And yes I did say slavery
During the course of a Wednesday morning radio interview [1] with Twist, host Charles Goyette [2] made an interesting remark. "It’s the buyer’s fault, after all," he said, implying that home buyers, whether investors or homeowners, are grownups and responsible for the obligations they enter into. Regular reader "Mike" made a similar point [3] earlier when he took me to task for using the "S" word (slavery) [4] late last month to describe the likely fate of many middle class borrowers should they actually have to pay the principal and interest on the loans they are saddled with now that the bubble has burst. Although my analysis is still very sketchy, I feel the situation for Joe Sixpack is sufficiently serious that the word slavery is not out of the question. Be warned that what follows is going to read more like a sermon than an argument. That the distressed borrowers and their families must not be called to account beyond a certain point, laying aside the practicalities, is simply an aspect of certain "bleeding heart" [5] tendencies that I will also try to justify.
