Who is to blame?

Is there anyone that can agree that the economy has totally tanked? I remember last fall that some people, even myself, said that the poor economy was widely fabricated. Part of me still gets really upset that a lot of people are refusing to change their way of life. I read and hear that the economy is bad, yet so many people refuse to change their spending habits. What is a savings account?

So with this in mind, I was watching 60 Minutes tonight while folding laundry. My life is super exciting, I know. So there was this lovely story on the housing crisis called World of Trouble. Now I know, this is the liberal media because it wasn't Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and it lived up to their billing because they presented the issue only as the banks fault. That it was the banks that forced bad loans onto people. There was one woman's story told where the bank used her income (of like $1,500) and since that did not qualify her for the loan, they used her husbands income. This seems normal until you consider that her husband was dead.

Now this is bad. I agree. Everyone at the bank that was involved with that loan should have been fired immediately, but part of me wonders why this is all the banks fault. 60 Minutes did not seem to think that the woman who took the loan should share the blame, at least this wasn't presented. When Katie and I were buying a house over the summer we were approved for much more than we could afford, but we had the brains not to take out the highest amount we could.

The skinny is that both sides are to blame. Banks did some terrible things. They got greedy and were pushing people into loans that they could not afford simply to get a commission. I hope that no one denies that, but the people seem to be getting off scott-free on this deal. You still signed the loan document. Even if the greedy, persuasive salesman (salesperson) told you this was a good loan there has to be a part of your brain that starts beeping when your mortgage payment is higher than your monthly income. Right? That part of your brain needs to work, otherwise you end up in these situations, and the salesperson who lives off of their 100% commission job isn't going to tell you NOT to take out the loan.

Sadly we have to fix the mess we got ourselves into. I will be the first to admit I have no easy answers. Part of me says screw the people that took out these loans because they should know better. But then I see stories like this about some of the incredibly terrible practices banks were using to get people to take these loans.

So my question is how do we use both sides and come together with a solution? We can't simply bail out people who took out loans they couldn't afford, but we can't just burn the banks either...