Mortgage Slaves?

Finally, someone has spoken the unspeakable on the foreclosure crisis. In today's WSJ there's an op-ed titled, "Why Be a Nation of Mortgage Slaves?" (subscription req'd).

The politicians have been spouting off for months on this--how it's horrible that homeowners have been the victims of the mortgage crisis and how they need a bailout or foreclosure moratorium to stay in their homes. These pols are blowing smoke. Nobody, I mean nobody, in their right mind wants to be forced to pay an oversized mortgage for an undersized house for the next 30 years. The question is who takes the haircut on these white elephants? The homeowner, the lender, the investor, or the taxpayer? Morally, I think the taxpayer should be absolutely last on this dance card.

I wrote on this before in my blog on Foreclosure Myths. Hopefully we can move the public conversation towards some kind of economic logic. If we want to make houses affordable, all we need to do is stop subsidizing them and let prices fall to a natural level based on comparable rents. We've got a long way to go.