Consumer Law In the News

“Blame The Victim” Alive And Well in Boston Globe

Kris Frieswick writes for the Boston Globe on June 24, 2007, this piece entitled “Here Comes the Repo Man.” And if you had any doubts about where Frieswick falls in the subprime crisis debate, she effectively puts it to rest with the subtitle: “It’s easy to scold sub-prime lenders for the glut of home foreclosures. It’s also wrong. Blame the buyers.”

Not exactly subtle, is it?

Her father was a repo man - the folks who sneak around in the dead of night repossessing automobiles for lenders from unsuspecting sleeping consumers who’d fallen behind on their payments.  Is this where Ms. Frieswick received her early education in blaming consumers? It’s a harsh piece, the kind that makes my blood boil not so much for what it contains, but for what it leaves out.

Where’s the lender in this sub-prime game? The lender who, if you’ve been paying attention lately, didn’t tell the consumer he actually qualified for a better rate but didn’t give it to him because the lender wanted some extra profit? The one who qualified the unqualified consumer, the one the lender knew without doubt wouldn’t be able to make those payments?

As the Credit Slips blog points out:

Twice, Frieswick asks variations on the question, “How, exactly, did
they think this was going to end?”  First of all, I’m sure that none of
the borrowers thought it was going to end in foreclosure.  More
specifically, many of them – I would bet – thought that they were going
to end up with the house, the picket fence, and the American Dream
precisely because their lender or broker told them they would.
Consumers are still operating on the assumption that qualifying for the
loan is the hard part, that banks refuse to give you loans you can’t
afford.  But the rules have changed, and the price for not having
caught up yet can be your home.

Pieces - and opinions - such as Ms. Frieswick’s rest on a fundamental misapprehension of the consumer/lender relationship. They presume an equal playing field - and that field, as we should all realize by now, is anything but level. It’s tilted heavily in favor of the lender.

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