Blaming borrowers’ financial ignorance obscures the structural logic of sub-prime lending

Evidence

We are beholden to recognize the savvy motivations that animated people’s engagement with sub-prime finance and not fall prey to the right-wing castigation of our “financial illiteracy” or the canard that people “used their houses as ATMs” for the purchase of “big-screen TVs” and the like. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 528

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the popular right-wing frame of financial irresponsibility — also connects to the broader critique in deWaard of blaming individuals for systemic financialization. — connects to: Exploding mortgage-security demand forced lenders to invent worthless borrowers. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 94; Predatory sub-prime lending preyed on America’s poor and racialized communities — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 154; Sub-prime borrowers were largely middle-class people refinancing survival costs, not stereotypical poor fraudsters. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 194 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• The ideal entrepreneurial-agent construct erases the very concept of predatory lending #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 347
• Government-backed loan guarantees without oversight enabled predatory lending #corroborates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1487
• The Great Recession triggered a redoubling of deliberate ignorance production in economics #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 629
• Finance escaping crisis consequences legitimated the economics profession dodging blame #corroborates (0.74) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 583