for simply serving our own interests.
This can be put in plain terms: whilst a person might make a decision that serves their own distinct moral interests, this same decision does not also serve the communal moral interest. The question then is: should the communal morality be held superior to the individual morality when the latter is separated from the communal interest?
This is not only one of the central problems of moral reasoning, hung as it is between individualism and communalism, but it's also threaded into all sorts of subject matter raised over years here on the deck. However, short of this philosophical way of viewing the problem, we can recognize that in the given example the problem is that the householder did not plan ahead to serve the communal moral principle, as-it-were.
It seems likely that the example does exemplify the householder serving their own principles even if the only principle is to find someway to remain in a viable economic circumstance somewhere in Lakewood. In this respect the decision may well be prudent and reasonable.
In going on at length here I've focused on a structure apart from whatever the devilish details actually were in the given example.
To take this farther, we might imagine that our own street best be constituted by householders who adhere to a strong sense of communal morality and meet the implicate obligations given by respect for each other.
Yet, at the same time, I can also imagine a street with twenty householders, nineteen of whom are crack cocaine kingpins who happen to want a low profile and do so by mowing their lawn and snappily greeting their neighbors, etc. So, in another respect, householder morality takes place on a much bigger canvas than a mere street. In fact i imagine a usurious 'payday' or deceptive subprime lender might well make a good neighbor, and so be great for the street but very bad for the city.
My own opinion is that individual morality predominates even if a strong normative case can be made for communal principles. This is to suggest that at the end of the day it will be very hard to constitute a street with only the communally principled householder.
Planning ahead or not planning ahead, by itself, does not strike me as being a moral conundrum at all. Also, if we cut off credit availability to everybody but the 'cognitively complex,' and the 'communitarian' moralist, you'd incur much worse problems as prudent self-serving individualists would pay cash and rent their houses out.
***
Sharon, I have a 4.0 currently as I work towards my MBA. I think I know about these things, no need to read up further. But thank you.
I barely made it out of high school and have a modest lay person's partial knowledge of a handful of subject areas. Thus Bryan you and I occupy starkly different positions. For me, the more one comes to know the more there is to know, and, consequently, I always have to, am compelled to, read up further.
There are two dimensions I'd like to contribute as food for thought. One is the cognitive and the other is the moral.
Here's a schema for considering the former.
1a. believes future circumstances will be the same as today,
plans to accomodate to them, even given that they aren't going to change
1b. believes future circumstances will be dynamic,
plans to accomodate to them, plans for future possibilities
2a. believes future circumstances will be static, "whatever!" lives in the now
2b. believes future circumstances will be dynamic, does not plan ahead
Okay: the person who plans ahead so that their household economic model can accomodate itself to either static (steady-state) assumptions, or, to changeable assumptions (ie. possible alterations in contingencies) which underlie a dynamic view of future changes, we would characterize as likely possessing a skills set able to deployed for the sake of planning ahead.
For example, a person can know ahead that it is merely possible that they could lose their job, their family could suffer an illness that causes extra costs, their car could be totaled by an unisured driver. Etc. In other words, the assumptions underlying the current sense of security, making a go of it, can be subject to being abruptly and radically altered.
Similarly, another person might not be concerned with or skilled at taking these possibilities into account.
From a psychological perspective, it's a hallmark of practical smarts to be future-oriented and possess the mental skills to be able to manage this dynamic 'tomorrow.'
It's also the case that to not plan ahead whether one assumes not much can befall one or one assumes that one needn't plan for that which hasn't happened, constitutes a different mental functioning and skills set.
For me the question begged here is: Is it more moral to plan ahead than it is to not plan ahead?
I don't doubt, aside from this question, that it is more prudent to plan ahead. But, since I can think of kinds of examples where the lack of planning ahead doesn't penalize one's self or one's neighbors, (and this is irrespective of potential changes in future conditions,) then I have to wonder what morality really has to do with planning.
What kind of example? The broadest example is anyone who through no work of their own has come upon the necessary resources that mitigate any need to plan ahead at all. One might well hope for such a kind to move into a house on their street but this wouldn't have anything with this newcomer being prudent or a great planner. Their rich; they have the money to withstand any future shock, and they keep their lawn mowed and property ship shape.
I can think of all sorts of other examples.
As for morality, Ryan wrote, I am so sick of people with no respect of others. He is willing to let the house fall apart and sit empty and ruin a neighborhood because he is too lazy to try.
This strikes me as a rich expression of frustration with a lot of important assumptions woven out of sight.
Although I would consider from the view of behavioral economics, (not worth detailing here,) that a situation of abandoning ahome to go rent is worth investigating in terms of unknown yet crucial complexities, I would assume that one can only reduce those complexities to likely explanatory factors only after knowing what devils actually are in the details. I'm not here letting anyone on or off the hook.
Still, the introduction of the idea, respect for others, is critical. There is the implication: if we respect each other, given the example on the table, we will plan ahead to not lose the house for a reason that trumps any self-serving reason. In other words, the moral principle is that respect for one another is a principle superior to principled respect for simply serving our own interests.
This can be put in plain terms: whilst a person might make a decision that serves their own distinct moral interests, this same decision does not also serve the communal moral interest. The question then is: should the communal morality be held superior to the individual morality when the latter is separated from the communal interest?
This is not only one of the central problems of moral reasoning, hung as it is between individualism and communalism, but it's also threaded into all sorts of subject matter raised over years here on the deck. However, short of this philosophical way of viewing the problem, we can recognize that in the given example the problem is that the householder did not plan ahead to serve the communal moral principle, as-it-were.
It seems likely that the example does exemplify the householder serving their own principles even if the only principle is to find someway to remain in a viable economic circumstance somewhere in Lakewood. In this respect the decision may well be prudent and reasonable.
In going on at length here I've focused on a structure apart from whatever the devilish details actually were in the given example.
To take this farther, we might imagine that our own street best be constituted by householders who adhere to a strong sense of communal morality and meet the implicate obligations given by respect for each other.
Yet, at the same time, I can also imagine a street with twenty householders, nineteen of whom are crack cocaine kingpins who happen to want a low profile and do so by mowing their lawn and snappily greeting their neighbors, etc. So, in another respect, householder morality takes place on a much bigger canvas than a mere street. In fact i imagine a usurious 'payday' or deceptive subprime lender might well make a good neighbor, and so be great for the street but very bad for the city.
My own opinion is that individual morality predominates even if a strong normative case can be made for communal principles. This is to suggest that at the end of the day it will be very hard to constitute a street with only the communally principled householder.
Planning ahead or not planning ahead, by itself, does not strike me as being a moral conundrum at all. Also, if we cut off credit availability to everybody but the 'cognitively complex,' and the 'communitarian' moralist, you'd incur much worse problems as prudent self-serving individualists would pay cash and rent their houses out.
***
Sharon, I have a 4.0 currently as I work towards my MBA. I think I know about these things, no need to read up further. But thank you.
I barely made it out of high school and have a modest lay person's partial knowledge of a handful of subject areas. Thus Bryan you and I occupy starkly different positions. For me, the more one comes to know the more there is to know, and, consequently, I always have to, am compelled to, read up further.
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Charyn Compeau
- Posts: 324
- Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:11 pm
When I go to the doctor, I listen.
When I get a diagnosis, I look it up and try to understand as much as I can.
Sometimes I get a second opinion.
But at the end of the day I rely on the doctor's experience and education to answer the questions I have. It is unlikely that I will ever have the 8 to 12 years to learn everything that my doctor knows so that I can make an educated decision as to whether they are correct in what they say. I can only learn enough to question what I dont understand.
While imperfect - I think this is a reasonable analogy for a good percentage of the people that were affected by the sub-prime lending business. Yes, we all know that there are a lot of people that played on speculation and lost. And there are those that simply spent foolishly. I am not talking about those people - as m grandmother would say.... They made their bed, let them lie in it.
But there are those that relied on brokers to answer their questions. They relied on those that were supposed to be 'experts' when making decisions. In many cases people did seek 2nd opinions only to find that lenders were hungry for them and that they were given even more encouragement to sign on the dotted line.
If I read Sharon's posts correctly these are the people she is concerned about. I know they are the ones that I am concerned with - the people that did try to do everything correctly, only to find out that their financial condition was 'misdiagnosed.'
For doctors (and lawyers too I think) there is malpractice insurance that works to level the playing field and ensure that the consumers are protected. Is this so different? Not everyone can carry a 4.0 and understand the complexities of the banking and lending industry. Does this mean they dont deserve a change to own a home? Of course not - but they will need to rely on others to help guide their way.
I believe that these are the people that we care for and help - and their lenders are the ones that should carry the financial burden of that help.
As for walking away - I think there's no excuse for at least making a reasonable effort to get out of a bad situation. It might not work (probably not if your house was over financed to begin with) but not making any effort should never be an acceptable solution. Maybe for those that cannot be bothered to try - they should lose the ability to petition for assistance?
Dunno - but there are a lot of sides to this issue and I dont think we can just neatly pack it into simple causes and solutions.
JMO
Charyn
When I get a diagnosis, I look it up and try to understand as much as I can.
Sometimes I get a second opinion.
But at the end of the day I rely on the doctor's experience and education to answer the questions I have. It is unlikely that I will ever have the 8 to 12 years to learn everything that my doctor knows so that I can make an educated decision as to whether they are correct in what they say. I can only learn enough to question what I dont understand.
While imperfect - I think this is a reasonable analogy for a good percentage of the people that were affected by the sub-prime lending business. Yes, we all know that there are a lot of people that played on speculation and lost. And there are those that simply spent foolishly. I am not talking about those people - as m grandmother would say.... They made their bed, let them lie in it.
But there are those that relied on brokers to answer their questions. They relied on those that were supposed to be 'experts' when making decisions. In many cases people did seek 2nd opinions only to find that lenders were hungry for them and that they were given even more encouragement to sign on the dotted line.
If I read Sharon's posts correctly these are the people she is concerned about. I know they are the ones that I am concerned with - the people that did try to do everything correctly, only to find out that their financial condition was 'misdiagnosed.'
For doctors (and lawyers too I think) there is malpractice insurance that works to level the playing field and ensure that the consumers are protected. Is this so different? Not everyone can carry a 4.0 and understand the complexities of the banking and lending industry. Does this mean they dont deserve a change to own a home? Of course not - but they will need to rely on others to help guide their way.
I believe that these are the people that we care for and help - and their lenders are the ones that should carry the financial burden of that help.
As for walking away - I think there's no excuse for at least making a reasonable effort to get out of a bad situation. It might not work (probably not if your house was over financed to begin with) but not making any effort should never be an acceptable solution. Maybe for those that cannot be bothered to try - they should lose the ability to petition for assistance?
Dunno - but there are a lot of sides to this issue and I dont think we can just neatly pack it into simple causes and solutions.
JMO
Charyn
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Grace O'Malley
- Posts: 680
- Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:31 pm
Businesses large and small "walk away" from a losing financial situation all the time.
In debt, got a judgment, can't pay the workers? File bankruptcy and next week open under a new name.
Why no outrage at that, Ryan?
Where is the outrage over responsibility when the lender, who has access to all the financial and legal history of the borrower, chooses to lend to a less than ideal candidate? Who took the risk here? Who should own up to it?
As Charyn stated so well, if I go to a bank to borrow money and the bank lends it to me, I assume they checked me out pretty well and I met the lending criteria, meaning I was expected to be able to pay it back. If I asked for more than I could or should be expected to handle, they'd decline, right?
They certainly were capable of doing that in the past. But no, they got greedy and saw a way to screw people over.
I have zero sympathy for the banks and lenders who made foolish decisions. Sure. lets talk responsibility. The banks should take responsibility for making undocumented, questionable loans.
They made bad business decisions. These decisions cost them money. That's what happens.
In debt, got a judgment, can't pay the workers? File bankruptcy and next week open under a new name.
Why no outrage at that, Ryan?
Where is the outrage over responsibility when the lender, who has access to all the financial and legal history of the borrower, chooses to lend to a less than ideal candidate? Who took the risk here? Who should own up to it?
As Charyn stated so well, if I go to a bank to borrow money and the bank lends it to me, I assume they checked me out pretty well and I met the lending criteria, meaning I was expected to be able to pay it back. If I asked for more than I could or should be expected to handle, they'd decline, right?
They certainly were capable of doing that in the past. But no, they got greedy and saw a way to screw people over.
I have zero sympathy for the banks and lenders who made foolish decisions. Sure. lets talk responsibility. The banks should take responsibility for making undocumented, questionable loans.
They made bad business decisions. These decisions cost them money. That's what happens.
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Stephen Calhoun
- Posts: 208
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2005 6:51 pm
- Location: NEO
- Contact:
It happens so often that people do things for reasons that are good enough for them yet bad for everybody, somebody, else.I think there's no excuse for at least making a reasonable effort to get out of a bad situation.
But, unless the worldwide education effort is going to be overwhelmingly concentrated upon teaching people to adhere to some world-wide 'morality,'
I can offer one single class of excuses that buffer out 'reasonable efforts,' in the sense of the kind of reasonable effort one might impose on the 'unreasonable.'
These excuses are: all the ones which are understood to be cost-effective.
In other words, he or she is in a bad situation and it is reasonable enough to get out of it so as not to incur an overload of financial, psychic, intrapersonal costs and overhead.
Such choices are rational, logical, and result from a smart assessment of what it is worth investing or psychic energy and what is not worth the investment.
This is excuse enough not because it's likeable but because it serves its practical purpose and is, as well, normal behavior.
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Stephen Eisel
- Posts: 3281
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:36 pm
It is ultimately the responsility of the borrower. The borrower is signing on the dotted line and is agreeing to the terms of the loan / contract. The lender is only responsible for clearly spelling out the terms of the loan.Where is the outrage over responsibility when the lender, who has access to all the financial and legal history of the borrower, chooses to lend to a less than ideal candidate? Who took the risk here? Who should own up to it?
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sharon kinsella
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- Contact:
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Bryan Schwegler
- Posts: 963
- Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 4:23 pm
- Location: Lakewood
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Bryan Schwegler
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- Location: Lakewood
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Stephen Eisel
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