- Joined
- Oct 30, 2004
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There is a massive difference between being dumb and being un-educated. There are plenty of smart poor people whether you, judging by your shitty remark, think that's true or not. Even so, you make a good point that with pressure tactics and sales pitches full of encouraging phrases people are easily lured into unmanageable debt. It can be practically coercive.
All the power is in the hands of the lenders while consumers are bombarded with jargon and numbers and buried in paperwork. In some ways it's gotten even worse now with the shortage of housing inventory everywhere. You have to move fast to have any chance of closing a deal and moving fast means you can easily get sucked in to a bad deal without realizing it until it's far too late.
I don't even think it's really an issue of individual qualities. When house prices are rising and lending standards are lax, obviously you'll have more borrowing for houses. And then when prices drop and the economy is doing poorly, you're obviously going to have an increase in defaults. Seems pretty mechanical.