Understanding the Mortgage Meltdown; What happened and Who's to Blame pg. 4
It would appear that the Fed has failed to curb housing inflation which played a role in this entire debacle then made matters worse and in their efforts or lack there of, to properly supervise banking institutions.
Finally the government, a.k.a. Uncle Sam, the big Kahuna 10,000 pound elephant etc. Where do we begin? How about with: ‘Where were they?’
It now appears that after millions of horses are out of the barn (some horses ran, others were foreclosed upon) the government wants to step in with a bailout to save the rest. While nobody wants to see people lose their homes, the question that must be raised is this: What about all those of us who were responsible? Those of us, who scrimped and saved up a decent down payment, bought less-house than we could afford and who live below our means? Many of us drive older cars and keep them longer. We don’t run out and buy the latest and greatest at inflated prices, we watch, wait and budget.
When the World Trade Center was attacked, families who decided not to sue received government payouts and we certainly don’t begrudge them as I’m sure that given the choice, they’d prefer to still have their loved-ones over the money. The problem, in typical government fashion is that those who were responsible and had insurance policies in place received less than those who were irresponsible and didn’t plan ahead. I’m not talking about dishwashers at Windows on the World and blue collar workers; I’m talking about executives, traders and people who should have known better.
Now our government, the same government that sat by idly watching as this bubble got bigger and bigger despite many warnings, wants to step in and bailout people who are in danger of losing their homes. There has been no talk about educating people, let’s not teach people to fish, rather, let’s give them a fish and bail them out once again at the expense of those who are responsible.
Clearly, by keeping the majority of the population financially ignorant, there is a lot of money to be made by the poverty industry.
Richard Gandon is the Managing Director of The Financial Learning Network. His 'Understanding the Stock Market" course was made into a CD-ROM and is in use in more that 50,000 classrooms nationwide.
Every year since 1998, Richard has teamed up with a fifth grade class in Georgia to teach them about the stock market online.
Richard has more than 20 years of financial services industry experience including as a broker, trader, licensing trainer and managed both a sales group and a Historical Equity & Index Research group at Standard & Poor's. 
