Make builders, lenders fix the housing mess
The housing industry showed incredible creativity when it came to qualifying people for mortgages they couldn't afford. Let's make its leaders put their thinking caps on again and fix the problem.

By Jim Jubak
Remember Enron? The company claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000 only to file for bankruptcy in 2001 when it turned out that revenues, profits and asset holdings were either wildly overinflated or didn't exist at all.
Losses to shareholders were variously estimated at $60 billion to $80 billion. Those are huge numbers. But when you add up all the fines and settlements paid by the parties the courts decided were responsible for at least part of the fraud, it comes to less than $10 billion.
So now we're in the midst of the mortgage and housing mess, and it's reminding me more and more of the Enron scandal every day.
Inflated revenues? Check.
Accounting fraud? Check.
CEO selling stock just before the company's fortunes tank? Maybe. The Securities & Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into stock sales by Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial (CFC, news, msgs). More on that later.

Before we go down the same unsatisfying road once again, I'd like to propose a different approach to dealing with this latest disaster: Let the punishment fit the crime. Make the companies, the CEOs, the managers and the employees who violated regulations and laws pay off their fines not with cash, but by working out new terms to save the loans they made that are about to go bad.
Hey, who better to fix these mortgages than the companies that made these loans in the first place?
No one left to repair loans
We sure can't leave the industry to fix itself. Because so many mortgage lenders have laid off staff, they don't have enough people to handle all the requests for refinancings and workouts that are flooding their offices. According to Moody's (MCO, news, msgs), lenders have eased terms on just 1% of the subprime-mortgage loans that have reset in January, April and July of this year.
If a subprime borrower can't get someone in the mortgage industry to pay attention, the odds of that borrower going into default go up with every passing month. With more than $350 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages due to reset at higher interest rates in the next 18 months, the problem is only getting bigger.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/MakeBuildersLendersFixTheHousingMess.aspx
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what a refreshing point of view....make those responsible for their actions...will never fly in this country unfortunately....and before anyone screams that the home buyers are at fault I only remind you that many may have been lied to...or had the facts misrepresented...

meant...someone TALKING sense...