The securitization of mortgages was behind the global financial crisis of 2008, and securitization is a form of trading debts, albeit different from the sale of defaulted accounts to debt purchasers who specialise in acquiring delinquent accounts. In this case, the purchaser pays a small fraction of the book value of the debt with the full knowledge that it's a delinquent account which may or may not be recoverable.Tuco wrote: I think that we both know that the real value of the instrument is zero and I have previously stated that it is my opinion that this trading (that was carried out over many years) was a large contributory factor in the banking crash of a few years ago.
The mortgages were still live and secured on property when they were traded, and could also be traded once they'd been defaulted (CDS, etc.). However, the fact that all this rather dodgy trading went on behind the scenes had no effect on the borrowers, who were still expected to keep repaying their mortgages plus interest. Even when the lenders went bust, the loans were taken over. Borrowers were not allowed to keep their house or even pay a reduced amount or a lower interest rate, hence the large number of mortgage defaults leading to mass repossessions and a crash in house prices, which, in turn, made some MBS almost worthless.
It was all rather dodgy, but there was no benefit for the borrower, no get out of debt card resulting from the shady dealings that took place between various types of financial institutions.
Physical cash does not change hands, the financial sector runs on database entries. Fractional reserve banking means banks can lend something like £10 for every £1 they have in actual deposits. When they say they are lending money, they are not actually letting you have any of their own money, they're pretty much plucking it out of thin air. That's why I've always said there's a difference between owing money to individuals and business and owing it to financial institutions.Tuco wrote:I think we also know that no physical cash was paid and it was just figures entered onto a balance sheet somewhere but (on paper at least) this contributed into falsifying a banks profits.
If you don't pay your builder, he will have trouble feeding his family and carrying on with his trade. If you don't pay your credit cards or repay your bank loans, the bank will just write off the balance as a "loss" for tax purposes and sell it on for a nominal amount. That means I personally don't think there is a MORAL obligation to repay banks (for the reasons above) but that doesn't mean there is no LEGAL obligation to do so.
If you look back, you'll find that, a few years ago, the banks themselves used to take people to court over unpaid loans, overdrafts and credit cards, just look at the number of judgments involving banks. In the last three years or so, hardly anyone is taken to court by a bank, virtually all money claims for regulated credit products are issued by debt purchasers. The banks seem to have decided to sell on their delinquent accounts for a pittance rather than going to the trouble and expense of litigating them. Maybe they all got a bit wary after Santander got spanked with c. £50k worth of costs against them for a £5k credit card debt they tried to recover in 2012, which the court ruled unenforceable.
It should be noted that the reason it was unenforceable was to do with the lack of a proper agreement for the credit card which had originally been just a storecard and nothing to do with the trading of debts, as Santander had not sold it on. There have been cases where the debtor has won in court due to issues with the assignment but they are not the majority. In most cases, the new creditor just can't get hold of the required paperwork, or the paperwork turns out to have been defective or non-existent to start with.
None of what I've posted above has anything to do with FMOTL. There are times when you can "get out of debt free", quite literally, simply because the other side screwed up. That happens, quite often by the sounds of it, due to the intrinsic arrogance of the financial sector. The FMOTLs just cherry pick those bits that suit them and use them to piece together their own, alternative version of reality.Tuco wrote: The reason that this argument is frowned upon so fiercely on here is because it has been hijacked by fmotl (albeit in a misconceived fashion).