I can understand how people, who are seeing their mortgage rates increase because of the types of loans they used to purchase their house, can just up and walk away from their property when they can no longer afford their monthly payments. However, I'll never sympathize with them, because they themselves made the decision to make the purchase using a loan where it was crystal clear that the monthly payment was going to increase over time. And they themselves know what their income buys and what their affordable standard of living is. Their decision to buy was based on two factors: buyer's greed and banker's greed. Sure, in a portion of the home sales the bank was complicit by using lax qualifying requirements in order to make the sale. But no one held a gun to the buyer's head and forced them to buy. The buyers were just rolling the dice and hoping that real estate values would keep increasing, thus increasing their equity and ultimately their bank account balance. Well, the dice came up and they lost. And now, in order to survive, they must walk away from the situation.

There's another type of homeowner who is also walking away from his/her loan obligations. This type can well afford the monthly mortgage payment. They are just walking away from a property that has decreased in value, where the balance of the mortgage is currently higher than the value of the house. This type of behaviour is just pure, unadulterated, immoral greed. They do this because they know, in our current financial times, that credit ratings and other black marks on their financial record will be all but forgotten in a few short years. The consequences of their actions are no longer considered as big a deal as before. Sure, the bank must absorb the financial loss and pass it on to the rest of us in the form of higher loan costs and much tighter restrictions on loans for otherwise good credit risks. But our society's moral compass is now pointing to indifference towards these selfish and greedy people, when, intead, we should all be outraged at this criminal behavior. Shame on all of us for looking the other way.