Well, it's more or less official. The government is going to bail out all of the banks who made risky (in many cases read illegal) loans to speculators, shysters, flippers, and worst of all, innocent know-nothing home-buyers who had no business buying a home. If you're a Lehman Brothers stock holder- you've gotta be PO'ed in the extreme. Out of all of the foolishness that has taken place, only one company gets hammered and bankrupted and all of the rest get a pass. Just when you thought the geniuses in the White House and the Congress could not possibly do anything any stupider than  the Iraq adventure, the entire concept of the Homeland Security Administration with its color coded alerts, expanding the already gigantic deficit to give everybody $600, and countless other banalities; now the taxpayers get to bail out the investment bankers. Hell, now they can start giving away mortgages again. There are no new rules, no additional oversight, no further regulation. All that has happened is that short sales have been banned by the SEC. The only people who made any money in the stock market this year have been the short sellers. Now NOBODY makes any money.

Oh well, enough political sniping. This is supposed to be about real estate. Oh wait, all of this IS about real estate. It's about the real estate "crisis" which is really an investment banking crisis with real estate as a scapegoat.

OOOh that's really snarky!! - More next time.