Zach is feeling the icy fingers of the recession gripping his throat. He\u2019s a small-business man with a retail store in New York and an investment in a small apartment renovation that hasn\u2019t gotten a buyer. Suddenly, his income is down by 25 percent or so. He has a mortgage on the house in Brooklyn where he lives that he used to be able to afford, but now he\u2019s dipping into his savings to the tune of $2,000 or $3,000 a month to cover his costs, and he\u2019s worried.<\/p>\n
So he called his mortgage bank to see what might be done. The answer was: not much, certainly nothing from any government plans to help homeowners get through the crisis. And for Zach, who\u2019s never gone to the government for anything before, there\u2019s a larger point in that fact.<\/p>\n
To wit: If you\u2019ve behaved responsibly and prudently all these years, you\u2019re on your own. But if you\u2019ve made colossal mistakes of greed and misjudgment \u201d\u201d either by selling billions in mortgages to people who couldn\u2019t afford to pay you back or by being one of the people whose eyes were bigger than their wallets\u201d\u201d you might just get rescued, at the expense of taxpayers like Zach.<\/p>\n