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Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

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Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#121

Post by crazynick4 »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111
crazynick4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

I knew one person who owed 300K for cancer related surgery and another who owed 30k for appendicitis and they didn't have any legal action issued against them. One was close to minimum wage and one stopped working entirely for years after the surgery. Is this more common in specific states maybe? This was in Florida.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#122

Post by zimablue »

kgwgk wrote: post #94
clairity wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the wealthy keep their capital in assets with above average returns. the rest of us get to pay for that with below average returns, fees, and inflation.

How does the math work out if the wealthy have much more capital than "the rest of us"? Why have you chosen to keep your capital in assets with below-average return if you know which are the better assets?

Better individual assets or better management of your assets are both gated. Privately held companies, hedge funds, financial managers. The guy who argues the parent point is Piketty in the book Capital.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#123

Post by reaperducer »

crazynick4 wrote: post #121
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

I knew one person who owed 300K for cancer related surgery and another who owed 30k for appendicitis and they didn't have any legal action issued against them. One was close to minimum wage and one stopped working entirely for years after the surgery. Is this more common in specific states maybe? This was in Florida.

In some states, especially retirement states like Florida, debtors can't take your home.

In other states, they can.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#124

Post by CNJ7654 »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #21

The definition of "we" and "survive" needs to be established clearly first and I don't think all those fancy graphs and market trends will define them. There's a lot of people that ended up bankrupt, in a bottomless depression, turned to drug abuse or committed suicide because of the last crisis. Wages are still relatively low while prices continue to climb. Many people are working 2-3 jobs and having trouble affordi…

Agreed! "Survive" is definitely not the right term here. Will I survive the next financial crisis? Yes, without any doubt. No matter what the financial crisis is, I will still be able provide myself food, water, shelter and security.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#125

Post by dv_dt »

airstrike wrote: post #78
HashThis wrote: post #5

The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis. Working American's had to financially absorb the 2008 Mortgage crisis. 2008 was a direct robbery because Mortgage Orginators KNEW the mortgages would blow up, because their own Underwriting equations said they would. That is why they did fraud on the customer's income levels or worked with politicians to al…

> the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis The working class wasn't robbed at all. Maybe they lost the value they thought their homes had, but the reality is that all of that was just inflated. 2008 was an issue of moral hazard and unfortunately Joe Schmuck isn't aware of that going into a mortgage agreement. This will continue to happen forever until people finally learn that when s…

By bailing out the originator of the mortgages via QE2/3 purchases of securities, the Fed removed all pressure to accept a two-way reconciliation between the originator and the loaner in mortgage transactions - e.g. by reducing the principal cost of the loan to reduce further erosion of the assets and the market as a whole.

Once that incentive was removed, mortgage servicing (often contracted to the same banks) could continue, putting unrelenting pressure on people who had taken out the loans. So what if they lost their loaned properties? Well anyone who had put down a down payment or had equity in their home lost that down and equity. So this ended up being a very one sided transfer of wealth out of the hands of people taking out mortgages, while preserving the profits of banks (they didn't have to accept the losses of the securities bought by the Fed...).

To me it looks like the the organizations with the deepest buffers of wealth (banks), got a bailout by the fed, while individual people bore the full pressure of having their wealth systematically reduced.

As an alternative, the fed could have risked similar or less money by offering to pay down some slice of the principal of the loans, requiring a refinance/reset to put the security back into balance with the market prices. This would have allowed wealth to stay in the hands of individuals, somewhat insulating the banks, but resulting in less transfer of wealth.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#126

Post by noobermin »

craftyguy wrote: post #15
HashThis wrote: post #5

The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis. Working American's had to financially absorb the 2008 Mortgage crisis. 2008 was a direct robbery because Mortgage Orginators KNEW the mortgages would blow up, because their own Underwriting equations said they would. That is why they did fraud on the customer's income levels or worked with politicians to al…

> The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis. If that's true, then why is the current government working hard to remove any protection (however meager it is/was) to prevent the same mistakes from happening all over again? If the working class has no tolerance for these things, then it definitely isn't reflected in the people the working class has ele…

The working poor did not vote for Trump more than they didn't vote. But even if you break down the vote by income, more wealthy folk voted for Trump and poorer people voted for Clinton, but more importantly, most of them didn't vote because they reckoned that neither choice affected them. I never understood this argument that poor people voted in Trump especially because it does square with exit poll data.

I do think some people voted for Trump as essentially accelerationism, but unless the Democrats and the media apparatus succeed again in disenfranchising an actual left candidate in 2020 (which is always possible) the tide could turn.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#128

Post by seanmcdirmid »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111
crazynick4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

In what state can debtees garnish debtor wages? To my knowledge, only the government has that power, and only uses for taxes or child support reasons.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#129

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

atomical wrote: post #113
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

I think most of the time you can work with the hospital and possibly get the charge cut in half. Then pay monthly payments with zero interest. Has anyone done this?

Yes people do this all the time, but YMMV. I could be wrong, but I believe the hospital is not obligated to work with you. Depends on who you talk to, the type of procedure it was, your household income and more. You're making $70k/year supporting a family of 4 in a tech-hub like the Bay Area, but say you had an accident vacationing in Texas and now on the hook for $8k in hospital bills. Will the hospital look at your cost of living or will they see 70k and assume you should pay in full?

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#130

Post by headmelted »

crazynick4 wrote: post #104
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #21

The definition of "we" and "survive" needs to be established clearly first and I don't think all those fancy graphs and market trends will define them. There's a lot of people that ended up bankrupt, in a bottomless depression, turned to drug abuse or committed suicide because of the last crisis. Wages are still relatively low while prices continue to climb. Many people are working 2-3 jobs and having trouble affordi…

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

"take the hit for 7 years"

This is the advice I've heard given to people who are severely underwater on a mortgage, but the idea that you can get sick one time and be financially ruined is still astonishing to me.

I guess everywhere has some legislation that is just bonkers, though. I only just recently found out from a friend that you can't legally walk away from a mortgage here (UK) without declaring bankruptcy like you can in the States, which is bananas.

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