Comments on: Why Aren’t Predatory Loans Illegal? http://www.ourbroker.com/toxic-loans/why-arent-predatory-loans-illegal/ Consumer Real Estate Information Since 1996 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:05:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: mrsizer http://www.ourbroker.com/toxic-loans/why-arent-predatory-loans-illegal/comment-page-1/#comment-4951 mrsizer Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:51:45 +0000 http://www.ourbroker.com/?p=2246#comment-4951 Three answers: 1) There is no lobby for the victims 2) There are disclosure rules, which should, and often do, reveal the "predatory" nature of the loan to said victims. 3) Stupid is not a crime - if you don't read the fine print and don't shop around, you get what you deserve - caveat emptor (If there were no disclosure rules, I would not make this argument.) The alternative is to repeal the disclosure laws and make predatory lending a crime. That is: There is no reason to put a clause in a loan that says "We will not cut off your body parts in case of delinquency". It is already illegal to do that, so there is no point in "disclosing" it. If offering predatory, which really just means "bad stuff that I don't like", terms is illegal, there is no point in disclosing the terms because, by definition, they cannot contain predatory stuff. Three answers:
1) There is no lobby for the victims
2) There are disclosure rules, which should, and often do, reveal the “predatory” nature of the loan to said victims.
3) Stupid is not a crime – if you don’t read the fine print and don’t shop around, you get what you deserve – caveat emptor (If there were no disclosure rules, I would not make this argument.)

The alternative is to repeal the disclosure laws and make predatory lending a crime.

That is: There is no reason to put a clause in a loan that says “We will not cut off your body parts in case of delinquency”. It is already illegal to do that, so there is no point in “disclosing” it. If offering predatory, which really just means “bad stuff that I don’t like”, terms is illegal, there is no point in disclosing the terms because, by definition, they cannot contain predatory stuff.

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