Bring back debtors' prison!

It's not the banks' fault for giving loans to people obviously unqualified for them, it's the poor dumb Americans who took the loans. We're a a free market, dammit, and if they fuck up them n their kids are out in the street. And fuck them for inconveniencing the banks. Or so says Megan;

I said in my previous post that I'm not sure it matters who's at fault, but of course, politically it does matter. Borrowers may have had help getting in over their heads, but at the end of the day, "variable interest rates vary" is not in the realm of things it is unreasonable to expect them to have understood when they signed on for a gigantic mortgage. Indeed, many of the defaulters seem not to be able to afford their teaser rates, which is certainly something they should have been able to figure out on their own. One of the reasons that I do not currently own a home is that I cannot afford one. Now I get to pitch in my tax dollars to bail out people who also could not afford a home, but went ahead and bought one anyway.

But Megan isn't inhuman, that the gubbermint is stepping in to make sure people aren't ending up homeless is one of those things she's philosophically opposed to but will live with, if she has to. I was being unfair, she's not saying they have to be thrown out in the street, just that they deserve to be.

I can't say that this thought is keeping me awake nights; keeping people from losing their homes, however stupidly acquired, strikes me as a better use of my tax money than much of what the government does, especially if this has the side effect of forestalling a financial crisis. And the cost of it is likely to be small compared to, say, invading Iraq or buying prescription drugs for affluent seniors. On the other hand, I am a contented renter, not a family crammed into a small home they could afford on a fixed rate, watching neighbours in bigger houses get a helping hand from Uncle Sam.

You've gotta love the gall of someone born into affluence telling one hypothetical poor family to hate another because the poor idiots fell for those omnipresent "easy credit low terms" ads. I'm not disputing their stupidity, but Megan is ignoring the banks'.