Submitted by James Jaeger, Dec 6, 2007 10:00

While not excusing any predatory lending that MAY have occurred, mortgage lenders and Wall Street are not to blame for the subprime mortgage "crisis". It flies in the face of common sense. Why would mortgage lenders voluntarily conspire to lose millions of dollars and put several of themselves out of business? I think the order of blame is as follows:

1- Congress. They have passed laws the last few years mandating subprime mortgage lending to enable more families to afford homes. While there may have been good intentions involved, forcing lenders to accommodate folks who would not otherwise qualify with "creative financing", distorts the market and produces a high default rate. Congress now ironically wants to "fix" the problem that they themselves created.

2- President Bush. For encouraging the above and signing those silly notions into law.

3- The instability of the dollar as described in the article.

4- Local governments. Their restrictive land use laws - environmentally inspired and otherwise - have severely restricted the availability of homes and made the ones that are built excessively expensive.

5- The mortgage purchaser. (Boy, I hate to "blame the victim"!) However, it takes at least two parties to agree to a mortgage contract. Did the buyers know what they were signing and the risks involved? Yes they did, if they actually read the six or more disclosure forms before they signed them. In their zeal to purchase a (maybe bigger) home in a highly inflationary housing market (some home prices doubled in the preceding 5 years), they may not have properly assessed their financial vulnerability.

6- Global Warming. Just because it gets the blame for most undesirable things nowadays.

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