You can pick selective events that occur in any set of organisations and then use that to extrapolate that they and everyone who works in those industries is defined by those events. Doesn't make it so.

Take another set of organisations that have garner much negative press of late, churches, judging by the press you would think everyone who works in churches are either pedophiles or covering for pedophiles. This ignores the extensive not for profit work they do in the welfare sector. In my country (Australia) the welfare sector would collapse under the weight of demand if weren't for churches the money and volunteer workers that they deliver.

The crash in the housing market wasn't caused by bankers, it was created by everyday people overpaying for houses. The lending practices that encouraged this were an initiative of the US government to get people into their own houses.

BTW the person who I heard predicting that it would all go pear shaped (and actually gave a specific date) was - wait for it - a banker!

I'd counter that the continuing sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic church worldwide indicates certain fundamental flaws in that institution, as well as in an unacceptably large proportion of individuals among its hierarchy. This goes beyond the actions of just a few.

I'm all in favor of taking personal responsibility. When I took a mortgage at one of the now-defunct giant banks at the heart of the mortgage implosion (chosen because I had a previous mortgage with them prior to their decision to concentrate on re-selling packaged sub-prime loans by deceit), they insisted that I accept highly-deceptive, potentially very destructive loan terms. In other words, they tried their best to deceive me. They then packaged this loan with other of a substantially lesser quality, assigned an inaccurate risk rating to the package, and sold them under even more deceptive terms to investors. There is no mystery about any of this--it's a matter of public record.

In other words, they engaged in fraud at multiple levels--from the executives who adopted that strategy all the way down to the mortgage writer in the local office who tried his best to hide the truth about his product, then admitted that this was all he was now permitted to offer to me. The scale of the fraud at that specific bank ran to many billions of dollars. I don't tar all "bankers" with the same brush, but it seems to me that much of the US banking system has been run similarly, to the detriment of most of the world.

Now, why do you suppose people might be peeved at "bankers?" Why would they be irritated by actions and attitudes within much of the church hierarchy? Do these responses seem unreasonable, in light of recent events (which continue to unfold and most of which presumably remain hidden)?

Railing about the fact that life as we know it would be impossible were it not for "bankers" misses the point. Life as we know it would probably be impossible were it not for scientists, engineers, mathematicians, teachers, farmers, heavy equipment operators, politicians, lawyers and (yes) soldiers as well. That doesn't mean we should maintain a grateful silence in response to institutionalized misbehavior by any of them.

IMHO, of course.

Mark

Mark, this is not meant as a criticism--your post is a good addition to this thread--your post brought raised a couple of interesting points (to me): First, what do you mean by your bank "insisted" that you accept disadvantageous loan terms? Why didn't you simply go to another bank, there is no shortage? Second, from your very brief explanation above, it sounds like you chose the bank that you dealt with because it was convenient for you (you had a previous mortgage with them). Once you realized that they were trying to deceive you, did you continue doing business with them, and if so, why? It seems to me that consumers are responsible for determining what is in their best interest, and for not dealing with mortgage lenders, or anyone else, once they've demonstrated that they are trying to hide the ball.

DocSherlock, drwnite, I don't think anyone is denying that there are some bad apples among the banking lot (as in all walks of life) and that the financial system as a whole is far from perfect.

But that doesn't even come close to meaning that there are more bad people in banking and finance than other walks of life. Take your pick--used car salesmen, building contractors, taxi drivers, lawyers, car mechanics, clergy, government officials, etc etc. Don't know about you, but I've encountered plenty of people in these fields that were hardly paragons of virtue, as well as many that were. Bankers just generate more headlines, and indeed bad bankers probably have more impact on the national (international) economy than your average bad plumber, but that by no means demonstrates that there are more bad people among banking than other spheres.

I was involved in a very time-sensitive purchase at the time, and needed to close quickly. I didn't want to mess around lining up another loan. However, I did rearrange my financial affairs to allow me to get out from under that mortgage quickly, and I stopped working with that bank completely.

I'm a fairly sophisticated consumer of mortgages, and I read the fine print carefully. Had I been otherwise--or had I fewer options--I might have been taken in. Make no mistake about it: that bank was taking advantage of anyone not able to understand, and they were doing it on purpose. They were then colluding with rating companies to defraud the buyers of mortgage-backed securities. Further, a great many banks were doing the same or worse, all across the USA.

Mark

I have little doubt that this is true, although part of the problem (and I'm not referring to you here) was that many of the borrowers either had no idea what they were signing, or were themselves guilty of overstating their incomes or choosing mortgages (interest only, etc.) that they should not have expected to be able to pay. In the big picture, many of the problems only achieved the scale that they did because of this behavior by consumers, so "they" also bear some responsibility.

And of course it is not only mortgages and house buyers; I have a friend, a finance professional BTW, that recently invested a considerable sum into a complex life insurance product. When he tried to withdraw some funds, he found out that if he did so he would lose 80% of his investment due to pre-paid admin fees or something, which apparently the agent did not disclose.