My wife and I are in the process of trying to refinance our home and cash out our equity. Being the fiscal idiot that I am, I used one of the banner ads posted on web sites that asks, "Want to get lower rates? Consolidate loans? Have banks compete for your mortgage! Click here." Within moments I had 5 different folks calling wanting to get my business. Only one claimed to be an actual financial institution and the others were loan originators like the kind described in your article today.

Again, not being very bright about these things, I was happy that there was so much interest and enthusiasm in helping me cash out my equity. I started getting promises right away from each contact person who assured me that we could get great rates and plenty of money to pay off the mountain of unsecured debt I acquired starting up my home business over the last few years. All it is going to take is an FHA loan. Okay, seems simple enough.

Then I unluckily read your article and then the picture began to become clearer. While my credit scores don't suffer and I pay my bills responsibly, there is a sense that maybe I'm as much of the problem as the originators themselves. When this process is said and done, I'm going to be out of equity in a housing market that may slide farther downhill and if my business investments don't pay off I could easily become one of the many out there that have come to be known as the kind of "risky" borrower that should not have been approved. In a sense, I'm in this position as a result of the economy and its effect on my client base. But to pay off my start-up costs, the loan originator I'm using is going to "help me" by squeezing 95% of my home's value out into a new mortgage payment at the very top of what I can afford.

Now, the question is do I learn from (resent) history, or do I ignore it and risk making the same mistakes again?

REGARDING THE MORTGAGE THIEVES, MAYBE BARNEY FRANK OR CHRIS DODD COULD BE OF SOME HELP !! ARE THEY NOT IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING IN OUR GOVERNMENT ?? WHO HAS THE OVERSIGHT ?? I HOPE OBAMA HAS ALL THE RIGHT ANSWERS, THE BALL WILL BE IN HIS PARK COME JANUARY 20th !! RC Davis

I am Outraged to see CountryWide still has advertisments to do business! Our U.S. Government nor STATE Government is doing a thing about these Carpetbaggers! No wonder they and the rest of their ilk are coming to the Taxpayers Trough yet again.