Hell's Handmaiden Rounds up the Mortgage-Fraud Ponzi Economy

But these fancy mortgages are not really mortgages at all. That is, you're not really buying a house when you take one of these mortgages, because there is essentially no possible way for you to pay that mortgage off as originally scheduled and own your home free and clear.

Instead, you're effectively "renting" your house from the bank and then rolling the dice in the Wall Street casino - that there will be a bigger sucker who would at least be willing to buy your house in a few years for more than you paid, so that its "value" rises at a rate faster than your loan balance grows. Each time you come back to refinance again, the bank "steals" some of your home's "appreciation" - it goes to the mortgage broker, banker, and Wall Street!

Wasn't this obvious years ago?

[spun]

I remember having discussions with the wife back in '03 about home buying, and how we weren't going to until the bubble burst. I think we gave it 3-5 years back then.