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Comment by johnrob | Hacker News Reader

The big winners are the businesses that sold products to these consumers. The losers are the banks and consumers themselves.

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I think the biggest losers are actually "the rest of us": i.e. those of us who neither borrowed more than we could afford to pay back nor lent to those whom we knew could not afford to pay us back. There aren't many bailouts or special government programs (at least that I'm aware of) for people who acted responsibly in the midst of what was obviously foolishness.

I am so glad I barely pay any taxes anymore (income and spending)

Indeed. I feel very screwed over by all of this. Making the wrong decisions got people lots of free money. Making the right decisions got me nothing, except interest on my savings account is now so low that it barely makes up inflation. (It was nearly 5% before all this!)

All these people that don't pay off their credit cards ensure that those who do get higher interest rates and fewer services. Thanks a lot, guys...

That doesn't make sense. The banks make money off people who carry a balance.

They don't make much money off people that rack up $25,000 of debt and then refuse to pay, or people that borrow $500,000 for a house that's worth $150,000 who then leave and stop paying the mortgage.

People that pay the minimum payment on their credit card every month are great -- if everyone did that, there would be no credit crisis. I would be getting my 5% on savings, and would probably be able to own a house.

Actually most banks did make money from those transactions. They knew it was a bad debt so they sold it before people defaulted. The US housing bubble actually ended up sucking up a lot of money from the rest of the world and dumping in on the US economy.

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