Mr Gilani's article is excellent-thanks

I agree, we need jobs in this country or we'll continue to deteriorate further. However, this continuous bailout of government and banking failures on the backs of those still working hard needs to stop. Wake up taxpayers and think about who you're electing into office — before it's too late!!!

CLEARLY . . . .

The problem was not the idea, "Home owners make for better citizens." The problem was the government bureaucracy to make it happen in a way designed to both fail and make the banks lots of money in the process. [Dodd and Frank, were the biggest recipients of contributions from the banking sector].

After all how many of you learned from history that Columbus wanted to prove the world was round not flat; or that he called the people he discovered "Indians" because he thought he was in India?

Propably 90% of you. But both things are absolute fictions.
Never in Western History did people think the earth was flat. The ancient Greeks assumed it was a perfect sphere and built statues of Atlas holding up sherical shape earths. This was established philiosophical fact. So ingrained was the idea that 10th century monks calculated the circumfrence of the earth (correct to with 1000 miles of what we now know) and in the 12th century got it to within 100 miles.

Columbus called the people Indians because he thought he got to the "Indies" a term then used for all the island chains off the cost of China all the way to India. (including Japan – where he thought he had landed, the Philipenes, Indonesia, etc)

They did not call themselves Japanese, but Arawaks, so he figured he wasn't on the main Island of Japan. On future voyages he explored the whole coast of Nicaragua, but didnt make landfall because he didn't see the cities and ports of China that he knew should be there. But never once did he ever think he was in India.

People don't make the same mistakes because they "didn't learn", they make the same mistakes because they "did learn" what they "were taught" which was wrong.

Bush did the same mistakes as Hoover, because he was under the mistaken understanding that Hoover did nothing. Instead he wanted to do "something" so that he wouldn't be Hoover.. So what did he do? The same mistakes that Hoover made. And the Democrats response is that "Bush did nothing just like Hoover".

There have always been defaults on mortgages. But there have been no "no documentation loans" that is total fiction. My girlfriend bought a condo in 2005, the very height of the market, but she had no choice. It took over 5 months of running back and forth to banks, the FHA, and several mortgage brokers, nearly every day. She had an income of nearly $50,000 working 2 jobs, excellent credit, and the condo was $125,000, it was the 3rd one she looked at, because of the endless demands for documentation, and the banks wouldn't loan her less than $125,000 she wasn't able to close on the first 2. She was not one of those ficticious minimum wage workers buying a half million dollar palacial estate in the Hamptons that the news media keeps claiming. But she was funneled into a "sub-prime" varaible interest loan with the promise that when rates go down so would the mortgage rate. One year later the rates went down, and her mortgage went fron 7.25% to the maximum allowed under contract of 12.25% her payment went from about $900 / month to almost $1500 per month. We have been desperately paying down the principle and have gotton the occassional, rate reduction, and have not missed or even been late on a payment. But the rate increase did severe economic damage to our plans. Most of the home buyers were in the same boat. You couldn't get a fixed rate loan between 2004 and 2006. Banks used any excuse they could find to push varaible rate and interest only loans. The higher the rate the higher the commission.

The reason for the mortgage meltdown was 2 fold. The oil price spike caused a severe economic slowdown, and developers overbuilt expensive properties in economicly weak areas. [the luxury condo craze in Las Vegas for example, "rust belt" revival crreated by the SUV craze] – loss of short term growth that was clearly not sustainable, and the massive government spending increases of the Bush administration.

Government has always been obsessed with maximizing "growth rates" and forgets that every "ghost town" was once a "boom town". When the economy slows down to try and get back to where it should be, government steps in to "stimulate" it. And there in lies the real problem.

This "sub-prime" claim is a fiction, a red herring. A recent studyconcluded that nearly all of the "sub-prime" / high interest rate loans, should have been low interest / "prime mortgages" but the consumers were funneled into them without a choice. People were not given the choice of a fixed 20-year 4% loan, and a 30 year 3% fixed rate loan. Nor were they ever sold a variable rate loan with a low starting "teaser" rate. To the contrary, home buyers were given moderate rates and told that they would go down when interest rates went down, and that the following year they would at not cost get a refinance at a lower rate when the value of the home went up. Many people were "forced into the market" as their rental properties were being converted to condos and sold, or their rents were being driven up by local market conditions, and tax increases.

John