No surprise at all. Recent studies show that the richer you are, the more likely you are to send in some jingle mail and walk away from an underwater mortgage. Moral responsibility is for the poor. The rich totally get that when the investment goes bad, you don't pour any more money into it. The reason the poor stay poor is that they haven't mastered the art of being rich in America, which is essentially privatizing profit and either socializing costs (shoving them onto EVERY other sucker) or finding a particular other sucker to stick them to.

A lot of folks believed the BS that real estate would continue to escalate in value at remarkable rates forever. The banks told us that the investment would pay for itself in 5 years or less and the "buyers" could pay off the ARM when the property was sold for a kazillion more dollars than they agreed to pay for the property. WRONG! And now these so called "investors" will pay the price of eviction, and the rest of us poor slobs, who were told we were idiots because we did not fall for this bank sponsored Ponzi scheme, will get stuck with the bill to pay off the banks who lied to everyone in the first place.
We still are getting notices from banks that they would love to lend us 125% of our home's current value, and enslave us to another 30 years of mortgage payments. We are senior citizens, who probably not live to be 90+ at the pay out. We like it that our mortgage is paid off.
This is outrageous!

Sorta not related to a LO streetcar but then again still relevant to LO money pools in general: money and love and dating and flirting games people play as we speak. Wish some real estate agent could whip up an excel spreadsheet graph showing frequency and rates (1Q, 2Q, 3Q, 4Q) over a ten year spread (2000 to 2010) of LO divorce filings, marriage licenses, foreclosure filings, and home sales closed. People there don't care about transit ... they have other things on their minds.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/04/wi-drive-luxd-out-commuter-buses-for-the-wealthy-popping-up-in/

I still think if transportation is needed into Portland, the luxury bus idea is an option and far less money than the expensive light rail. Who can afford to pay for the light rail now if even the Lake O is in the hole? It doesn't look like they need more housing. . unless someone has the idea they too will now need these "affordable housing complexes".

Can we take some Streetcar money and just move the end-of-period buzzer from Memorial Coliseum over to City Hall, so that whenever one of these hairbrained stupendously expensive projects comes up in a city council meeting, someone can just drop a 90 dB wake up call on the chamber?

"Now, moving on to the Lake Oswego Streetca...BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT"

"Okay, let's talk about the east side bike lanBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT"

"Perhaps the Convention Center HoteBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT"

"... meeting adjourned. *whimper* "

LOL MSFred - now if we could just BZZZZZZZZZZZZT the entire SamRand Show, it'd be great...