So many of those who own homes that are presently valued below the mortgage balance have stopped paying that we now have a term to describe it:  “Strategic Default”. The term is sanitized of any moral value. The free market ideal that one should honor a contract is no longer fashionable. Why should it be?

                The Obama administration approved of a restructuring of General Motors that robbed bondholders of their legal right to priority over union pension plans.  The money that belonged to the bondholders in a bankruptcy proceeding is promised to the unions that overwhelmingly supported candidate Obama. If the government that makes the laws and is supposed to enforce them can disregard them, why shouldn’t private citizens? After all the usurpation of property in the government’s takeover of GM was for the benefit of private citizens. Strategic Default is simply a self-help bailout.