Why will nobody accept any responsibility?

SkepticOne

Boskowski wrote: »

I mean it's the risk that comes with a mortgage. You're tied to the property/location and the repayment ties you down as well. You're doomed to get that money in the door every month and if your circumstances change it's just not that easy to downsize and relocate. While there is disadvantages to renting there is also disadvantages to ow(n)ing. This is one of them and regardless of whether your jobloss is your own fault or not and regardless how many children you have - it is your risk and you couldn't realistically expect welfare to keep you in your house indefinetely.

But what you are talking about is individual responsibility and it is true that there are some who don't want to face up to their individual responsibility. What this thread is about is the Irish people's responsibility as a people.

Where I think we do have to accept responsibility is for who we elect into government and we have to take the consequences for that. But we as a people are being forced to take consequences beyond those that normally result from the bursting of a bubble and I think this is what a lot of people are missing.

drunkmonkey

Starter Home, there's no such thing.

You rent, then you find a house you could live in for 30 years and buy it.

You don't buy a starter home, hope it goes up in value and then expect to make money so the home you always needed works out cheaper. That's gambling.

T runner

IrishButGerman wrote: »

Yes I do accept that investors in Germany and other countries are getting off lightly, but I also think many in Ireland currently are too.

The talk of the Irish having to pay for the bad investments of foreign business is a little off mark. It's not all the Irish people, it's pretty much just those who are meeting their own debts. Those who cant meet their own financial responsibilities aren't going to help the Germans either.

Yes they are through, higer taxation, lower pensions, social welfare, public spending etc etc etc.

IrishButGerman wrote: »

What fundamentally is different between those two groups you just mentioned.

Those who borrowed recklessly.
Those who borrowed under assumptions about the regulator and banks.

Where's the difference. If they were calculated risks that is fine, but the unfortunate outcome has arrived.

One borrowed recklessly and have no-one to blame but themselves, The other group didnt and can feel rightly wronged. You seem to insist that teh second group should not feel hard done by. I disagree.

It was a strawman argument of sorts, in response to the predatory lending strawman.

Can you deal with the actual arguments. I have explained exactly why the banks lending was predatory. You seem to chose to counter this by pretending to answer an argument i am not making.

I suspect we won't pay for them in the end, because I don't think we can.

We already ahve payed them. A massive tranche of money was payed to German and French pension holders as recently as 3 weeks ago. Do you think Merkel and Sarky would have made that announsement if this hadnt been the case??

Many people can't repay their own loans, because they never could also. Talk to people abroad about the incomes construction workers were receiving here, about how large the mortgages are here to see that there was a temporary insanity

Yes we know there was insanity. But people paying mortgages have the right to expect due diligence to be carried out and regulations to be proper.

They could hardly be expected to foresee that these banks would act in such a reckless manner as to actually bring the country to its knees putting people in a position where they ahd to pay not just their own loans but the banks loans as well.

You seem to believe that mant Irish should have taken the possibility of an economic meltdown into their calculations. Nobody saw teh meltdown coming till it was too late. Least of all your average mortgage holder.

Floppybits

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Starter Home, there's no such thing.

You rent, then you find a house you could live in for 30 years and buy it.

You don't buy a starter home, hope it goes up in value and then expect to make money so the home you always needed works out cheaper. That's gambling.

So you are single person and you buy an apartment for yourself to live in, then a year or two down the road you meet someone and get married, you live in the apartment for another while but now you are starting a family and need to move to a house. Is this still gambling? should this couple now be stuck with the apartment?

Drunkmonkey you have a very simplistic view of things. There are a lot of people who are stuck in the scenario I have outline above, so you are saying that they should live in a 2 bed apartment for life?

meglome

I've been saying on boards for weeks that we all need to take personal responsibility. I appreciate we're not all as responsible but the majority voted for party's that supported high spending and low taxes, which was crazy. This isn't about beating yourself up or letting those more responsible off the hook, it's about making sure we learn something so it doesn't happen again.

SkepticOne

We've got collective responsibility for those we elect. This is true. We elected FF and their various coalition partners and we need to take the consequences.

Where I have a problem is that when you try to point out the mistakes of these people we've elected someone pipes up and says "hang on you can't put all the blame on the government, after all, we elected them". The problem I have with this is that part of taking collective responsibility our electoral decisions is analysing where those we elect have got it wrong.

This is the politics forum. It is about changing the things that can be changed and need to be changed. We can't vote out the electorate; we can only vote out governments and while we might recognise that we have made a mistake there's no point in dwelling on it. Obviously we made a mistake, but what was the nature of the mistake. What exactly were FF doing wrong and what should we look for in the next party. Rather than shifting the blame this process is part of the learning process.

This is different to the personal responsibility issue which is that if you take on a loan you should pay it back. While a lot of people made a mistake in borrowing during the boom, the test of personal responsibility is that you do your utmost to pay it back. I don't see that there's much of a difference in Ireland compared to other countries in this regard. We've never had a "jingle mail" culture in Ireland unlike the US although this is slowly changing. However it is not the majority and like I said this is a separate issue to the issue of collective responsibility which is addressed above.

Separate again is the issue of corporate responsibility in banking lending and the issue of investor liability. If you make a business mistake you should not expect others to help you out.

I think the problem with these discussions is the blending of all these different responsibilities together to the extent that they no longer make sense. The underlying sentiment is that we Irish are fundamentally flawed and that there's no point in changing government or anything else since we Irish are going to remain in existence. I think these people are probably fairly young and need to gain a bit of perspective.

Yes, we messed up by electing Fianna Fail repeatedly who not only allowed the bubble to grow; not only that but in the wake of the bubble bursting failed to realise the scale of the problem and made decisions that exacerbated the problem.

Yes, as the electorate we must take responsibility for electing these clowns and their toadying sycophants, the Greens but having recognised that we must still seek to understand what they got wrong, what they were thinking when they were doing what they were doing so that we can avoid the same mistake in the future.

ednwireland

Floppybits wrote: »

So you are single person and you buy an apartment for yourself to live in, then a year or two down the road you meet someone and get married, you live in the apartment for another while but now you are starting a family and need to move to a house. Is this still gambling? should this couple now be stuck with the apartment?

Drunkmonkey you have a very simplistic view of things. There are a lot of people who are stuck in the scenario I have outline above, so you are saying that they should live in a 2 bed apartment for life?

yep

rent till you find somewhere is the alternative to buying overpriced apartments.

Floppybits

ednwireland wrote: »

yep

rent till you find somewhere is the alternative to buying overpriced apartments.

Such a flippant disgraceful attitude to have towards people who did not gamble. Everything in this country has been overpriced since 2000. With your poxy attitude and way of looking at things you are saying that no one between 2000 and 2010 should not have bought any place to live?

drunkmonkey

Floppybits wrote: »

There are a lot of people who are stuck in the scenario I have outline above, so you are saying that they should live in a 2 bed apartment for life?

No i'm saying they should have rented. They did not need to buy the apartment in your scenario.
You do not need to own a house to live in it, this is the bit a few people completely missed.

There may be 70,000 people struggling with their payments, but there's another 300,000 out there going thank christ I didn't buy into the bubble.

To rent for 30 years is about half what it costs to buy over 30 years when you factor in rent relief and interest on your loan.

Buying a house has really only been for the very well off over the last 10 years. I earned good money but in no way could I afford a house without leaving myself seriously exposed.

sensibleken

You are only in negetive equity if you are going to sell but there are a lot of people who are going to default on their payments because they cant afford to keep it up due to unemployment, increased taxes etc.

some of this bailout should go to writing off a portion of the debt owed by ordinary morgage holders, this would reduce the amount and number of payments they need to make, allow more disposable income and add a much needed stimulus to the economy. then we can raise capital quicker and pay off our debt quicker.

Fighting Irish

sensibleken wrote: »

You are only in negetive equity if you are going to sell but there are a lot of people who are going to default on their payments because they cant afford to keep it up due to unemployment, increased taxes etc.

some of this bailout should go to writing off a portion of the debt owed by ordinary morgage holders, this would reduce the amount and number of payments they need to make, allow more disposable income and add a much needed stimulus to the economy. then we can raise capital quicker and pay off our debt quicker.

lol fook no