[UGAalum94]

AGDee, the people that you describe that you know are absolutely the most sympathetic to me, but they also seem to be people who would have been at risk of foreclosure no matter what the terms of the loan were.

It's a tragedy, but I'm not sure there's much the mortgage industry or anyone else can do to keep people in the homes that they've lost the ability to pay for.

Maybe an expansion of Private Mortgage Insurance to protect the buyer too would help, but I don't know how it would work and stay solvent.

If, in some cases, the lose of the job was linked to choice or behavior by the buyer, (of course, I don't mean your friends here, AGDee, but I've known/been related to a lot of people who have made interesting employment decisions that lead to dire financial situations for their families which were not in any way driven by external forces), how are you essentially going to let people choose to turn the cost of their homes over to the insurer and still think that the insurer will stay in the black? I honestly don't know how you'd do it.

I think the mortgage companies that overvalued houses will pay for it if we avoid a big bailout; having the ownership of a bunch of properties that they can't sell will drive companies who did this out of business.

Unfortunately, it might ruin some neighborhoods in the process. But if we do bail them out and put in protective legislation to prevent them from doing it instead, we're almost going to have to put homeownership out of the reach of a lot of risky borrowers. Maybe that's the way it ought to be, but I suspect it's going to trouble many, particularly housing advocates.