What do you think about the current mortgage mess?

Who's to blame here: Borrowers? Lenders? Wall Street Investment firms?

They all played the game, they are all getting burned.

Look at it the opposite way... Smart borrowers didn't get burned. If everyone were a smart borrower, then there would be no mess as no one would sign some of these stupid documents.

Lenders relaxed credit standards and pushed exotic loans. If they hadn't been stupid and relaxed their standards and pushed stupid loans this wouldn't have happened.

Wall street investment firms bought the loans that were packaged together into securities believing that the high rates of return didn't carry much risk. If they weren't stupid then they wouldn't have done this reducing the number of stupid loans.

These groups ALL contributed.

yes, there are going to be stories of people being taken advantage of and pushed into things by unscrupulous lenders...

Lenders. F-ing Vultures!

Lenders in the fly by night mortgage business that absolutely abused the system and took advantage of a lot of people. But will come out of this and we will see things turn around.

Borrowers. People overextended themselves in order to own something they couldn't really afford. Lenders also were sneaky about trying to make seriously bad deals (arm mortgages, interest-only, etc) look like great things to buyers. Bottom line is that each person can only take care of themselves, and if you don't crunch the numbers on what a mortgage is going to cost you, you're going to end up in trouble.

The large brokerage houses target the poor and blacks in the subprime scheme. Now they get to write off there mortgage back securities that went bust when there hedge on the poor did not work when the party were unable to pay for these mortgage when those revolving terms kick them in the butt. Countrywide was the biggest culprit and they should be investigated by the Justice Department. Where are the hearings on blacks and the poor losing there homes in congress? Hello Hilary and Obama -- asked for their heads.

Probably a little bit of blame belongs to all parties. I think the market it is in the process of turning around. We are starting to see more buyers beginning to look for properties in our office.

without stupid borrowers none of the other parties could have done anything. barrowers are the main blame.