Depends what you mean by "wrongly". Did those people owe the money? In almost all cases, yes. Did they fall behind on their payments? In almost all cases, yes.

People are trying to create a narrative that people got into this mess through no fault of their own. That people were powerless to resist the lure of easy credit and ever rising real estate prices. That you could use the equity in your home as easy as an ATM machine.

The truth is that most of these people knew exactly what they were doing and willfully ignored the downside dangers. Now that the downside has happened, they want to blame it all on someone else. There's plenty of that to go around, but you pick out a house first before you go anywhere near a bank.

The Pelosi IPO is actually worse than insider trading. It stinks of a bribe.

"But Pelosi aides said that her husband, Paul, did not gain any special access to the IPO. He purchased them through his existing broker at Wells Fargo, one of the 41 banks that were underwriters in the $17.9 billion IPO, the largest in U.S. history."

No ordinary investor can just call up a broker and get the IPO price in an underwriting like this. No. Way. In. Hell. Typically, when a new issue goes public, all the shares have already been subscribed, mostly to large clients of the underwriters with a few set aside to bribe people with. Aristocracy of Pull, indeed.

Ordinary investors get what's left over after the shares hit the secondary market. I think what annoys me most about Nancy Pelosi is that her excuses insult my intelligence. I'm going to call up my broker now and get in on the Facebook IPO.

Maybe because the original article says no such thing and you're just making s__t up.

BTW, I see the Guy Fawkes mask and I bet you have no idea who Guy Fawkes was and why he tried to blow up the English Parliament.

One thing that the media won't let you in on: Taxes are cumulative.

Here's a simple and simplistic example: Let's say a company sells something for $1000 which cost them $900 to make and sell. They made a profit of $100. If the company is a corporation, they are subject to a max 35% tax rate so $35 goes to corporate taxes leaving $65. Let's say that get paid out to the shareholders (i.e. owners) as a dividend. The shareholders are then subject to a max 15% tax on that dividend ($9.75 if you do the math). So the cumulative taxes on that $100 profit is actually 44.75%.

So as an investor, Romney's tax rate is much higher than it would appear.

Thanks Mr. Stranahan. There is a thing that economists call The Greater Fool Theory. It states that you can always find someone stupider than you who will buy something from you for more than what you paid. This is usually in play in any kind of asset bubble. Think house flippers.

There is something I call The Wrong End of the Greater Fool Theory: When there isn't anyone stupider than you. That's when asset bubbles pop.

You're not wrong if Nevada is a non-recourse state.

In a non-recourse state, the mortgage is secured solely by the value of the house. In a foreclosure sale, if the bank can't get back what they loaned out, too bad. In a recourse state, like New York, the bank can still come after you for any shortfall from the foreclosure sale.

The reason that Wells Fargo foreclosed? Apparently it wasn’t hardship on the part of the Vieiras family. They simply stopped making payments to Wells Fargo because they felt that an appraisal conducted by an independent firm was “fraudulent.”

This makes no sense. They stopped making payments because they thought they were overcharged for the house? An appraisal is done so that the bank can get an idea if the property is worth what the bank loans out. In other words, the appraisal is done to minimize risk to the bank. It has nothing to do with whatever amount the purchaser agrees to pay for the house. That happens before the bank ever gets involved.

Here's what I think happened: The real estate crash caused their Reno house to go underwater on the mortgage. Instead of walking away (Is Nevada a non-recourse state? Someone help me here) and taking the lumps on their credit score, they're trying to claim fraud to have the whole purchase nullified.

“Despite the foreclosure, both of us still maintain near perfect credit scores,” Vieira said, “but due to something that is completely not our fault, we can’t take advantage of the low mortgage rates now and switch to a 30-year fixed. It just creates so much uncertainty in our life.”

Are these people complete idiots or do they think that everyone else is? You just stiffed the bank and claimed they cheated you (how?) and you can't understand why no one would want to loan you money again? Sheesh!

The biggest problem when the Alaska pipeline was built was how to keep it from sinking into the permafrost.

Oil in the pipeline has to be heated in order to stay viscous, otherwise it would become like wax. The problem then was that the heated oil would melt the permafrost causing the ground underneath the pipe to subside and potentially cause the pipe to rupture. How they solved this was by putting the pipe above ground resting on supports and attaching passive radiators to the support structures.

It never occurs to environmentalists that there are people who much smarter than them who figure out how to solve problems instead of just complain about them.

My advice to you is that you should think a little more before calling other people dumb.

Corporation: from Latin corporatus, pp. of corporare "to form into a body".

Women don't fart either (so I'm told). Does that mean they're not people?

There are a number of flaws in your thesis.

You fail to define exactly who is rich and who is poor and by what standards. Assets? Income? Someone who's retired, paid off the house and living off their savings would be classified as poor by the standard of income but rich by the standard of assets. Someone else who makes 250K and blows it all shopping and eating out and paying a ton in rent with a big credit card debt would be income rich but asset poor. So unless you can define exactly what you mean, don't bother spouting off further. And "anyone who has more money than me" doesn't cut it.

When you're comparing two group thirty years apart, you're making the flawed assumption that these are the same people in each group. In some cases they are and in some cases they're not. Someone could have started out with nothing and have been classified as poor. By working, saving, investing, and, yes, luck, they could be the rich thirty years later. And it goes the other way too. Just ask anyone who invested with Madoff. But again we're back to the problem of what determines whether someone is rich or poor.

And don't get me started on what's wrong with your tax rate thesis.