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the globe. In fact, it would please many. The American Dream, however, has never been about sharing a small apartment with another family; so, right or wrong, such a situation would be a serious decline in our quality of life.)

This housing thing isn't necessarily about a bunch of irresponsible people and equally irresponsible banks just "going wild" for the fun of it. It's about a complicated set of issues related to the bigger picture, that should have been addressed over the last couple of decades.

The parents of the Baby Boom generation bought homes in which to raise their children. Many made sure their children could go to college if they chose to. The American Dream of raising children to get a good education and good job in order to provide their own families with a nice standard of living was shared by the Baby Boom generation, as the next generation of families was built. The goal of getting an education, getting married, buying a house, and building a family was considered an "ideal" - and yet millions of couples chose to aim to build that kind of life for themselves and their families. After all, we are a society that often disdains getting little education, having babies as unmarried couples, and bringing those babies into poverty and the neighborhoods that go with that poverty.

The children of the first wave of Baby Boomers, along with others who felt pressured to buy a home before the prices went yet higher, are a generation for whom four-year degrees are common, and for whom those four-year degrees, alone, don't necessarily bring in a very high income. Graduate degrees increase earning potential but cost a lot of money to get. With the idea that getting a good education "at all costs" is well worth it in the end, the generation that followed the Baby Boomers has often been burdoned not just with the usual high cost of living, but with school loans as well. This often hard-working group of people with young families was faced with increasingly high rents. Most would not have wanted government assistance with housing, but even if they did they would not have been eligible.

As they watched houses get farther and farther beyond their reach, and as they saw rents that were already high continue to go up, many of these sensible, hard-working, Americans believed that "throwing their money away on rent" was not financially wise, and that investing in a home was. At least their money would grow. Some could even be said to have panicked. After all,
if they didn't own a home and rents continued to go up, where would they be if rents rose beyond what they could afford?

Can the mortgage crisis be blamed on the people who were simply trying to use their money most sensibly, while providing a home for their families? Were they really being "irresponsible"?
Can it even be blamed on all lenders, who adjusted their practices to meet the needs and demand of a market that believed risky financing was a better gamble than the "sure thing" of throwing rent money "out the window"? Not all foreclosures are tied to predatory lenders. Some of those adjustable rate mortgages have been with reputable banks as well.

As with so many complex problems, the causes of the current mortgage crisis go deeper than just a matter of too many adjustable rate mortgages agreed upon by too many irresponsible and greedy people. There''s no doubt that if one were to look at the problem, greed and lack of responsibility could be found in some places and some cases. Upon closer look, however, one would see that the story of the present mortgage crisis goes a lot deeper.

Learn more about this author, Lisa H Warren.
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