The Bush Administration has a plan to help sub-prime borrowers that are headed for a crash landing. And that has certain folks screaming mad. The claim by these angry critics – is that ‘it punishes responsible folks’ who didn’t over-leverage, who didn’t jump on the bandwagon and join the ‘spending party’.

Anger by reasonable people who didn’t join the credit party, is more just jealousy, or upset at Democracy & Capitalism joining forces. Markets tend to balance and many segments of the US real estate market are now balancing as prices slide and sales activity slows and in some regions crawls. Compounding and perhaps causing the slowdown is in part the reactive problem of/to the sub-prime market. The Administration is not so much protecting homeowners about to get struck by increased rates, as it is trying to balance, or perhaps more bluntly – support the market in attempt to halt the ongoing slide.

Is it fair? No. Is it a good thing in the overall to intercede and hope to moderate a deteriorated situation – yes. It will help to slow the slide, maintain balance. Is it delaying the inevitable? Likely. But some folks will come out the other end and manage the increased debit servicing down the road. And lots of folks in between will reside in a more stable market as the Government of the day works to add some balance, even if only in small measure, to the marketplace. Governments do it every day with other products – money – exchange rates and interest rates, wheat, milk, lumber.

Will certain businesses win as a result – yes. But we’ve all seen that we don’t necessarily win when business looses. In fact when we business is good – we all seem to share.

So is it fair to responsible people? Yes. Be sure - when others ‘survive’ we all do better. Systems that have only winners and losers make it easier to measure – but even the winners can loose…their heads…when the attitude becomes …”let them eat cake!”