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Comment by compcoffee | Hacker News Reader

>Then while we (working class) were dealing with the fallout

On the ground, parts of the financial services and the "working class" were responsible.

This story that it was simply a bunch of innocent people trying to fulfill the American Dream of owning a home is hogwash. People were knowingly buying property beyond what they could afford because prices would "always go up" and they could flip it to a greater fool. Greed, pure and simple, and both parties were complicit.

Don't believe me? Go watch one of the multitude of flipping shows from the era.

>Much to the contrary, they went on enjoying the same mind-boggling luxurious elite lifestyle they always did.

Let me guess, you don't work in the financial industry? Would it surprise you to learn that not everyone in it (and responsible) is a CEO? The industry was gutted, and many in it paid the price with their jobs. Why do you desire a pound of flesh?

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I really feel like this is just victim blaming. When financial advisors are telling people they can afford something because prices will always go up and will give them those loans, working out a payment plan they say that is affordable, how on _earth_ is it the fault of the people who believed financial experts on financial matters?

credentialed or not, if somebody told you you could afford something because "prices will always go up", would you believe them?

Do you have a pension? A lot of us do, and a lot of them are just specifically structured investment schemes with some tax incentives, which means they're a seventy year bet that the stock market will "always go up". Historically, that's been broadly true, given decent time scales - just as it was with house prices.

I suppose it would be logically consistent to then say that people with pensions are "asking for it", too, but you get to a certain point where we cannot blame the layman for not looking at a field where all the experts are saying the same thing and not believing them.

In financial markets, the idea that "prices will always go up" is not just reasonable, but one of the founding principles of our economy. Everything must grow, all of the time. If prices _aren't_ going up, then something is wrong, and if prices are going _down_ we call it a recession, give it a grand name with capital letters, and try to make it not happen again.

in the context of an investment strategy, it is reasonable to assume that the overall market will always eventually rebound after a crash. it might not sometime in the future, but if the entire world market collapses and never recovers, we have bigger problems on our hands than asset allocation for retirement.

that said, there's really no reason to assume that a specific type of asset will continue to appreciate indefinitely, even if it has done so for a very long time.

but we're not even talking about betting hard on a particular asset class. we are talking about massively levered loans whose viability depends on the value of a single building. literally zero diversification. I honestly don't know how anyone could see this as anything but wishful thinking.

Never trust someone who's trying to sell you something.

One person asks for the loan, another person approves and gives it.

Lenders were giving NINJA loans left and right, and stacked credit rating agencies to give them fake scores to sell off bad mortgages before the grenade went off.

Being able to find shady people on one side of the fence doesn't absolve, in any way, the behavior of people on the other side of the fence.

Whataboutism is not a proper argument or defense.

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