Ahem. If I told you that my childhood home had been foreclosed, how do you think I’d feel about the current mortgage melee?

I read an LAT story about how government intervention on the current mortgage loan crisis is unlikely.

The Bush administration has ruled out a blanket program to help homeowners stave off foreclosure, reasoning that it’s “not an appropriate role for the federal government,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.And at the state level, “there is only a limited amount we can do for people who are affected right now,” said Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), chairman of the Assembly Banking Committee.

By one estimate, as many as 460,000 people in California — and 2.4 million nationwide — could lose their homes because they are unable to make payments on high-cost sub-prime loans or to refinance them to more favorable terms.

Well, I should hope so! I can think of at least two people I know personally off the top of my head who bought houses in the past year who didn’t have any kind of down payment, nor good credit (and one of them doesn’t even have a steady job!), yet were still given loans to buy houses.

So, if you were given a gun, would you just go around shooting it just because someone gave it to you? No! So just because you get a loan to buy a house (which also comes with property taxes and maintenance costs) doesn’t mean you should. It’s not the exact same as paying rent, people. Good God, go do some homework.

I’m tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions. I guess I learned my lesson early – in college, I racked up bills (with some help from my family) that I couldn’t pay back in the long run, so I’ve had bad credit and have lived on cash for the past 7 years. But stories like mine are a dime a dozen, so it should not be hard for people to learn from the mistakes of others.

Instead, people think, oh, the real estate market is booming, oh, real estate value keeps going up and I can sell at a profit, oh, that sort of thing won’t happen to me…

Remember the old adage? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.