John McCain announces his plan to end the housing sell off.

that must be nice while most people are just trying to pay for the one they have he is trying to buy more

Everyone seemed to think that home prices would keep going up without end. While home prices had gone up for a long time it was pretty unrealistic to think that this would continue forever with no blips.

Everyone thought of a home as something you could buy and would make money by appreciating. It didn’t matter if the buyer was dependable, since their home would be worth more in the future they could cash out and if worst came to worst the bank had to foreclose the property value would cover the bank’s loan.

It seemed like a win-win situation for everyone to get every single person into owning their own home.

As so often happens greed gets the better of us. Banks got too greedy charging too much to people who couldn’t afford it. When home prices droped home owners could no longer just take out another mortgate to stay afloat and since they owed more than their house was worth they just walked away and left the banks holding the bag.

Greed is not necessarily a natural instinct. I think much of it is learned from past generations. Greed is not a driving factor in my life. But regardless of where it comes from, greed does exist. And government’s job should be to place a check on greed, not to encourage it. Greed and capitalism are not the same thing. We had regulations in place that would have prevented much of the lending practices employed by the sub-prime lenders. But those regulations were lifted in the name of greed, not capitalism.

Very good one toadaly… lol

thedude, I don’t think we can keep blaming the people who were not smart enough to know better. People today are no stupider than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Most people then didn’t make these bad decisions. This crisis has occurred because the GOP congress lifted the regulations that had been preventing this kind of predatory lending practices. There have always been people that make bad decisions, but the government didn’t allow mortgage companies to take advantage of them. I am not saying the answer is just to throw money at these people, but something has to be done on a case by case basis.