As righteous as that position is, “they” will still get their bail out and you will still end up paying for it. Well, if only we could refuse to pay our taxes and by that route refuse to bail out the banks. Then, we could really teach those “geniuses” a lesson.

I read this article and recalled what one of my clients told me about “walking away.” She said that the government was going to do all it can to bail out the banks, the brokers and the many homeowners who bought homes beyond their means. As a taxpayer, she is contributing to the bail out and therefore feels justified in walking away from her upside down mortgage. She figures it’s her money in the end anyway.

I’m not so quick to put all the blame on homeowners. Banks who approved the loans and sold them off as derivatives also refuse to deal symmetrically with the consequences of home price decreases. If you have a pension fund that invested in these derivatives, you got walked out on by the banks when they wrote-down their assets in mortgage backed securities.