[Domenic_S]

> to pretend like people with less than a million dollars in liquid assets are "too dumb" or "inexperienced" to purchase something is beyond insulting.

Really? Because a lot of that group said they "didn't know any better" and were "misled" when it came to bad mortgages during the crunch. Whether you believe them or not, that was their argument and it worked.

There are entire industries based on exploiting people with bad money management skills (payday lenders, rent-to-own, etc). Clearly the population exists.

[themagician]

Yeah, lots of people do claim that. But we still let them do it. High risk, low reward investments are totally cool for everyone. We don't have a problem with the risk portion. It's only when the reward becomes huge that we have a problem.

I don't think most people realize how true the adages are, "the rich keep getting richer," or, "it takes money to make money," really are. People say it, and other people feel it's true, but then they can't point to anything tangible. But there it is. Current SEC regulation basically institutionalizes this.

Here is a financial opportunity that's actually not that complicated, which is no more risky than other available opporutinies, but we have actually made it the law such that, "Only the 1% may do this."

[shanemhansen]

But there's only one law "protecting" them from one specific kind of bad money decision. So I guess we're saying payday lenders are ok for poor people, rent-to-own is ok for poor people, but we must protect them from investing in the next amazon or dropbox at all costs. That's much riskier than the lottery.

[a_c_s]

1. Mortgage contracts are too complex for a layperson to understand. Often the amount of time people are given to sign them is less than it would take to read the entire contract through just once. 2. Getting a mortgage is an instance where the seller is also the advisor (similar to an auto mechanic or a doctor). 3. Consumers were actively advised to take out mortgages that the seller knew were more expensive than the consumer could afford. 4. If a predatory auto mechanic deliberately advised a customer they needed repairs that they did not, that would be fraud on the part of the mechanic. The same thing applies to predatory lenders.

(There certainly were people who just made bad decisions. But there was also widespread, documented fraud on the part of lenders.)

[prostoalex]

Nobody really got screwed by misunderstanding small print on page 89 of the mortgage contract. The fraud (faking employment and income levels) was directed at insurers and buyers of those mortgages, not at the recipient.

[tsotha]

>Because a lot of that group said they "didn't know any better" and were "misled" when it came to bad mortgages during the crunch.

What else are you going to tell people when you lose half a mil? That sounds a lot better than "Honey, I gambled our financial future trying to get rich in the housing market, and you'll never believe what happened..."