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The bankers' entire business of lending is predicated on their understanding of risk and proper extension of credit dependent on that risk. To extend credit as

• vidarh 13y ago
  Exactly. For some perspective: In the UK, if a bank extends credit to people who were obviously not credit-worthy at the time of applying, based on the information available to the bank, not only is the debtor not at fault, but the debts can in many cases be wiped out by the courts. And it happens regularly - people have had entire mortgaged just struck off because the banks were found to have acted irresponsibly when giving them out. The banks here have a legal responsibility to understand their customers ability to repay, and to not extend credit that is likely to cause their customers substantial financial hardship. The reasoning for this is that there's a massive information symmetry - most people do not understand the full risks, and are easily seduced by the thought of a new house and possibly smooth talking real estate agents to look at think in the most rosy way possible, while the banks know very well the hard data on what financials are likely to cause defaults when you take into account risk of unemployment, budgets, unexpected repairs, likely interest rate movements etc..