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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Why would the borrower take a loan that didn't benefit them?

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin

They'd take out loans even if the price of the property didn't go up.

I'm not sure that would be the case if they would be targeted with marketing for taking on more loans.

This is a fully general argument against homeownership.

No it is not general argument of homeownership, it is an argument against predatory practices on giving out loans without the safeguards of looking at DTI etc... i.e. the first claim you made on how it is supposed to work.

It's good that you know better what's good for someone than they themselves! If only they had you to run their lives.

No it is not general argument of homeownership, it is an argument against predatory practices on giving out loans without the safeguards of looking at DTI etc... i.e. the first claim you made on how it is supposed to work.

And indeed you cannot get a mortgage if your DTI is too big.

It's good that you know better what's good for someone than they themselves! If only they had you to run their lives.

No that is not what I'm saying. Back in the day there where a bunch of rules put in place to rein in finance industry. Banks actually had a bunch of duties to fulfill when conducting business. One by one those duties has been removed, so instead of having someone with fiduciary duty now we have someone selling you financial services when invest in funds.

And indeed you cannot get a mortgage if your DTI is too big.

Yes you can if you have collateral that the bank can see as free money. They have no responsibility towards the borrower stopping them making a bad deal, which they used to have.

Edit: to amend. We are not in disagreement here on how it should work. We are in disagreement if it works like this today. The starting point of this whole discussion is that my theory is that the 'life script' isn't working is because there has been an effort over the last 50 years to make companies more responsible towards their shareholders than to the customers of the companies. You as a customer have little recourse against a bank that tricks you out of your house with a bad loan. This is what happened 16 years ago and I've heard nothing that has changed preventing that happening again. If you don't believe me.... I'm done trying to convince you.