Everyone’s had a fingers-wide handful of reasons to be mad at the government. At Wall Street. At Ben Bernanke. At AIG, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And we’ll be using both sets of fingers and hands to scoop our own money into the pockets of some awful company stewards in the hopes they won’t screw things up worse the next time around.But the home mortgage lenders? That’s what I think the home mortgage lenders should get from this bailout. Not. A. Finger. Permit me to do some remedial math:News reports are quoting that 94% of all home mortgages are doing just fine, and only the remaining 6% are in or going into default status. And what happens when someone defaults on their mortgage? The lender gets it. So now those lenders own 6% of the homes they’d lended money for their purchase. That’s still an asset, as far as I know. Not liquid like cash, but not like that 6% of their money goes poof, either.

And for the sake of argument, let’s make some ultra-conservative assumptions:

1. Every one of those mortgages defaulted beginning at the first payment; the lender did not receive a single penny back for those loans.
2. Every home was purchased for no money down, meaning that the amount of the mortgage was the price for the home.
3. Every home could be liquidated for 50% of it’s purchase price.

If we use those assumptions, I think we can then also assume that the home mortgage lenders are a bunch of pantywastes who don’t deserve a penny of bailout. If they liquidate that 6% of home inventory for half price, that means they’re only out 3%. If any of these companies had even attempted to tighten their belts they could have fought their way through a loss of 3% of their business. And that’s with a worst case scenario of immediate defaults and zero money down. If the home buyer put down 10% the cost of the home and diligently paid their monthly mortgage bill for several years, it’s that much less the mortgage lenders would be out when they liquidated those homes in a big, bulk sell-off. And if they got 60%? Well hell, now we’re down to 1-2% losses. EVERYONE is taking on those kinds of losses this year - why should they get special treatment?

I haven’t heard of a tie yet between commercial paper (the new financial buzzword of these shitass economic times) and home mortgages, so I say let the home mortgage companies twist in the wind.

Not a finger!