this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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49
Did banks successfully shift blame for 2008 onto workers? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago by merthyr1831@lemmy.ml to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm looking to buy a house so I'm going through mortgage stuff, so you inevitably hear a bit about the context for the 2008 financial crisis.

Now, what I've seen a lot from this perspective is that what the banks did wrong was to lend too much money to "anyone who applied". This narrative seems to be the justification for lots of the more invasive and punitive mortgage practices 17 years later.

To me, this is blaming the poor people who needed money for housing, then jacking rates above what they knew borrowers couldn't afford. It drops all blame from the banks who, if anything, are portrayed as "too generous" in this period, which was sadly ruined by idiot poors not paying their bills.

Now it might just be my anecdotal biases at play, but it all gives me the same vibe as carbon footprints: Sure, maybe it wasn't ideal for people to be sold loans who weren't likely to afford them later on, but you motherfuckers made the system whereby housing is either consolidated by shitty landlords or locked behind a lifelong debt designed to bleed you dry for the privilege of "owning" something.

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[–] Terrarium@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Yes it was a fully top-down, banker-spun narrative for how people buying subprime mortgages were "irresponsible" rather than the massively overleveraged financialization of all mortgages, including subprime, by the banks. This is part of a common PR scheme by which to blame "consumers" and the poor for problems created by capitalism and the ruling class. Same as telling people to budget better when they complain about real wages dropping. Or to "sell-improve" if you've been unemployed and are desperate for a job. It's not that the fed created a baseline level of unemployment in the intetests of capital, it's that you didn't divine what skills were most in demand by capital 10 years before they needed them.