Readers suggested a topic surrounding the latest bailout news. "Supporting a tax bailout is akin to supporting higher taxes, higher interest payments and ultimately serfdom. If the market is allowed to run its course, prices will fall and homes will once again be affordable."

A reply, "IMO, this stuff doesn’t have much support. Here's an editorial."

One said, "Hooray for the St. Cloud Times! Now lets see if we can get this type of editorial into the 2 big papers! (The Star Tribune and Herald, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press)."

Another had questions. "Why a bailout to keep people in 'their' homes, when the only out-of-pocket equity they have invested in it are the curtain rods? What right to an enforced transfer from taxpayers do they deserve?"

"Why a bailout to the first mortgage companies if they are already out of business?"

One thinks borrowers won't want a bailout, "Are people going to want to be saved if their homes are worth less than they paid for them or would they rather walk away?"

"Bankruptcy reform makes it harder to do a Chapter 7, many won’t be able to even afford after a Chap 13 rearranges their finances. Things will still be too high."

"What is the number, something like $600 billion in ARM’s reset this year? That is just the tip of the iceberg. Bailouts for FB’s will not even make a dent in this bubble. Sorry."

One posted this link. "Does anyone have a spare $120b to chip in for bailing out FBs? 'Want to pick up the check for every homeowner who got saddled with a risky mortgage? It's a big one, on the order of $120 billion.'"

"'The numbers are going to get very large,' says Raphael Bostic, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California. 'I don't think this is a feasible plan."

"Economists say bailout could have the effect of causing more defaults. 'If the plan is to pay off loans when people quit, then I plan to quit paying my loan,' says Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics."

"What's more, some economists say a bailout could encourage more risky lending in the future. 'A bailout would validate what some of these lenders and borrowers did, which we now understand was reckless,' says Carl Tannenbaum, president of the National Association of for Business Economics. 'I don't think that's what we want to do.'"

From CNN Money. "Non-profits and lawmakers are stepping up efforts to help people at risk of losing their homes. But critics contend the programs will do little to stem the nation's rising tide of foreclosures."

"'By putting people in new loans all we are doing is throwing leverage after leverage,' says Joseph Mason, a finance professor at Drexel University and an expert in the mortgage market. 'These programs are not a good idea. They just don't work.'"

"'There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of problem loans out there,' says Zach Schiller, research director at Policy Matters Ohio. 'We have much larger problems than can be dealt with by these programs.'"