[tightasadrum]

This whole mess should not be looked at as an opportunity to kill the wounded. Trust me on this one: if banks, there investors and the borrowers all go under, and that drives us deep into a recession/depression, then corporate business notes and bonds will be the next victims. That would make the sub-prime mess look like a stroll in the park. Business weakens, jobs disappear, housing values sink, etc. It's all connected my friends. You might not like mega-corp, businesses in general and the distasteful things it forces people to go through, but every one of us needs the system they all represent.

I don't care much for the snakes who wrote the bad loans with no documentation or even the flippers who lied about living in the home they never did. Nor do I think much of the so-called experts who dreamed up ways to leverage their banks into insolvency without any idea of how they would recover the collateral if needed if defaults occurred. But I DO care about the value of my real estate, the strength of the USD, value of my financial assets (which represents ownership in the whole system), the US and world commerce, and the future for my daughter in this world.

Write your congressman. That's a great idea, if you're a citizen ,AND you vote. But give him or her some advice that he or she might be able to use to fix this mess, not make it worse.

What is NOT useful are mobs of uninformed people screaming for someone's head just because they "think" their taxes might go up a few bucks! You'll have plenty more to worry about than paying taxes, like eating and paying the mortgage.