>>>>Srdjan, people with ARMS had their house payments jump from 600.00/mth to 1600.00/mth. Only then did it become a question of what their money would go for. They thought they would be ok because by the time the payment went up, they thought they could sell their house for more than they owed and make money on it. That was not surprising because it had been done for years and years. Many people made their income buying and selling homes. It was the housing crash that killed that idea and folks were left with house payments they couldn't afford and no way out of them. They were in houses that were too big and too expensive. The price of food did not rice exorbantly nor is it in short supply. We did have some large increases in prices on some items (blamed on the manufacture of ethanol and the cost of transporting those goods due to the price of oil), but nothing that made food too expensive for the people of this country. Food has never been that expensive.
>>>
>>>
>>>Food & shelter were more like figurative speech. What I meant was cost of living that skyrocketed last 8 years.
>>>due to many factors. And yes, speculations in housing market surely contributed to all this.
>>>I wander what is percentage of those specutive loans comparing to real loans where people actually bought house
>>>to live inn.
>>
>>That would be nice to know. There have been many stories of families who rent and had to find a new place to live because their landlord couldn't keep the property and the house went into foreclosure - same with apartment buildings, etc. I thought leases were protected when the property was foreclosed on (the mortgage company had to respect the lease)...
>
>Of course It would be nice to know, becase IMO part of any fair bailout plan should help only those those home owners.
>Something like government to subsidise their montly house payments for certain period of YEARS.
>(Swimming pool should of course disqualify home owner for subsidy)
>
>Real home owners (families) anyway pay artificially inflated house prices, so government would basically pay fine for their own criminal negligence to the real victims of this scum. Government could purchase all troubled investment banks (for fair price of ONE USD), downsize their stuff drastically and then keep them running under protectorate for the same number of years while mesures (subsidies to real home owners) are active. So money will be basically coming again back to government. Then when things get stable privatise them again by selling them for real market value.
>
>How is that for bailout plan ? :)

Bad mortgages/foreclosures are just a source of the problem, but they alone could not cause banks to go belly up. I think it is clear enough, by the way, that investment banks have never played mortgage underwriter roles. The actual reason for financial blowouts are derivatives, primarily, credit-default swaps, that magnify bad loan potential liabilities to sky-high levels. In other words, banks are on the hook and it doesn't matter anymore if foreclosures happen or not.