Subprime Mortgage Loans...

I'm rather surprised at all the talk about who's to blame for subprime mortgage loans in the news recently. There was an interview I caught on TV where the host was pretty aggressively demanding a solution from the mortgage industry.

Aren't the people who jumped all over those "too good to be true" deals somewhat responsible? Doesn't anyone who even considered an adjustable rate mortgage, contemplate the possibility of a substantial interest increase after 5 years? My take is the responsibility lies primarily with the people who signed these mortgages. People gambled that property prices would rise faster than the principal owed on the negative amortization loans. Well - they gambled and lost - now owing more on the property than it's worth. You can't call foul on the mortgage industry now for making that loan available in the first place. You DID sign on the dotted line after reading all the fine print, right?

You might say what the mortgage brokers did was unethical, immoral, and irresponsible. I don't disagree. But I don't think what they did was illegal - and so I'm not convinced they are on the hook to find a solution that lets people keep houses they can't afford.

EDIT: Interesting article on an inevitable housing crash in the Bay Area:
http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html

Stanley Keg Champs!

My Thursday night hockey team (aka the Scorpions, the Yellow Team) won the Stanley Keg!
(I'm the guy on the far right kneeling.)

By the skin of our teeth too! We were the 6th rank team going into the final game playing the #1 ranked team. We built ourselves an early lead 4-2, and then very nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory - the other team came back to tie it up 4-4 with minutes left on the clock. Overtime decided nothing, so we went to the shootout. We end up scoring on the last shot of the shootout... What a great game! We offered to get our names engraved on the keg, but they declined... Hmmm.

What I like about playing at the Ice Oasis is the fact they mix the teams up every season (and even midway through the season) so that there is always parity - any team could win any night. Another nice feature is everyone eventually gets to know everyone, so it tends to keep the games just a little less chippy. :)

My new Thursday night team is the Cobras (aka the Green team). Oddly enough most of our forwards from the yellow team are together on this team. So far, we're 2-0! Better start sandbagging it before they trade off some of our better players!

One last comment: Because we have a guy who's really into photography that's been taking some awesome pictures of our games, and the fact he takes the time to caption all the pictures with people's names, a google image search for my name now returns many pictures of me playing hockey. Go on, try it. Or just go here for more pictures of the games and of the other hockey fanatics (otherwise known as puckaholics.) :)