Reply #174: Sorry, but personal responsibility does play an important role here

[MadHound]

After all, you are making what is probably the biggest investment of your life. If you don't know jack shit about what you're doing, then you learn. If you don't want to/can't understand the material that you need to learn, then you go out and find an objective, knowledgeable third party who can explain all of the pros and cons of the deal to you. You read the contract that you make with the lending institution beforehand, and understand it. This is your responsibility when you're buying a house, not the bank's, not the government's, your's.

You also follow the second golden rule, the one that keeps you out of serious trouble: If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is and you should walk away.

Yes, lending institutions were pushing a con job. But as in any con job it takes two to tango, and far too often borrowers let their greed get the better of their common sense, and they need to bear the responsibility of their actions. When somebody tries to push you into a half million dollar house when you're making fifty thousand, something called common sense should kick in and say "Hey, I can't afford that." But for many people, greed drowned out common sense and they got burned.

Yes, lending institutions bear a major share of responsibility for their actions, but ordinary people who bought into the madness deserve their fair share also. Hopefully we've all learned some serious lessons from this, things like our need to re-regulate the financial sector, and how to buy a home and manage our finances.