‘Strategic defaulters’ is the loosest terminology

The mortgage situation continues to bedevil both political and economic commentators. It does this in an almost complete vacuum, and, as we know, nature abhors a vacuum, and so there is chatter and verbiage. Out of this chatter has come a series of memes.

Memes are social genes — they propagate and mutate, sometimes becoming full- blown urban legends, other times lurking in the collective subconscious like recessives only emerging to render their carrier sterile, blind, and damaged.

One such meme is that over one-third of mortgage arrears are by “strategic defaulters”. That is a delicious meme. The words sound precise and weighty, and convey an image of hordes of well-heeled investors sipping Pimm’s while debating their financial future with advisers. Are there people who make cold, calculated decisions to walk away from their loans and leave the State to pick up the mess while they continue in the style to which they have become accustomed? Assuredly there are, and the vast majority are in Nama, multi-million bankrupts and defaulters.