Debtor's Prison & Forty Lashes

Check also this excerpt from the WSJ that the poor little rich girl ran:

"People have to be responsible for their own actions," says Harry Lancz, a small-business owner in Traverse City, Mich. He holds a pair of fixed-rate mortgages, one for his primary residence, which has been for sale for six months, and one for a second home in Louisiana. "What are you going to do when their credit cards get due and they can't pay? Are you going to bail them out on that, too?"

No, because the credit card industry purchased enough legislators to make it much more difficult to declare bankruptcy a couple of years ago.

Must be easy for a small business owner to get self-righteous about poor people.

Also from the WSJ, a mortgage banker:

says he made a bad investment decision when he bought a $600,000 oceanfront home last December with two subprime loans. But he's committed to making the $6,000 in monthly payments -- and the higher payments once the rates go up.

"A lot of people are trying to point fingers and get themselves out of something they put themselves into," he says. "I put myself in this position. I need to find a way to make it work."

And how is Mr. Mortgage Banker, who should, of all those on the face of this planet, know what a good or bad position is in the first place, going to "find a way to make it work?" Selling even more bad mortgages to other suckers? Get a night gig driving a taxi? Stick up liquor stores? Start counterfeiting? Really? What's he going to do?

Mr. Miller [the incompetent mortgage banker] says that the rate-freeze proposal reminds him of a television commercial: The announcer asks, "Do you owe back taxes?" A client responds, "I settled for half of what I owe." Says Mr. Miller: "How's that fair? Everything seems to be backward."

What would Mr. Miller say if he were offered a better deal on his "bad investment decision?" Turn it down & stick to his original deal? Is he in favor of the maximum sentence on all criminal convictions? And opposed to plea bargaining of any kind? Has he ever changed the terms of a mortgage deal? As one of the local sports columnists says: "These people live among you."