As I was thinking about everything that has gone on this week i thought of a crack dealer analogy. The banks who have engaged in highly irresponsible lending practices, in some cases even predatory lending practices, are a little like crack dealers pushing their drug (easy cheap money) on the users who were either too dumb or too hooked on the material ride to stop themselves form doing something stupid (after all all the realtors, bankers, etc were saying house prices were rising and could never fall, they couldn't lose right?) Just as when dealing with real crack dealers, they should take the hardest hit. The users (homeowners) should get rehab (mortgage workout). Instead the dealers got the "get out of jail free" pass and the users are going to get screwed along with the rest of us good citizens (anyone under any illusion that this isn't going to substantially raise rates, especially great for those of us who have responsibly been waiting for the housing bubble to pop before buying). Upside down world where the US (even global)economy and the American taxpayer is at the mercy of the crack dealer. Puts Jeffersons' quote in to perspective doesn't it. "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."