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Most specifically, NOT the taxpayers of this country.
There is so much disclosure paperwork when taking out a mortgage that I cannot accept that people "didn't know" their payments would increase. And don't answer that there's "too much paperwork, no one could be expected to read all that stuff". The reason it's there in such quantity is because folks complained about too LITTLE disclosure in the past. Can't have it both ways.
Furthermore, when folks couldn't qualify for a traditional mortgage that HAD to tell them something about a different mortgage that somehow, magically, they could qualify for.
Finally, even if you dismiss any premise of responsibility on the part of the borrowers, the lenders (who are supposed to be the "professionals" in these transactions) certainly had to know they were dealing with low-quality borrowers. Their credit scores display it in cold hard numbers, and their need for such financial instruments is a dead giveaway. They were dealing with low quality, ultra high risk borrowers - and they signed the paperwork anyway. They took the chance. It's a free country, they're welcome to strike any deal they want, but it's wrong on every level I can think of to expect the taxpayers to bail them out when things go predictably sour.
Bush & Co. are wrong, the Fed is wrong, basically everyone is wrong. Once again, I must invoke the first rule of whitewater rescue: "Don't be the second victim." Spreading the misery to virtually everyone in the nation does not make things better and won't keep these people in their houses. Those deals should be allowed to die the natural, predictable death they had structured into them - and the rest of us should be left alone.
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The people and institutions whose names appear on the paperwork, and NO ONE ELSE!!! New 
BoaterTalk 
