notsodailyfrench asked:
notsodailyfrench.com A bit of French vocabulary about mortgages cannot hurt. Articles describing how to “strategically default” on ones mortgage explain that what you have to do is closing the shutters, and walking away from the property. And all it will cost you is a hit to your credit score. But who cares? Now that you have tasted the bitterness of credit, you are unlikely to be in a hurry to take another bite. And if you cannot learn, experts say you can rebuild your credit and have the red ink whitened within two years. But when a company walks away from an underwater mortgage, nobody will give it an accurate equivalent of the credit score. Moodys, S&P and the like are paid by the corporations they rate! If you had to pay for your credit score, youd make sure you had a good one, right? I don’t know if there is a moral obligation for the average homeowner to pay the mortgage. (In a country where earthquakes replace roller coasters, we are not sure we wish to mortgage a house and repay a pile of concrete.) If there is one it must exist in absolute, and be valuable whatever the persons and the circumstances. Either there is no moral obligation for John Doe to pay off his mortgage, or there is one for Morgan Stanley as well.
Karen
