I have just seen Oysterman's offering and would like to comment on and correct some of his erroneous contentions.
(1) Tax Benefits: All types of house mortgages attracted tax relief back then. Tax relief was not specific to endowment mortgages.
(2) Reckless exuberance aka greed. If there was any display of exuberance or greed it was displayed by the mortgage salesmen who were tripping over themselves misseling these mortgages in a greedy pursuit of their commissions.
He mentions seeking compensation because things did not turn out (an outcome that was solely within the remit of the fund managers). I am not looking for compensation, I just object to paying more and more for someone else's misjudgement. He then implies that the "losses" incurred would be shared among the general community. What is he talking about? The "losses" are being paid - on the double, by the self same people who were duped by the overconfidence of the lending agencies in the first place.
Oysterman then goes on with the rather insulting remark that only stupid people allowed themselves to be forced into these mortgages. I remember well that these mortgages were aggressively pushed and confidently declared as the only sensible thing to do when seeking a mortgage. Young couples put their trust into the so-called expertise of the experts. There was no palette of options presented and the endowment mortgage was flavour of the month across all the agencies. Does it not strike Oysterman as rather ironic that thousands of "stupid people" in the UK were given their money back -not compensated - by the UK Regulator who took the sensible and provable view that these mortgages failed purely due to the agency's commercial shortcomings.
As well as having a hazy knowledge of the topic, Oysterman has an even less talent as a comedian. He makes the laughable comment that he has a UK mortgage but would be ashamed to seek justice the same as everyone else. How noble and altruistic of him? It's a pity that his sense of shame is not shared by the banks and others in the financial fraternity who are shamelessly turning the screw on innocent mortgage holders by insisting on their pound of flesh for the failure of their own financial projections. The contention that all this was a risk - openly entered into by the mortgage holder - is rubbish. This fiction was also nailed by the UK Regulator when he pointed out that the terms of many mortgages were often years beyond the retirement age of the customer. He went further to say that it was the sole responsibility of the lending agency to prudently judge the mortgage holder's ability to pay. This proved that the agencies were confident that there would be piles of money built up to cover the residual cost of the mortgage after the customers retirement.
Finally, Oysterman brings in the concept of the "punt paying off". Perhaps he could consider my racing analogy. Imagine a bookie who offers 100/1 on a horse only to find it romps home ahead of the favourites. The bookie then asks all the winning punters to pay him back all his losses (over a few years mind you) because he should have given shorter odds. Then one can imagine Oysterman ( so ashamed of his winnings) running to the bookie to pay him back. Yeah, right!