The news on the radio today reports that the Senate is meeting to discuss what to do about the subprime/m ortgage/foreclosure mess that we find ourselves in. This after our government urged lenders to be more accomodating to potential buyers of homes. The government wanted more people, even if they did not qualify for a loan, to be come elgible for a home loan. Because of that desire we now find ourselves in a mess. Can everyone say bail out?

There were a ton of mistakes made here including unscrupulous things like not putting people into the right mortgages in order to earn a substantial and shareable fee. I am still trying to comprehend why it is legal to bundle mortgages, an extremly risky business, into funds and then sell them to people. How dumb is that.

The question we are facing is do we want a bail out and if so what type do we want? Are we going to bail out everyone including folks that had credit scores that allowed them to qualify for a conventional mortgage but took a subprime so they could over buy on a house. Do we bail out the no doc folks like the strawberry pickers who made $600 a week and purchased a $720,000 home and were illegal aliens to boot. Or do we bail out the guy kinda in the middle. Needed the subprime, got it, but didn't realize that it was going to go through the roof in three years and is now, in a down market, unable to refi his home.

Personally I'm moving toward not helping anyone but my compassionates side, yes I have one, is slapping me in the back of the head and telling me that I can't be that way particularly since we are 20 days away from Christmas. But let me tell you that one of the things I am going to push lenders for is the pre-settlement issuance of the paper work buyers must sign prior to buying the home and not fly through it at the settlement table. Full disclosre and I mean full disclosure must be forthcoming and it must happen now. Between this mess and the Savings and Loan fiasco in the early 1990's, we must get this industry in line. To those of you who do your job well and I know you represent the vast majority, my finger pointing is not at you. To those of you who have problems with ethics, and I mean anyone involved in a business that involves ethics, you need some work. And last but not least, we must take a serious look at a government that is constantly trying to do good, so they tell us, by sticking their noses into places where they do not belong and one thing that means is that we remind them of the emumerated powers and the tenth amendment.