We own land! Give us money!

Emailed in by MBK from The Telegraph:

In the latest case involving elderly home owners urged by salesmen to take out mortgages and invest the cash, a couple are about to have their home of 15 years repossessed...

In 2006 Rita and Richard Kauffman turned to their adviser, Mint Financial Services, in the hope of boosting their income. They entered a deal where they tied up £50,000 of savings and topped up the investment by taking out a £195,000 mortgage. The money was used to buy second-hand endowment policies, a form of investment often described as "low-risk" but which has in practice delivered volatile and often poor returns.

The arrangement was supposed to work by delivering returns big enough to cover the couple's mortgage - the £195,000 debt was added to an existing £160,000 loan - plus some spare income.

So they bought the house back in 2000 when they were in their mid-fifties with a stonking great mortgage which they had only paid down to £160,000 by 2006, when they were both at or coming up to retirement age.

And then they increased their mortgage to £355,000? The investment adviser probably was quite reckless, but which bank hands out mortgages like that to people around retirement age? Answer = one that went bankrupt and had to be nationalised.

The irony is that people like this and The Telegraph in particular love blaming the financial crisis on young people and welfare claimants.