An Industry in Denial: The Path to Recovery As the current foreclosure crisis lingers over the heads of millions of Americans, it is increasingly common for those, qualified or not, to give There is an opinion on who to blame and what should be done to eradicate our foreclosure problem. During the housing bubble, many borrowers outright lied about their income, credit history, or why they wanted to buy a home. Despite their dubious circumstances, they eagerly took advantage of the property boom to get their hands on fancy and luxurious homes; with astronomical mortgages. Hungry for more money, to say the least, many lenders overlooked these obvious fabrications and, in doing so, hid a significant amount of future problems. These undermining tactics, which banks and credit unions say would fill businesses' accounts with double or even triple mortgages owed on a single property; while ignoring the fact that this gross miscalculation would seriously lower the value of these valuable properties. Thus leaving himself the victim of his own plot. Therefore, with so many bad loans on the market, it is no wonder that our current real estate market has been flooded with a wave of foreclosures. Moreover, while the banks and their advocates in Washington delayed attempts to resolve the problem as it arose, they quickly provided incomprehensible mortgages with low "teaser" interest rates, basing qualifications on immediate ability of the applicant to pay the artificially low rate. All the while, knowing that adjustable rate mortgages would cripple applicants' ability to afford the mortgage in the final months....... middle of paper ...... able to 4.6 percent; for many of them, the rate will have to be reduced further, much lower than what banks and credit institutions are prepared to do. Yet in doing so, people will eventually regain their leverage by receiving restructured loans, which will hopefully (without repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression) send them further on the path to safety. In conclusion, as we witness the end of another year of the housing bubble, the inevitable reflections of its troubling consequences in its entirety should be like an “O so familiar” slap in the face. But maybe one day it will cure us of many of our costly and misleading ideas about homeownership and remind us that if we build our industries on bad lending practices, people will take advantage of it and we will. we will all pay the price. , as we have been doing for several years.