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Not really. Banks have a fiduciary responsibility to lend out their money with some caution.

The banks colluded because they too wanted to make a pile of money quickly, then when it all blew up they went after all the collateral leaving the private individuals holding the debt after the foreclosure.

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I don't disagree, but that doesn't absolve him of responsibility. He is as much a perpetrator of this as the banks are. If he'd needed the money, that would be one thing, but he took unnecessary loans to do speculative, risky investing.

I doubt he understood that he was doing speculative, risky investing.

Mid-bubble, I can't count how many people told me that the market can only go up, or who looked at me like I was insane when I said I was watching month-over-month sales to try to avoid getting creamed when the bubble inevitably burst.

Yeah I'm really split on this myself. On the one hand he should have known better than to take on that much debt. On the other hand, the people offering him such easy credit should have to face the consequences of the risks they were taking by lending money to overextended borrowers.

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