Craven

A lot of people, referring to subprime loans and other foreclosure-inducing circumstances like to blame borrowers who "should have known better" than to get into too much debt. But when you read descriptions of some common practices, it's pretty clear that borrowers were not only misled, but were sometimes completely manipulated.

Some ... reps actually falsified the loan applications in order to steer prime borrowers to subprime loan officers. These were loans applicants who either should not have been given loans or who qualified for a prime loan. One means of falsifying loan applications that I learned of involved cutting and pasting credit reports from one applicant to another.

There are scenes that evoke Midas sifting through his heaps of gold coins. And yet it's the lenders we're bailing out...