Has your opinion of bankers changed since the credit crisis and housing bubble?

There has been quite an upheaval in this once very respectable community minded profession.|||It's further evidence that it only takes a few bad apples....





The problem started back in the 1970s and 1980s when the bank regulators encouraged lenders to securitize their loans. The regulators thought it was too risky for a financial institution to carry mortgage loans with fixed interest rates over a long period of time. But these days, most mortgages are paid off within 5-7 years. They're either refinanced or the home is sold. Very few mortgages stay on the books of a financial institution until maturity.





Then, with the risk to the lender effectively eliminated, people started to get reckless and greedy. If a loan was not repaid, it was the investors who lost money, not the lender. Everyone wanted something out of this deal - the bankers and mortgage brokers wanted their fees; the investors craved higher yields, the developers and speculators wanted a super-heated housing market... it goes on and on.





The bankers have done an excellent PR job of blaming the victims - the people who borrowed the money. All they did was what their realtors, bankers, financial advisers and possibly their family members and friends told them to do. Get in the market now before you cannot afford to buy at all.





Others already owned their homes and were the victims of predatory lending practices. It's easy to judge and say they should know better. In many cases, the lenders broke the law and did not disclose the terms. Talk to any state Attorney General and ask them how many pending cases they have for deceptive advertising and unfair trade practices among subprime and Alt-A lenders. They'll tell you the whole story, and it isn't pretty.





Now, we need to wait until the market settles down again, and it will be hard on everyone. Fewer housing starts means lots of unemployment among a host of industries, from lumber mills to appliance manufacturers, etc.





For some people, their home was their single largest asset, and they will suffer. If they had a 401k, that is down, too.





Even lenders who made no subprime or Alt-A loans will suffer. Anyone holding real estate debt is going to take a beating.|||I blame society. It was the idiots that walked into banks and got talked into these loans. The papers clearly stated that the interest would go up by a certain amount. They also fully disclosed early payment penalties. It was all in plain, easy to read, black and white. I asked questions if I didn't understand something.





I read my mortgage. Obviously a lot of people don't know how to read.


Bankers were just doing their job on commission - just like sales people at Sears.


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|||Honestly, no. There are good people and there are bad people in every profession. And I don't blame the bankers for everything anyway. There are a ton of reasons that we're in the current financial mess right now.|||No, my opinion of them hasn't changed at all..............I've always believed they were bunch of unscrupulous, robbing bastards|||Bankers are all crooked thieves you just need to be able to outsmart them!