Buy, Finance or Lease - the Car Conundrum

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Who to blame

I leave the borrowers out of the blame.

If one is in the business of lending money, one must assume that crowds of people will come in to request loans they will never pay back. Lenders honestly earn a big part of the interest by working hard to turn away most of those unqualified borrowers, and by accepting the losses on the ones that get through despite these efforts.

While I'm sure some deadbeat borrowers are no better than thieves who knowingly cheat the bank, many others are somewhere on the spectrum of deluded dreamers and fools who think a miracle will help them make the payments.

Our problems today are not due to some sudden increase in deadbeats trying to get loans - those have always been abundant.
Our problems are due instead to a sudden increase in shady lenders making bad loans knowing they can either sell the loans to fools or get insurance to avoid the inevitable losses.

I can agree with this. All throughout history there has been times of low defaults which usually were oriented around tough lending standards etc and times of high defaults.

If there are the same amount of so called "deadbeat borrowers" then the only variables to change are interest rates and regulations around lending.

I knew this guy back when I was in college (just a guy from town that didnt go to my university) who was really into car modification. He owned a Honda Prelude which he bought on credit. He then told me he got a few credit cards with a total of 15k on them and went to the body shop to get his "car modified." Cold air intake, turbo added on the engine, upgraded suspension etc.

His plan was to take out all this credit to get his car suped up and then declare bankruptcy.....

[don]

Re: Who to blame

His plan was to take out all this credit to get his car suped up and then ....

drive away.

How insane can it get? I was around when mortgage interest rates were 16%, cost of living increases neared 10% - inflation was off the charts. Went to a seminar where two realtors said flipping was never better - but how to finance the initial buy? They then let drop to the floor their credit card wallets. This was at the time when multiple offers came in the mail every week, if not every day. Apply for every offer, max out all the cash advances, buy your flipper, clean her up, and then flip. Wonder what ever happened to these two hombres . . .

[GRG55]

Re: Who to blame

drive away.

How insane can it get? I was around when mortgage interest rates were 16%, cost of living increases neared 10% - inflation was off the charts. Went to a seminar where two realtors said flipping was never better - but how to finance the initial buy? They then let drop to the floor their credit card wallets. This was at the time when multiple offers came in the mail every week, if not every day. Apply for every offer, max out all the cash advances, buy your flipper, clean her up, and then flip. Wonder what ever happened to these two hombres . . .

They moved to London.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_and_Nick_Candy

[don]

Re: Who to blame

those are the guys!