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I think you'll find they are in as much trouble as American banks. Being that the world is basically tied together economically these days when we took a big monetary digger they more or less followed us. I travel to Germany for my work semi-regularly and they are having terrible issues with housing foreclosures, bank failures, inability to get loans/mortgages. You know, the whole rigamarole we're wadding through now.

Okay then, on that note, I just do not know why people try to live so far beyond their means. My Father-in-law was a loan officer for a major banking conglomerate and he once asked me if it made sense to refinance my home to take a luxury vacation. It did not then and it still does not make any sense to me to pay for one vacation for the next thirty years.

Before the housing thud I noticed that young folks were buying homes that I thought were so far overpriced ($500,000.00+) and getting five-year interest only loans that had a payoff date in five years so then they would have to refinance or pay off the loan. That really does not make sense to me! When I was still working I noticed an increase in auto repo's, and these were not cheap ones either – BMW's, Mercedes and the like – that these young folks would buy on the same kind of loan and then not make the payments.

To me, I would think that if a bank was stupid enough to loan these people this money on these flimsy circumstances then they – the banks – should be left to waller in their own feces and not be bailed out with tax payer money.

After all, the road of time is littered with failed businesses and banks. They come and they go, nothing stays the same, and when one business (or bank) fails there is always another one out in the wings ready to take its place.

But then again, that is just my not-so-humble opinion. B)

ah, and here I agree with you. I have many work aquaintances who rushed out and got $500,000+ 5/1 ARM sub-prime mortgages and have spend the last 5 years paying only the INTEREST on these loans….. So now 5 years in, the monthly payment skyrockets, they aren't making nearly enough money to pay it, and even if they sell there is negative equity on the home so they walk away with less than nothing after closing costs of their sale.

BUT, and this is a big but to me, but a small but for population. I was one of the people nearly screwed by the collapsed market. I, and my (newly married)wife recently purchased a small condo, well within our spending means as our first starter home together.

She is a school teacher, and I am an engineer. We're the safe bet as far as I'm concerned. and even though we asked for far far less than even $250,000 the bank made us miserable. We jumped through more hoops than a PI marine recruit. My point is; I was upset that in many cases, the people who deserve the loan, who are starting small the way you're supposed, the people who have good jobs to pay a moderate mortgage are suffering for the fools who bought into the sub-prime ARM mortgage nonsense.

Sucks for them. Glad I'm in the good old USA.

Dude I am in the USA, that was the point of my story.

The younguns just don't seem to get it, no matter how many times you tell them.

Glad to see you made the right choices, LT, and congarats on finding one to latch onto you. I consider myself one of the more fortunate in my old profession as I have been married to the same woman for 40+ years now – and for a cop that is a minor miracle of Biblical proportions!

Most of my former colleagues hit the silk half a dozen times or more during their careers.

Glad I did it right! B)