Joseph L. Shaefer submits:

The mortgage crisis …that caused the fall in home prices …that exacerbated the credit crisis …that resulted in a crisis of confidence …that led the over-reaching national government to create an over-arching plan to throw trillions at the guilty and punish the innocent…

There is no question that ill-trained and ethically-challenged mortgage brokers, NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) liar loans, bankers who couldn’t decide if they were more stupid or more greedy and finally settled on both, and an avaricious Wall Street that packaged trash and called it trash internally, but marketed it as gilt, all played their role. As we said when I lived in Hawaii, “Yeah, yeah, yeah to all that.” They are all a piece of the whole but the big reason is the one that makes the most sense to those of us with a modicum of common sense — and it involves the fewest variables, as well. In short, the biggest problem is simply buyers with no skin in the game.

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