Guys, honestly, aren't you tired of this? Banks are this and banks are that. At minimum they are stupid... They should not have given risky loans, they should have been more cautious; they were greedy ... And as a result – see what happened to the housing market.
We love to get together and bark at the banks. What a terrific target.
I have a small problem with that. There is a smell of real estate agents, who, like dogs, marked the territory.
Because the Banks did not deal with Buyers directly. Do you know who was initiating all these deals, bringing these deals to them? Yep, that was us...We were in a good company, but we were there...
Did we tell our customers that it could not always go up, and they could be for a big surprise? That they should not gamble and buy to flip? That with 5 year open ARM (I thhink that's how it is called, but I may be wrong here) the increase was guaranteed, while their reselling it for $100K profit in 2 years wasn't? That stated income, stated assets was, well, not the best and safest way to invest? That there was and is a big difference between investing and gambling?
Oh, we did not know then...
True, I didn't. I was reading every Realtor Magazine watching for signals, for words of wisdom, for words of caution... There were none. NAR was pumping hype in every issue... I did not have 30 years in Real Estate behind my belt to be smart enough, or I simply was not smart enough...Many did not know...
But so did the banks...
Lets talk about us, not the banks.
Why are we barking? Because everyone else does it, and in doing so we forgot that we were right by the banks' side? That we were working closely? Look for blogs and articles of that era, we were not complaining. We were happy that banks were doing what they were doing. Nowhere could I find that banks were stupid for loaning right and left...
What changed? Only that they were caught, and we are smaller fish in the pond and nobody cares about us.
When we yell at banks for what they have done, how about looking in the mirror first?
Between us we know that we were right there at the front line facilitating all the things that we call wrong today. We were happy with the government for pressuring banks to lend indiscriminately, praising banks for being easy to work with... They helped us make money, and if they were screwing up people, so were we...
I am not saying that we were supposed to retire and not work during those times. I am not even saying that we need good spanking... All I am saying is that we need to stop pounding on our chest simply because today we are not the target.
A sparrow could not take the freezing cold any more. 
The tiny bird succumbed, fell on the pavement and closed the eyes. A horse stepped over and dropped that big smelly thing right on the bird. And this horse$hit warmed the bird, it came back to life, made a hole in the pile, stuck its head out and started singing.
A hawk heard the singing and got the bird.
That's life. If you got into a pile of $hit, sit still, be happy, and do not sing.
P.S. I am not on a high horse. I am just tired of loud singing. We haven't cleaned the feathers yet...
* Image courtesy of jfinnirwin via Flickr.com under Creative Commons license
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