U.S. Bankruptcy Bill’s March of Triumph

Great Debates
81

I’m reasonably sure I’m going to regret this because I think I already know the answer. But where are you getting this? From what part of the bill’s text do you derive this requirement to bring in “accountants, auditors, etc.” and by what analysis do you get from the text to your claim? And last but not least, are you aware that persons may file for bankruptcy pro se or with the assistance of a non-attorney debt relief agency? What do you think of the limitations and increased disclosure requirements on debt relief agencies?

On a separate subject, do you believe that the increased restrictions on creditors as regards affirmation agreements are part of a plan to screw the poor?

82

You realize, of course, that this same argument can be made against requiring anyone to repay their debts to any solvent business.

I get a credit card, use it to buy groceries, then I don’t pay the credit card bill. It is the credit company’s fault for giving a credit card to me.

I buy a car, take it home, and don’t make any payments. It’s the dealer’s fault for selling to someone like me.

I hire an attorney to help me file for bankruptcy. I then stop payment on the retainer check. It’s the lawyer’s fault - obviously someone filing for bankruptcy is a deadbeat.

Etc.

Regards,
Shodan

83

“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up – you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!”

–Eric ‘Otter’ Stratton

84

Some quotes from the article “Debt Attorneys See Red in Senate Bill” at http://biz.yahoo.com/law/050316/da494a48bfd3ad3ad2a24528d5caa9c0_1.html

I’d quote more, but I think I’m straining the patience of the mods as it is. I trust I have made my point.

YES!!! YES!!! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M SAYING!!! This is an evil law!!! Ravening, unconscionable, raw, ugly, naked GREED is the sole motive for passing this law, not any concern for justice or the good of the nation. Excuse me while I set off some fireworks and ring a church bell to underscrore my point, but, yes, Manhattan, that is EXACTLY what I’m saying. The goal of this bill, the only reason for its existence, is to make bankruptcy more difficult or impossible for the average filer, and the motive for doing so is the disgusting greed of the credit card industry. Forgive the arm waving and shouting, but I’m near the end of my patience.

85

All I can say to this is, you have some rather quaint notions about causality. :rolleyes:

86

Well, that’s what I get for posting too hastily. Man, the restrictions on affirmation agreements you’re talking about don’t change the fact that this bill was crafted by industry for the sole purpose of promoting their own interests at the expense of the American people as whole. They are only concerned with squeezing as much money as they possibly can out of the rest of us, and they don’t care whose lives they ruin as long as their profits soar. This bill is a gift of billions of dollars to its backers, and it is indeed a plan to screw not only the poor but much of the middle class as well.

I’m growing weary of this subject, but I confess to a morbid curiosity about the weird rationalizations the bill’s supporters on this thread are going to come up with next.

87

No, this is what you said:

(emphasis added)

You are clearly making a moral judgment here, and you are clearly saying that the borrower in this situation is guilty of some moral failure.

If someone seduces your wife, it isn’t only your wife who is guilty of adultery; and if you knowingly offer a drink to an alcoholic, it isn’t only the alcoholic who is responsible for the bender that may ensue. For quite a long time now, many credit card issuers have been extending absurd lines of credit to people with questionable credit histories and/or shaky finances, but they now want to change the rules of the game so that most of their victims…uh, customers can no longer claim bankruptcy protection. You guys see nothing wrong with this. I says it’s spinach, and I says to hell with it.

88

I’m not here to win friends and influence people, though that’s always nice. I’m here to express my ideas and opinions, however unpalatable they may be to some.

There’s been no obvious flag-waving, but i find the theme of Amurrican indifference to the poor (even by the Amurrican poor themselves, which is kinda funny if you think about it) to be widespread enough to trot it out whenever it seems right.

89

You’re just saying you value the welfare of credit card companies a lot more than you value the welfare of human beings. Gotcha.

90

If you were an auto dealer who sent car keys to people through the mail, and invited them down to your lot to pick up a car if they just signed the attached slip of paper, prolly not a lot of people would be deeply sympathetic to you when you complained that a lot of people were taking your cars and not paying for them. Especially if your response to the sitaution was to get Congress to pass a law allowing you to hire bounty hunters to break into people’s houses and take their stuff.

91

When you said the people who accept credit cards and then declare bankrupty are NOT INNOCENT you clearly meant they were guilty. And being guilty, they should be punished. So we don’t have to care about what the bankruptcy bill does to them, because they NOT INNOCENT and are suffering the just punishments of the system.
And of course, this bill will also harm the children of people who are hurt by it. But they’re not important, because their parents are NOT INNOCENT.

I’m just trying to make you face up to the moral results of your position, Debaser. Let me know if you want anything else 'splained to you.

92

No. I’m not. I type “unwise financial decisions” and you are somehow reading “guilty of some moral failure.” You’re putting words into my mouth. I haven’t said what you are accusing me of and I would like you to rethink this and then retract your accusations and apologize.

93

What. The. Fuck.

You have just invented an entire paragraph on complete and total bullshit to attribute to me. Congratulations. However, attempts at fiction should probably stay out of GD, and instead be posted in MPSIMS.

I’d ask your you to consider your idiotic rant for a moment, and then apologize and retract, but I know it will never happen. I don’t know LonesomePolecat, or his posting history. It’s quite possible he just made an innocent mistake reading into my post stuff that wasn’t there. Or maybe he just confused my post with others in the thread. However, I’m familiar enough with your posting history to know that you won’t back down an inch, even though it’s obvious that you are completely wrong and way out of line.

94

C’mon, Debaser. I laid out the steps I took to get from Point A to Point B. If you wish to disagree with any of them, just say so. You could say, “When I said, ‘Not innocent’ I meant X” instead of the reasoning I attributed to you.

Most of the time, when a conservative calls for someone to be “responsible” or points out that they are “not innocent” or “guilty” they mean that we should not worry about their suffering because it’s their fault. If you disagree with ANY of this, set me straight. Tell me what the hell you DO mean. Is there some nuance I am missing? I am really good with words and meanings, Debaser. Lay it on me.

95

This is the problem - the part where you make things up and attribute them to other people.

You did it here too:

Is it really that challenging for you to react to what people post?

Regards,
Shodan

96

Retraction? Apology? Ain’t gonna happen. You keep trying to imply that there’s some kind of problem with too many bankruptcies these days (which may or may not be true) and it’s all the fault of stupid or dishonest borrowers and not in any way the fault of our noble credit industry which would never, ever dream of twisting and warping the laws in their own favor, so obviously we gotta gut the bankruptcy laws. Wouldn’t want those stupid and/or dishonest debtors to get out of paying their debts so easily, ya know.

If that isn’t your position, will you please be so kind as to tell us what it is? ‘Cuz you’re soundin’ more and more like a character from an Ayn Rand novel here.

97

I explained my interpretation of what Debaser meant and called on him to correct me if I was wrong in any respect, by telling me what he actually did mean. Haven’t heard a peep out of him. I suppose that constitutes “making things up” in your world, but in mine it’s called “communicating.”

It’s called an analogy, Shodan. I was showing how the credit industry was doing unwise business practices and then trying to get Congress to help them lever people out of their possessions/money when the inevitable happened. By making the business practices different I tried to show the utter hypocrisy of the credit industry’s position. Guess you missed that.

Not at all.

98

Then let me rephrase the question - is it really that challenging for you react to what other people post in an intellectually honest way?

Hint: Interpreting “people who declare bankruptcy are generally guilty of making unwise financial decisions” as saying “all poor people suck and are stupid and deserve to be robbed and have their children starved in front of their eyes and all conservatives think so” is not intellectually honest.

If you care to respond without exaggerations and strawmen, feel free. Otherwise, I will assume you cannot come up with any realistic responses. As seems often to be the case.

Regards,
Shodan

99

Shodan, I’ve several times asked a question here that you and other apparent supporters of this bill keep dancing around and around: * Why do we need this bill at this time? * It isn’t because the poor banking and credit card industries are being destroyed by the number of bankruptcies; their profits are quite healthy. And, despite claims to the contrary, people don’t generally declare bankruptcy because they’re gulty of making unwise financial decisions. That’s a crock. As far as I can tell the only thing this bill accomplishes is, in another poster’s words, to give the lenders a big stack of money with a ribbon on it. It’s a bad bill. It’s a classic example of the law being perverted to benefit the rich at the expense of–well, just about everybody else.

If you want honesty, give honesty. Explain why this bill absolutely had to be passed and what benefit the nation–not just the fat cats—is supposed to derive from it. Because anything else is a dishonest evasion, which is every bit as bad as exaggeration and strawmen.

100

Because bankruptcies and credit card debt are on the rise. And, in the opinions of those who support the bill, there are instances where debtors could pay back the money they borrowed rather than not doing so.

If you want me to defend the notion that banks and credit card companies will collapse without the bill, I have not made that claim.

If you are proposing that no bill should ever be passed unless there is a crisis, I disagree. In many or most instances, I would prefer that crises be averted rather than waiting until the problem is too large to be ignored. YMMV.

As I mentioned earlier, and which you seemed to deny without refuting, this argument seems to indicate that there is never a reason to pay a debt if the industry in question is solvent. The mortgage industry is not hurting too badly, and yet I have to make my house payment every month.

I don’t see how the solvency of an industry matters to the moral obligation to pay back money you have borrowed if you are able to do so.

Suppose I loan you $1000. Suppose you defaulted on the debt. It wouldn’t break me financially. I could survive the loss and remain solvent. Does that mean you are under no obligation to pay me back?

What this bill seems to be meant to do is to push people who borrowed money - and that is exactly what a credit card is - in the direction of actually paying back money that they owe instead of renouncing the debt altogether. The whole process remains under the jurisdiction of the courts, so if you want to entertain notions of evil Mr. Moneybags gloating over his wealth while widows and orphans starve in the snow, feel free to discuss how the judge in the bankruptcy case came to decide that people who could pay their debts ought to do so.

Actually, that this is “a crock” has not been established. If you are defining “medical reasons” as a cause beyond the debtor’s control, cites already listed seem to indicate that at least half the time, medical expenses are not involved in bankruptcies.

Besides, if medical expenses are the problem, I don’t see why a credit card company would be pressing for bankruptcy reform. When was the last time you put your hospital stay on your Mastercard?

Actually, if you change the word “give” to “return to”, and the phrase “with a ribbon on it” to “that the debtor borrowed, in instances where they could actually repay it without disaster”, you have a better characterization of the effects of the bill.

Asking people to pay their debts is “perverting the law”?

I see it in just the opposite way. The general expectation that people who are able to do so should pay back money that they borrow is a social contract I would prefer to see preserved.

Regards,
Shodan