And Andrews not credible when he says he "wasn't allowed" to use his 401K: one can take an early distribution and pay a penalty (10% federal, plus a state penalty that's 2.5% here in CA), and plenty of people do exactly that to survive and avoid bankruptcy.

The NY Times has had an unfortunate relationship with the truth in some famous instances lately, and you've got to wonder whether Andrews is yet another sign of terrible management at that paper.

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The parts of the Mag excerpt that were most eye-opening were those describing his mortgage officer's creativity in finding and exploiting loopholes in the system. This won't work? No worries! We'll move down the list to Plan X. And so on. It really captures the insanity and sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-prime-iness of everything during the era. Adding his wife's bankruptcies to the mix would have shined an even harsher light on the sort of people who were being approved for half million dollar loans.

So would it have been so hard and so destructive to his case to weave in at least a token mention of his wife's troubles? Even if he had to cloak it in all sorts of woe-is-her fluff, that'd still be better than a blanket omission. And I'm sure plenty of us would still be able to relate. This is America. Who doesn't have a fuckface ex-husband bankrupting them?

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Let's start with just a sampling of the clear cut spelling and grammatical errors:

* "Since Patty was reproting them on their personal tax returns . . ."

* "moving the spin-control enguine"

* "old debts . . . is still an issue when you're applying for a home loan"

* "before said credibility . . . become further affected."

Then we move on to the general clunkiness of the prose. Stuff like:

* "Bankruptcy Number One came from an ex-husband who's apparently far sketchier than Andrews, five years previous to their marriage."

* "And now, without reading or knowing the book, it's completely evident that this omission changes the context of the story at large."

* "All parties involved might find it in their best interests to shut Andrews up and start moving the spin-control enguine before said credibility (and, thus: sales) - which, right now, sounds something like this - become further affected."

Wow, that prose goes down about as smoothly as a thumbtack milkshake. A little advice: This article should be about half the length it is now and the author should have spent about twice as much time on it before hitting post.

K. Thx. Bye.

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And, Thanksgiving dinner with the family must be fun.

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It would also help if we didn't elect financial incompetents (I'd taking about you, Bush) to high office. Not that I'm bitter.

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They talked to the mortgage broker, who took no responsibility whatsoever despite Andrews completely omitting his income and debt data on his loan application. The lenders only purpose for existence is to find creditworthy borrowers -- when they don't do their f-ing job, they're guilty of defrauding their sources of funding, in this case the buyers of mortgage-backed securities. Mortgage brokers should be forced to pay back the commissions they collected.

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