I agree completely with you, but I remember during the crisis that a large part of the outrage was directed at banks "taking advantage" of the poor by lending t

I agree completely with you, but I remember during the crisis that a large part of the outrage was directed at banks "taking advantage" of the poor by lending them sums that they couldn't hope to pay back. I can remember a couple years later trying to buy a house and being surprised that the formula for loan size was so concrete. They didn't care what you actually spent your money on, just that your payments be no larger than 30% of your income. Because we're frugal, we could have afforded quite a bit more house than they were willing to lend to us for. Indeed, we paid way more in rent than we could get for a monthly mortgage payment. We ended up wishing that the banks had tried to "take advantage" of us because that would have meant giving us more latitude to manage our own affairs.