The mortgage bailout, from a former employee

The first time I graduated college my degree was in business. My first job out of school was in the Mortgage business. ( I will keep all company names out of this in the interest of fairness) I worked in the mortgage industry as sales through underwriting for five years during the housing boom and the beginning of the wain. I have seen a lot. In the beginning it was great because there was lots of money to be made for me and most of the time I was helping people refinance and save money. It was a win win situation. As my career progressed and time moved on the loans began to change and there was a huge market for BCD loans as they are called, high risk loans. Borrowers with very low credit scores buying houses with little money down or refinancing almost all or over the equity of their home. Most loans we did were 2/28 adjustable loans meaning they would begin to adjust after the first 2 year period. People were barely qualifying on the intial low rate. I saw so many shiesty things go on. Income was pushed up, debt pushed down, comps that weren't really the best comps but we needed the value and other things of other sorts. We pushed through loans that I knew in my heart people would soon not be able to afford. It no longer felt good to do my job. I was combing through pages and pages of bad credit reports to try and give people loans they weren't going to be able to pay. It was false hope. I watched this go on for a while before I moved on. I knew this was coming. The situation we are in now with tons of bad mortgages and a $700 billion bail out plan as the NY Post proclaims today, is no fault but our own. If I saw this coming then those who are many years my senior and wiser than me had to see it too. But we pushed for every last dollar we could make, until most of the companies I used to work for are now out of business, people are out of their homes and America's finances are in a very bad place. All over the headlines every day is how this bad debt is effecting our economy. I hear people around me discussing that they haven't seen things this bad since the depression. In a way I hope so. I hope this pushes us back a little bit and maybe forces us as Americans to see things in a new light. To learn to live more simply and spend less. That we don't always need more, bigger, and better that we can be happy with the small things and it is not our possesions that will bring us the kind of joy we are looking for. I hope the CEO's loose their ridiculous salaries and their excess lifestyles. I hope hope hope we can all learn from this.