A lot of Americans live in modest homes because that's all they can afford. They've chosen to live within their means and to be financially responsible, but a lot of other Americans have chosen instead to go into serious debt to buy homes they couldn't really afford. They signed on to variable rate mortgages, knowing full well that the rates they were paying were going to go up. As the New York Times put it:
Banks and mortgage lending companies developed an array of subprime mortgages for people with poor credit and exotic loans that allowed people to borrow without putting any money down, or to qualify for mortgages without documenting their incomes.
When the inevitable happened and the rates were raised the borrowers found themselves unable to meet their payments and the lending institutions that made the risky loans have been forced to foreclose and are take the houses.
Now Congressional Democrats and others are demanding that taxpayers bail these people out. Those who chose to live within their means all their lives are being told that they should essentially pay for the houses of those who live above their means, many of whom should never have been permitted to buy a house, or at least not one as expensive as they did buy, in the first place.
This may be the sort of thing Democrats do, but it's hard to see the justice in it. It's as if your neighbor overextended himself on his credit card and is now going house to house demanding that everyone else pay off his debt.
Michelle Malkin has details here.
RLC
