[Rick Lee]

We can completely forget about an honest discussion happening among our elected officials. The small handful of them who actually understand this stuff still wouldn't risk being painted as a socialist or cold-hearted conservative. IMHO, FHA is the only extent to which the feds should get involved. FHA is pretty well-insured through their own MIP program. So loosening up their guidelines to accomodate refis would not be as bad as telling banks to write down loans by whatever percent. Who pays for that in the end? Kinda ironic that in the past folks used FHA to get into their first house and then refi'ed into a conventional loan to shed the MIP. Now it's going to be the opposite.