Responsibility and accountability

Further to the comments in the previous post about "perversity", today brings the headline in the New Zealand Herald: "Banks hang tough over home loan 'break' fees". They are refusing to drop the fees paid by a mortgage borrower on a fixed rate who decides they want to break the term of the fixed rate. This is understandable as it would effectively mean there is no such thing as a fixed rate if people were able to break these agreements every time it was to their advantage to do so. It would then be readily understandable if the bank decided it needed to break the terms and lift the rates when it was to their advantage to do so.

"Perversity" becomes relevant in so far as people seem to think they are entitled to trash their contracts and what a big, bad, ugly old bank it is that expects them to hold to what they had agreed to! If the shoe was on the other foot, they'd howl like wounded animals.

No wonder we are seeing fraud and corruption at all levels. Almost everyone seems to think they should not be responsible for the choices they make and the consequences rendered. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. If you signed up for a 3-year fixed-rate mortgage at 9% or 10%.....then relax and enjoy your mortgage payments for the rest of your term.....or pay the fees to get out of it. Stop whining and expecting others to pay the cost of your choices. If we demand accountability and responsibility from everyone else, they expect the same from us, me, you.