Community Reinvestment Act

[Kantian Pragmatist]

Nobody can predict the future, you don't have to explain that to anyone - no bank was ever able to do that anyway, you are just muddying the discussion with irrelevant and overcomplicated nonsense to the point at hand. The fact remains that anyone who makes a living doing anything ought to know how much they make and how much can be used for a known mortgage payment. Betting on the future and losing isn't criminal, sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't so I won't say it's stupid but it is risky - either way it doesn't negate the simple and straightforward approach of saying here is what comes into my wallet every month, and here is what goes out, and here's what is left I can use to make monthly payments on a mortgage.

Except that most workers don't know whether they'll have the same job in 5 years, because they don't know if their bosses are gonna outsource their job to China or India, and they don't know whether they're gonna get a raise or get promoted, though most people, if you ask them, will say that they will, and those loans and mortgages they've agreed to initially have very affordable payments and zero down, or whatever other terms were used to sucker people in, and even though the loan officer mentions something about the payments doubling he also mentions something about refinancing and you're gonna get that raise or promotion anyway, and then goes through about a dozen different fees, some of which are mandatory and some of which are conditional. Most people barely know how to calculate their income tax, let alone provide a reasonable estimate of future income. And most people barely manage to keep track of their past income and expenses either, if they do at all.

I find it hard to believe that you think the poor and middle class folks who got suckered into taking out more credit than they could afford and who failed to realize that on average they were gonna be eating a pay cut due to economic circumstances largely beyond their control are the ones at fault here, and not the people who did the suckering and rigged the economic circumstances, and who, so far, have walked away with hundreds of millions, if not billions apiece of what used to be the money in the average American's IRAs and tax-payer backed insurance funds.