Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Mark Stapleton]

Consumers did not buy houses they knew they couldn't afford, they were sold those houses and the mortgage that came with them. That sales job was performed by people who by your own admission knew that the mortgage was never going to be paid under the original terms on its face - that doing so was a mathematical impossibility.

Blame the innocent in other words. We see this game in all sectors of life. Drug addicts are to blame for the importation of drugs - not the drug barons and elite who reap immense profits from selling misery and living hell.

It makes me sick to see this line of reasoning.

Me too. These paragons of free market capitalism can't be allowed to rewrite history but they'll try, aided by a complicit MSM who are only too keen to ignore the failure of the so-called ratings agencies, and the usurious shackles placed on the bulk of mortgagees.

Over here in the land of floods and fires we have an obnoxious Sydney radio broadcaster called Alan Jones who is trying to pin the blame on the public and their "reckless credit binge". He seems to be in favor of bank bailouts but rails against handouts to the (<$100K p.a.) public.

So we have the Eastern European banks rumoured to be on the brink and the disastrous numbers in the Hughes article posted by Peter in post #236 painting an equally grim picture for the major US banks. Then there's the blind panic of almost every other European country and 100,000 people demonstrating in Ireland last week.

Man the lifeboats folks, it's every consumer for himself--and forget about all that women and children first crap. Actually, I think the Titanic sank while trying to break records too. Funny that.