I posted this a while back. See it here. I was responding to this moron the first time he opened his idiot face and let venom spew. Of course, since he’s still slithering around out there, the post continues to garner hits, over two years later. I reread what I wrote, and I can’t really improve on it. All I said is still true. So I’m posting it again.
Rick Santelli is an Idiot
I can’t believe this guy. I heard him spouting off about how Americans shouldn’t pay for their neighbor to have one more bathroom. I wanted to reach into the screen and slap his ugly head. What an idiot.
Here’s a clue, Mr. Smarty Pants: People who are in foreclosure are in foreclosure because the system is a mess, not because they are “deadbeats” and want a free ride from the government or their neighbors. Want to point fingers, idiot? Point them at the banks that overvalued properties in the first place to get people into questionable loans so brokers could collect bigger fees. Point those fingers at the lenders for telling consumers that their ARM loan wouldn’t be a problem because they would be able to refinance in three years when the rates change (and hey, rates have been going down forever, so why shouldn’t this continue? Your payment will be lower!) while simultaneously neglecting to point out there would be no way in hell any traditional lender would refinance property that is mortgaged for more than it is worth. And oh, be sure to keep it a secret from the borrower that refinancing will not be an option if you lose your job. How about pointing the fingers at lenders who convinced people to take out that second mortgage or a HELOC to “consolidate their debt” without pointing out that trading unsecured debt for secured debt would make bankruptcy pointless should the need arise? How about pointing fingers at the pathetic and useless Bush administration who drove us into an economic crisis and higher unemployment than we have seen in decades? Let’s just blame the victim for losing their job. They should have known to move to China or India ten years ago so they would be there when their jobs were shipped overseas.
I heard the jerk in an interview claim that buyers should have hired lawyers. Guess what? Lawyers aren’t free. And assuming someone could afford $225 an hour to hire one, a lawyer wouldn’t hire an appraiser to know that the bank overvalued the property. Plus hiring an attorney when you buy a house is theoretically unnecessary anyway. Mortgage brokers and lenders have a fiduciary duty of care to their clients. This means they are held to a higher standard of care in dealing with the public. They are expected to act EXTRA honest because it is expected that they have greater knowledge about the mortgage industry than consumers. How does this work, Mr. Santelli? Are the consumers supposed to suddenly educate themselves so they can catch dishonest bankers and brokers? Would you hold a patient to the same duty before going to a doctor? Am I supposed to go get an MBA before I go to a financial expert to ensure they are upholding their fiduciary duty? Should I get an MD before going to the doctor?
I can’t stand the mentality that we are not obligated to help one another. Guess what? We are all in this together. We can sit in our foreclosed bunkers with our guns aimed at our neighbors and barbed wire wrapped around our hearts to protect us from the enemy, ensuring we keep that property because, hell, it belongs to us, right? We don’t need to share. Or we can grow up and realize that society at its heart means social. It means taking responsibility for one another. It means what we do for each other we do for ourselves. It means we care for and protect one another and when someone is down, we offer them a hand up. Taking care of one another is the stuff life is made of. The alternate choice is to live like Rick Santelli, cold and alone with his gun pointed at everyone, dragging his loot into the afterlife. Good luck with that, Buddy.
P.S. Being a stock-broker might be a high risk financially, but it is not hard work.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 
Two years later… and the problem is no better, little reform has been made and people continue to lose their homes due to greedy weasels who knew exactly what they were doing. I would have agreed with you then and agree with you now. I’m a fiduciarily responsible real estate agent dealing with the mess every day. Most buyers were innocent. I had clients who bought at the height of the market at the top of their price range because they were being priced out of the market and thought the longer they waited the worse it was going to get. Loan products are so complicated buyers can’t be expected to understand them. They shouldn’t have to worry that they were being sold a higher interest rate than they quailified for or that the loan was designed to increase the lender’s profits. Of course they weren’t going to hire an attorney who wouldn’t have saved them from this anyhow. How many people knew the high risk loans were being bundled and resold or that no one was keeping the chain of title correctly? Now you lose your job and lose your house and you are a deadbeat trying to scam the system. So not true. The scum that scammed us is living quite well and is finding new opportunities in the distressed home market. And their buddies are fighting any true reform to prevent this from happening again. More weasels. Not one person who confided to me their attempt at a loan remodification has had it be successful. As a RE agent I’m finding little consistancy in how purchase offers on bank owned properties are handled by the banks. Their rules supercede any of our usual documents or procedures. It’s buyer beware. They are surprisingly nonnegotiable on the properties in such poor condition that they will not qualify for regular financing. Why not let an investor buy it at a reasonable price, spend money on goods and labor fixing it, then sell it to a buyer with enough profit to go buy another property? Or it could become a rental to someone whose credit rating sucks due to a foreclosure. They are sitting on at least a 3 year supply of foreclosed properties. There is a long list of people to blame and it’s likely not your neighbor unless you are Santelli. Two years ago I would have happily supported some way to help my neighbor keep their house. Values have dropped so much I’m underwater now too. The rich weasels aren’t going to throw us a life ring.
Wow. Thanks for the chance to vent. And apologies to real weasels for the analogy.