For me, this includes the people who bit off more than they could chew and assumed mortgages they could never hope to pay when the interest came due.
There is a lot of talk about helping out the beleagured homeowners facing foreclosure, but I can't afford to buy half the house that many of them also could not afford, but on which they are defaulting. And I'm supposed to help bail them out because they made stupid decisions? I think not.
I'll grant you that those who bit off more than they could chew do not deserve a bail-out; however:
If all "those above" default on their mortgages we will end up with a real-estate market flooded with re-pos and a banking industry in melt-down (if the bad loans were individually held by the original lender banks we might adopt a "tough luck" attitude to the bank; however, the tainted paper has been repackaged into a variety of different financial products which are now held by all sorts of entities, including public employee and individual pension plans.
Instead of simply evicting the half-dead beats and ending up with no income, a non-marketable property, and a family now dependent on the state for housing, we might be better off working a deal to leave the owners in their homes, collect what they can afford, and attach a property lien to be repaid at time of future sale.
der Brucer
