>Or, look at it this way: you are being honorable if you pay all the debt, >as long as you can do so physically (not financially, which is all the law >seems to require).
OK, so two parties sign a contract. Shouldn't both parties know what is in the contract? In particular, shouldn't a big bank know what is in the contract? If I sign a contract with someone else, I am honorably obligated to fulfill the contract if I can. If I sign as a creditor, I feel I darn well be willing to take as payment what is in the contract. If I'm not, I shouldn't have drawn up that contract (every mortgage I've signed has been drawn up by the bank's lawyers). So, you and John are arguing that there is a moral obligation of an individual to do more to repay the debt than is in the contract. If it says "this contract is written under the laws of the State of Texas", then if I were to loan money to someone, I would feel that I had to be sure I know what limits there are on what I can collect. I can't imagine loaning money without knowing the law. For example, if a company owes me money for something I sold to the company, I have the right to put a lien on the assets of that company. However, if the company goes bankrupt, the personal assets of the stockholders of the company are typically not available to me if the company is a LLC, or some other form of corporation. That's why some corporations bonds are junk bonds, because, even though the stockholders could pay off the bonds from their personal assets, those assets are protected by law. If someone qualifies for a loan from a bank, housing prices fall 40% and they lose their job, most states allow for allowing the bank to simply take the house as payment for their debt in their mortgage laws. By definition, then, that's the agreement between the parties. It appears that you and John are suggesting that the only honorable act is one akin to the central family in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Finally, if someone cannot afford a house, how did they qualify for it? I see two possibilities. First, they fudged the numbers they gave the bank. That is clearly dishonest, and they should be liable for submitting false information. In fact, I'm 99.99% sure that's against the law. The second is that the bank who gave them the loan knew that they didn't qualify for the loan, and had a high probability of eventually defaulting, but the officers of the bank thought it was in their own best interest to make the loan anyway. In that case, don't they have responsibility when the borrowers follow the law when they no longer are able to make payments? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
