Welcome to the Bizarro Universe, also known as present day America.

Forget what you thought you knew, we already live in a world where high achievement is ridiculed and mediocrity is rewarded.

We live in a land where many think we can spend our way out of debt.

And don’t forget, in mortgage land we plan to reward the irresponsible as well.

Now finally, a renewed effort to punish the responsible In a letter to Michelle Malkin from one of her readers:

I want to share this story with you, and you may share it with your readers if you wish. I ask only that my name be left out.

5 years ago while we were in the middle of putting an addition on our home - the final step in our remodeling - my wife was forced to leave her job on long term disability due to very serious back issues. She had been having back problems - including two surgeries prior to this so when she began her job at a nearby university we purchased disability insurance. Even with the insurance, we lost 40% of her income. We went from things being a little tight but comfortably manageable to mortgaged over our heads instantly. For five years we have managed to bootstrap our way from month to month by drawing down savings to cover whatever we were short on the mortgage and putting any extra that came our way back into the savings account.

After four more surgeries and little relief it is quite clear that my wife will not be returning to work, and the savings well is nearly dry.

We recently contacted our mortgage lender, WAMU/JP Morgan and outlined the situation for them. Explaining that while we had never been even a minute late, in about five to six months we would likely be unable to make a payment. We weren’t looking to get out of our debt, but to hopefully restructure it to take some of the pressure off, and hopefully keep our home. We thought we were doing the right thing by being proactive. We thought they would be happy to work with us before we defaulted.

We thought wrong.

They took all of our financial information to review, but the person we were working with explained that they really didn’t have anything in place to help people like us.

Repeat: “they didn’t have anything in place to help people like us”  That’s right, nothing in place to help actual responsible people who want, and are willing to work, to do the right thing.

He recommended that we stop paying the loan because once we were in default it would be easier for them to work with us. I have to admit that I thought about the benefit of saving a couple of months worth of our mortgage. I thought about it for about ten seconds. Then I sat down and took another look at what we squeeze out of our budget. Just tightening the belt further would buy us a month or two. So I started taking on extra work on the side.

They actually told them to STOP PAYING THE LOAN because they could only help them if in default.

translation: “sorry but you currently qualify as a producer with some semblance of ambition and personal responsibility and therefore don’t qualify for our socialist program”

Seriously, how far have we come that we can’t/won’t help someone who is actually working but needs help, but we can help someone once they pass the fail threshold?  That’s the equivilent of not offering any preventative medicine saying “come back when you’re really sick and we can treat you”.

Read the author’s last line below:

I don’t know if we will be able to restructure our loan, but I [am] damn certain we will never miss a payment. You can count me proudly among the chumps.

 This is someone I would gladly help to pay their mortgage.

DMobile Economic, Values