How to Keep a Promise: Laymen Answers to the Financial Crisis

Abstract

This article is a case study, providing a possible interpretation of the current Hungarian financial-legal culture.
How to apply those terms and conditions in long-term loan agreements in financial crisis, which are favourable or seemingly irrelevant in good times but turn out to be disadvantageous, sometimes even disastrous in bad times. How to calculate and allocate risks, what is acceptable and what is foreseeable to laymen?
The focus here is on the laymen attitudes towards long-term contractual obligations and performances in the global financial crisis: whether debtors’ contractual obligations must be fulfilled, what should be construed as an excuse for non-performance, whether there should be measures designed to protect the debtors more, if yes, at whose expense – the creditors (rather preventive measures) or the taxpayers (rather restitutive measures) –, if no, how to allocate ideally the risks and liabilities, is profit-making an evil per se, that needs to be managed?