Let me see if I get this straight… (very high level summary)
The investment banks in this country made very poor investment decisions, including but not limited to giving mortgages to anyone with a pulse that couldn’t afford the house or the mortgage, and sold these investments to other suckers, including folks managing 401K portfolios.
Investment banks know their mortgage portfolio is shit, so they take out insurance with AIG, paying premiums on insurance policies that will pay off if the mortgages are not paid off (defaulted).
AIG couldn’t pay the insurance due the banks without a massive bailout with taxpayer money.
Investment banks also got bailout money when it was discovered that they carried nothing but bad investments, erroneously rated A2 or higher (investment grade) by Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch, who would not get paid by the investment banks unless they got the high rating. (anyone see a conflict of interest in any of this yet?)
Joe and Mary Taxpayer watch their 401K disappear as the stock market crumbles and the entire world economy is almost brought to its knees by this mess.
Lehman Brothers was made the sacrificial lamb of the investment banks by being forced to declare bankruptcy because they couldn’t get another bank to buy them in time. This was done for a number of reasons, but the primary reason was that Barkleys (London) wouldn’t buy this lump of shit company and its toxic assets, and the treasury dept. refused to help them directly. This was also meant to demonstrate to the public that these greedy investment bankers were going to pay the piper, even though reality was far different.
The Stock Market tumbles, and Joe and Mary Taxpayer find that they no longer have the money they thought they’d have to retire on. So now, the banks, who screwed over millions and lost untold (trillions?) for the average investor (who never got their own bailout), are now offering to give you a reverse mortgage on your home.
The RV supplies the home owner with money each month, and instead of the homeowner paying their mortgage, the bank is paying money back to the homeowner.
What is the endgame here? The bank ends up owning the house through their reverse mortgage “generosity”.
So not only did the banks screw an entire segment of the population out of their retirement, they are also screwing them out of their homes by taking them after they either die or move into a nursing home?
Is that about the gist of this? So they blow your retirement AND get your house at the end, too?