In the first place, blow it out your ass. You have no way of assessing my emotional state and whether or not it is "calm." I have no personal issues with this deal whatsoever, beyond simple interests of decency, as I have never been in debt in my life, and have absolutely no connection to the banking industry. Secondly, I cannot understand why so many of you people throw up that caveat about "just for the sake of argument" and then snivel and cower behind it when someone argues against it. If it is not your position, then why take criticism of the position personally and get so defensive about it? All I did was attack the position, yet you not only take it personally but go on to extrapolate absurd assumptions about me from my refutation of an abstract premise, despite the total lack of personal information offered in my post beyond my rejection of that premise. If you do mean this as simply an intellectual exercise, stop making it personal for both of us.

Finally, how is the bank wrong for trying to make money? That is why it exists! It is a business, not a public utility or private charity. I did not make refute the argument that the banks are responsible for the crash, because YOU did not make an argument. It was simply an unsupported assertion designed to lend artifical moral weight to a justification of what is essentially theft. I rejected that point in the argument both because it is untrue and because it is irrelevant. Regardless of what was the cause of the housing collapse (have you actually done any research or are you just repeating what commentators and the media have asserted? Try reading "The Housing Boom and Bust" by Thomas Sowell), a loan recipient did not borrow money from "the banks" and thus has no right to cheat the particular institution with which he is in business, any more than you have the right to steal from a store because of personal objections to "big business" or murder a congressman because government policies cause death. The only case where the bank's actions might justify acting in an otherwise immoral manner against them is when their specific actions in the case in question were immoral and unjustified.

As for your absurd contention that one no longer is obligated to repay a loan because the item you purchased with that money has depreciated in value, it is plain that you have little or no understanding of economic matters. The actual or theoretical value of a commodity does change the obligations in a transaction. There are grounds for nullifying a fraudulent transaction, but in the case you describe in this reply, that is a simple case of a poor decision on the part of the mortaged homeowner. Purchasing a house that has since declined in value WHATEVER THE REASON does not invalidate the purchase, unless it was sold with the knowledge of the seller of the factors causing the decline, and this knowledge was deliberately withheld from the buyer. Such is not the case if the house lost value because of the market. The general drop in housing prices does NOT free the buyer of the obligation in his transaction, and it especially does not free him of his obligation to pay his debt that enabled him to purchase the house.