I applaud your response and second it. I cringe at the thought that I moved my family away from SoCal in 2005 because houses quickly moved out of my affordable range and I was *responsible* enough to recognize I couldn’t afford to buy. Now all the former speculators with green in their eyes are playing the victim-of-the-lenders card. I have been saving for a down payment on my first home ever since… have yet to buy… and don’t want my hard earned money taxed to cover the greedy.

Suck it up, folks. You gambled and lost. Now get on with short selling your houses to the rest of us who waited…

As for home loans, there needs to be some personal responsibility for this. When tech stocks crashed, did the government ride in and put money back in people’s 401ks? Did they help Enron employees that lost their life savings because there was a freeze on selling the stock? If you take the risk out of speculation, then what incentive do people have to avoid it? And when it turns out poorly, is the government going to rescue everyone? I’m sure houses will sell when the price is right. Are people and banks going to lose money? Probably, and rightly so. They took risks and it didn’t turn out as planned, suck it up. Are we saying people are too stupid to make their own decisions and accept the consequences? They need someone to hold their hand and bail them out when they make a bad decision? If it was outright fraud on the lender’s part, then the borrower shouldn’t shoulder any of the blame, but in any other situation there has to be some personal responsibility in the matter.

I agree that people should be responsible for their actions and make good on their obligations – but that doesn’t forgive the banks for irresponsible (and sometimes predatory) lending.

I can see how overweight people would be sensitive about it, though. I mean, if you know you need to lose weight, you don’t want your number called out in a hallway full of people. That’s just not necessary, and making a patient feel bad is not the way to encourage weight loss.

As for the homeowner article–great read. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the people who knowingly chose to overextend themselves, but I think the banks are every bit as responsible for deceptive lending practices.

Not sure why women who fear being weighed in the doctor’s office is a failure of the last mile, though. As a woman, I feel that it’s generally best for the self-esteem not to weigh yourself. So whenever I go to the doctor and get on the scale, I simply don’t watch the numbers as the nurse balances the scale. For years I did this and never knew how much I weighed. Then one day a nurse ruined my peaceful ignorance by declaring my weight out load as she wrote it down. No nurse had done that before, they simply wrote down my weight without saying anything. I could have strangled her right then and there.

It’s a serious issue for women, and I’m not even one of the women who obsesses over weight.

I read “The Entrepreneurship Myth” , good ideas, particularly on why some fail and others don´t.

What about start ups and small business as educational experiences? If you come out even, or even a little short, the experience of running projects on your own, having responsibility, having to make decisions, networking, selling ideas are all good for future endeavors and for personal growth.