The banking practices known as """"foreclosure-gate"""" and """"fraudclosure"""" were scrutinized. On the front end, Americans began to discover that realtors had been amassing enormous commissions and off-the-books lender bonuses, while many back-end mortgage brokers turned a blind eye to underwriting documentation of inflated income levels, fake home appraisals, etc.
The rest is now past.
Eventually, a larger deception was uncovered; the financial industry knew there would be a high rate of subprime-loan defaults and stood to profit regardless. Despite the growing realization that subprime loans were merely another profit center for the financial sector and not the average person, nothing has changed in 2014 except the names!
Wall Street bankers continue business as usual, and the government continues to permit subprime loans under the guise of auto loans. The title of this article published on October 7, 2014 says it all: ""The new subprime is in auto loans: one-third of all new auto loans are subprime."" Repossessions are up 70 percent. It continues to say,
""It is instructive that the majority of this debt expansion has occurred during a period of economic recovery. If things are going so well, then why are so many bad-credit loans being issued?""
Valid point! Almost exactly four years ago, Shaun Donovan, then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, stated on ABC News Today, in reference to housing foreclosures, that there do not appear to be any ""underlying systemic problems"" while referring to his review of foreclosure-documentation-issues of specific lenders and banks that may have violated the rules. However, his ""bad apple"" perspective could not be further from the truth. The growth of subprime auto loans and the inevitable increase in repossessions are nothing more than the dying gasps of a debt-laden financial system: a self-serving, vampire-like attempt to survive at the expense of its victims.
Baby Boomers are in the most precarious position for incurring new debt, given all they lost in the 2007-2008 economic collapse and their diminishing ability to replace it. In this economy, the best advice is to eliminate debt and increase the number of revenue streams. That is, if you wish to avoid becoming a New-Normal statistic. ReinspirementTM, not retirement, is the key to our current economic conditions."""
