I totally did not make this up

I like to make fun of the jackasses who took out stupid loans to finance their unreasonable lifestyles as much as the next guy. Silly me, I bought a crappy little house in a crappy ghetto neighborhood (Motto: Even the cops won't come here!) because that's what I could afford; if I'd known I could have gotten bailed out of an adjustable rate mortgage on a fancy schmancy house with new-fangled luxuries like air-conditioning and functional doors, I certainly would have.

However, I read an article in the newspaper today that sheds light on a different facet of the housing crisis. While there were many people who were greedy and stupid, there were also some people who were just plain and simple stupid. A whole group of people in New York City apparently got swindled out of their houses by a company called "Home Savers"*, which promised to help them get out of debt by refinancing their mortgages but in actuality tricked the people out of the titles to their houses in order to get overinflated mortgages from IndyMac. I have pretty much zero financial or real estate savvy, but I think that even I would recognize a scam such as this, especially right about the time that I signed over the deed to my house. The article is mainly about one sad little old lady named Waver Brickhouse, for whom I actually do feel sorry. It would be nice to live in a world where people don't go out of their way to steal houses from little old ladies.

In any case, this story brings to the forefront another important point, which is that somewhere in New York City is a housing crisis victim whose actual name is Waver Brickhouse.

*I like that the house-stealing company is named "Home Savers". It's like the happy names that Bush gave to things to cover up their devious intent, like the "Healthy Forest Initiative" that allowed clear-cutting on National Forests with no environmental review, or "Enhanced Interrogation", which meant government-sanctioned torture.