{"id":19741,"date":"2010-05-14T09:02:58","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T09:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/60_minutes-strategic_default_walking_away_from_mortgages\/"},"modified":"2010-05-14T09:02:58","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T09:02:58","slug":"60_minutes-strategic_default_walking_away_from_mortgages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=19741","title":{"rendered":"60 minutes&#8211;Strategic Default: Walking Away from Mortgages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite some indications that the economy is recovering, the housing market remains a disaster area. Currently, about seven million homeowners are behind on their mortgages and that number is only getting worse.<\/p>\n<p>Banks, with the help of the government, are offering some relief to homeowners who&#8217;ve lost jobs and just can&#8217;t meet their payments.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a growing number who can pay but are simply walking away from houses that are now worth as little as half of what they paid for them.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s called &#8220;strategic default.&#8221; People have done the math and decided making those monthly payments is just throwing money away, leaving the mortgage holders &#8211; the banks &#8211; as zookeepers of an ever-growing parade of white elephants.<\/p>\n<p>In the past year it is estimated that at least a million Americans who can afford to stay in their homes simply walked away.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2010\/05\/06\/60minutes\/main6466484.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;segmentTitle\">Read it all or watch the video <\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite some indications that the economy is recovering, the housing market remains a disaster area. Currently, about seven million homeowners are behind on their mortgages and that number is only getting worse. Banks, with the help of the government, are<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=19741\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,149,168,600,593,585,596,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-housingreal-estate-market","category-personal-finance","category-the-banking-systemsector","category-the-credit-freeze-crisis-of-fall-2008the-recession-of-2007","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}