why did I give a person who is a mortgage walkaway a piece of my mind and real estate madness

           While skiing out west last month, I was getting on the ski lift with two other guys when I overheard one of them saying that he was going to try a short sale on a property that he owned and if that didn't work he was going to walk away from it.  A short sale is where the sale of the property results in proceeds that fall short of the balance owed on the property.  The borrower and lender both agree to the process and it may or may not result in the borrower being forgiven the rest of the debt.  In the case of a mortage walkaway like this disgusting human being, he speculated like many other people in real estate because it only goes up or so we are told.  Right.  He still could afford it but is willing to just walkaway.   I just laid into him because I'm totally disgusted with people like this who speculate and then those of us who pay our bills pickup ours and his.  I just ranted at him the whole way up the lift. 

          Here we are with the most tax advantaged investment in the tax code which caused our financial meltdown.  There is plenty of blame to go around, wall street, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, appraisers, and homeowners, etc.  They all participated in the bubble.  Now we have record low mortgage rates and we're giving $6,500 - 8,000 of our tax dollars as incentives to purchase homes that you get to deduct the mortgage interest and property taxes on.  Not only that you get to exclude $250,000 if you're single and $500,000 if you're married from any capital gains taxes.  This is getting ridiculous.  We need to go through some more serious fiscal pain to get our speculation in real estate under control and the majority of us who pay our bils and don't live beyond our means shouldn't have to pay for it but I'm sure we will.  Thank you.