Wondering Why Home Owners with Dicey Mortgages Should Get Some Assistance, Too?

In short, here's the deal. First, skip over the home owner who is losing his/her house and whether they made a bad business decision. Instead, put your mind on the bigger picture, i.e., ask youself what happens to the values of your own house and other supposedly non-affected owners?

Now, you're pointed in the right direction because the danger in not bailing out troubled home owners has a direct effect on all their neighbor's values. The bottom line -- a surplus of homes coming on the market all at once drags down everyone's values. Worse yet, should some of these emergency "for sales" not get sold, the homes sit empty. No one mows the yard ... sometimes someone even breaks in ... and the end result is that values go down further. Buyers get nervous and don't want to choose a neighborhood where things look like they're on the down-hill.

Of course, it wouldn't be fair to just give a tax-payer supported break to either the in-trouble home owner or his crappy lender, so we hope you'll support things that can protect tax-payers across the board, e.g.,

1. For home owners in trouble, support for a lower interest rate but also a commitment to pay back the assistance when the home is sold some years later.
2. For the big firms that made the bad business decisions, (1) taking federal assistance should equally require a promise for pay-back, just like we would support for the homeowners caught in the rising interest rate trap, and (2) for the executives that already have been paid the big bucks, let's make sure those golden parachutes are prohibited ... or failing that, taxed at 90%.