Reply #65: Right back at you if you believe everyone in this mess does.

[Hansel]

The percentage is very small. I work at a bank, for a period of time as an analyst in credit card collections and my daughter worked in mortgage services. I have some knowledge on the subject. I also grew up in some a very poor neighborhood and worked in the inner city for a decade at a community service organization.

The vast majority of people are not in the categories you are talking about. Does it make you feel superior to pretend that everyone in need is some con person? That they don't legitimately work as hard or maybe harder than you do but their circumstances put them in a bad place? Too many years of the Reagans of the world using the most vulnerable as examples of people you don't want to be like to get people to vote for them?

You're living in a cynical fantasy world that doesn't exist wholesale like you pretend it does.

Let's talk about people taking tax payer money from others. Let's talk about Kansas case in point, because I assume you are from Kansas by your name. Kansas gets $1.12 back in federal taxes for every dollar they pay in. Those of us from Minnesota get only $.72 for every dollar we pay in. Maybe those of us in Minnesota should be tired of Kansas being a "welfare state". But for some reason this quite Liberal state isn't whining about that. I don't really care because I believe Kansas needs it. It's what being a good American citizen is all about.

Edit to add: Speculators known as flippers have been excluded from government mortgage programs so far and there is no reason to believe this won't continue. Even so, the vast majority of people who are upside down in their mortgages are not speculators. They are people who are losing their homes.