Replies

Should it be illegal for everybody or just those that are not as financially savy as you?

The argument on the interest rates has gone on for over a century and how many family failures such and such an interest rate at time period, it would generate. Indeed in the 1950s loans over 10 years were consider immoral since a young family would be in mortgage debt for all the early childhood years.

Similar discussions rose around the 30 year loans and now we are talking about interest only loans in which young families are not encouraged at all to get out of debt.

The next stop in this process is loans on which your children and grandchildren have to pay off or never pay off. This is already underway in Japan.

Right now, I know of two families severely impacted by interest only loans. Their unhappy prospect is to have to leave their homes with a hanging debt over their heads that make their prospects of getting another mortgage in doubt.

So I do think the morality of these mortgages should be discussed or else are you against free speach?

I'll get enough money from selling my home to be comfortable for the rest of my life. Its not me I'm worried about, its young people whose parents haven't passed their homes onto their children and as it stands - have no hope of buying one on their own. The American Dream is become a distant dream at that, if housing prices bear no reality to real world incomes.

( No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)

I don't think "morality" comes into it. I won't flame you or use sarcasm, but Fan's point is pretty clear -- I could hurt myself by taking the wrong job, buying the wrong car, marrying the wrong woman, etc. When does the g. get to make these decisions for me? If Joe wants to sell me a mortgage, and I (not being in a nuthouse or anything) want to buy the mortgage, being that I own myself (not government, or my friends, or my neighbors who have a majority vote against me) what would be immoral is for somebody else to come along and claim ownership of a portion of me, and tell me, like my father did when I was nine, "No." Also, my children and grandchildren will never "have" to pay off any of my debts. They may be left with zero inheritance because of my stupidity, but nobody will ever tap them on the shouder and say, "Your father owed me ten bucks, now go to the bank and drain your account to pay me."

So I do think the morality of these mortgages should be discussed or else are you against free speach?

You didn't say the loans were immoral in your original post, you said they should be illegal. I'll ask again; do you really think the government should make interest only loans illegal?