[bshomoic]

Janice Rutherford is a city councilwoman in Fontana. Her neighbors lost their house to foreclosure. She figures they paid about $250,000 for the house. By the time the bank repossessed it, the neighbors owed more than twice that amount: They had borrowed repeatedly against its inflated value, and when values slumped, they were "upside down" on their mortgage — with negative equity.

And we're now supposed to feel sorry for these idiots and bail them out?

[weegee]

NPR’s headline is trying to draw an analogy to wildfires.

Have they ever had an article headlined with Unabating Illegal Imigration Ravages Southern California???

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

And we're now supposed to feel sorry for these idiots and bail them out?

Keating Five to the rescue!

[q_an_a]

Does anyone in Calif remember what happened when Klinton killed the aerospace industry in the LA area? Prices dropped like a stone. My parents bought into a retirement community in the mid 90s for about 150,000 guess how much it is worth today? Real estate always has ups and downs and people have short memories.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A family loots the value of their house to buy a $100,000 motor home for vacations. Can I get a ride ?

[Eva]

I remember, back in the eighties when, thanks to Jimmy Carter, the interest rates rose to 18%. That’s right, 18%, and then they took away the assumable mortgages. If you think the housing market is bad now, you should have seen it back then. People were building customs homes that they never got to move into because they couldn’t afford to convert to a regular mortgage. People were taking seconds to help sell their homes and then when the new buyers defaulted, the sellers ended up either taking the house back, or losing their money because, the housing prices were dropping so fast.

Then came the nineties and attempts to limit growth, and the Mello Roos developer fees and the housing prices went up $100,000 in one year. The prices have been up and down since then but never as bad as they were in the eighties.