We always look for somebody other than ourselves to blame...

How Missed Signs Contributed to a Mortgage Meltdown - New York Times

But the cast of characters who missed signals like the rise of delinquencies and foreclosures is becoming easier to identify. They include investment banks happy to sell risky but lucrative mortgage debt to hedge funds hungry for high interest payments, bond rating agencies willing to hope for the best in the housing market and provide sterling credit appraisals to debt issuers, and subprime mortgage brokers addicted to high sales volumes.

The Simple Dollar » Five Money Lessons For Preschoolers - And Applying Them To My Own Child

Love this person's perspective and grounding. Live within your means, not like the Joneses.

Credit crunch imperils lender - Los Angeles Times

This is worse than I had imagined it could get.

At some branches, managers would buy lunch every day for their staff to keep them at their desks working. One manager at a branch in Van Nuys was known to keep a case of Red Bull by his desk for employees to tap when their energy flagged.

Like in the dot-com boom and bust...

More than one-third of all mortgages sold to Fannie Mae comes from Countrywide.

Nothing like the government putting a lot of eggs in one basket!

A bailout of Countrywide would make the government's efforts to save automaker Chrysler in the 1970s look puny.

Especially since Chrysler is doing so well now (not). It seems to me that Countrywide should be allowed to fail...and Fannie Mae should have to carry the debt, at whatever terms they can negotiate with mortgage holders. It may mean that other mortgage companies could service the debt and be given appropriate (i.e., fair) compensation for doing so with zero risk.

Could be a windfall for banks like Washington Mutual, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.