To the editor:

Last week, I listened to reports and punditry about the “sub-prime” crisis. Finally the Federal Reserve jumped. They pumped millions of dollars into the financial system. That’s good. It is important we protect our wealthy people, the banks and the lenders. After all, some of them risk one or two of their BMWs or second vacation homes to invest in these high risk ventures.

I’ve heard about the predatory lenders and Web sites that would provide fraudulent employment documents the lenders were obviously aware of. In fact it was their loan agents that referred the loan applicant to the site or told them to just put in an income amount whether true or not.

What I seldom heard about was the fact that many of these home buyers had no experience with the mortgage system. Or that these applicants were not the best financially educated and had little idea that their payments were going to radically increase and the value of their new home might not increase as homes had been doing in the recent past.

What I never heard from a pundit, a reporter, a political party, financial experts, presidential candidates, newspapers, blogs or radio or TV spokespersons was the idea that maybe the best way to help was to find these loan applicant victims and provide them cash to help them keep their homes. It seems that we no longer think to help our neighbors, just bail out the wealthy, the banks, savings and loans, and car manufacturers.

It’s disgusting.

Alan Welles,

Lawrence