If this Country can give trillions of dollars to the bank at zero percent interest, and

[midnight]

a tax break to boot.... Then why can't the banks turn around and re-write underwater mortgages at 1 or 2 percent interest rate? There has got to be a lot of money generated from all these underwater loans with just the 1 or 2 percent?

[customerserviceguy]

1. Are you talking about a mere rate reduction

or actually writing the principal balance down, too? What happens when people can't even afford that?

And what do you tell people who paid off every dollar of their own home mortgages taken out thirty years ago? Do you just say, "Sorry, suckers!" ???

[midnight]

7. You ask some good questions... I know there are people paying 9 percent on mortgages that are

underwater... If the rates are around four percent and they will only give out nine percent something is wrong... The people who payed off their mortgages were most likely not frauded which is good news for them.... And I'm sure they want people in homes and not on the street... Unless their Republicans then I don't care what they think...
Those people frauded could use all the help they can get... write down the principal balance too..

[customerserviceguy]

10. You speak of people being frauded

Did they not sign agreements to buy houses at inflated prices, with mortgage terms that could foreseeably become onerous? Who's doing the 'frauding', was it the people who sold their homes for inflated prices?

Any time there is a bubble, there is always a deflation that takes place to correct things. This particular bubble did not involve stock manipulation, or a fad, or even the classic tulip bulbs. It involved something that reached deeply into the whole banking system, and the whole house of cards fell down. There's no pumping it back up artificially.

Prices have to fall to their natural market level, and that simply means that a lot of people are going to be underwater for quite some time to come. In every bubble's rise and collapse, there are winners and there are losers.

[valerief]

2. CAN vs. WILL. They're light years away from each other when it comes to 1%ers sharing wealth.

They don't share. Period.

[TK421]

3. forget it, the banks win in this economy, apparently n/t

[liberal N proud]

4. The mortgage holders are not too big to fail

That is the difference.

We don't amount to shit in the scheme of all this.

[xchrom]

5. Because 'extraction' from the masses is a real economic theory

& it is being practiced on you & me.

[SixthSense]

6. people can't even pay off principal

it's not going to help... all sorts of assistance has been tried but the fact is that people are going to have a hard time paying off bubble mortgages in a depression economy - the money just isn't there to pay

[midnight]

8. I'm not sure what assistance programs you are referring to, but Obama

allowed the Hamp program to be run by the banks on a voluntary basis... Now Obama gave them, the banks, credit for being screwed so he should of known they would of never volunteered.... Because they didn't and that is why the program failed....

[Kennah]

9. If enough of us go bust, we just squat.