Much like you or I would send a card of support to a friend in troubled times the CEO of the company who holds my retirement account took a minute this week to send me and my fellow policyholders a few words of encouragement during these shaky times. Even though it seemed odd to get a note that essentially says, "This too shall pass," from a major corporation, it gave me a little peace of mind to know they haven't forgot whose money they have.

The gist of the email was to brag about its "sound decision making" and avoidance of subprime securities, and how these actions have allowed it to remain strong and safe during this turmoil. Normally a company flaunting its good choices in such a blatant manner would have turned me off, but this email made me want to drive over the headquarters and give every employee a hearty slap on the back! These actions were even more impressive by the fact that other institutions did not express the same concern for our money.

On top of the reassurances and self congratulatory words they also offered to help me make the right financial decisions. To do this, the company has offered its employees free personalized advice on how to best allocated their funds, depending on their life stage. Even though I am a ways off from retirement I think I just might take them up on this offer. In the end, I'm glad they took the time to let me know that I won't see them on the news next week, as the next company to be taken over!

Late last year, the Fed approved some new mortgage guidelines as part of a broad effort to fix the housing woes. These guidelines, aimed at the sub prime mortgage industry:

• Requires lenders to determine the borrower's ability to repay a mortgage loan by using the highest potential mortgage payment during the first seven years of the loan.
• Ban "no verification" loans -- meaning lenders must now verify both income as well as assets.
• Ban prepayment penalties if the payment could change any time during the first four years of the new loan.
• Require insurance and tax escrow accounts, called "impound" accounts in many parts of the country.

There. That will fix those mean old sub prime lenders. No more sub prime lenders making bad loans to people who can't afford them. Yeah, that'll teach 'em. The problem is, just exactly who will these new rules apply to, hmmm? I don't see any sub prime lenders, they're all out of business. Went away last year. Can anyone say, "too little, too late?"

When I was about 10 years old, I went to an abandoned property auction at a local self-storage place with my mother. We thought it would be a fun end to a long day of yard-saling. It was anything but. It was cold and rainy, and it was one of the more depressing experiences I've ever had. An old and sickly auctioneer went from unit to unit, auctioning off the contents by the lot, with no time for any kind of inspection. People bid $10 or $15 for a chance to acquire someone's property because they couldn't pay the $50 a month to keep it. Notably, a large collection of Jackson 5/Michael Jackson memorabilia went to auction after the family failed to pay its storage bill.

With foreclosures hitting record rates around the country, many former homeowners are packing their life's accumulations into storage units. But the financial woes that made it impossible for them to keep their homes are making it tough for them to keep their stuff in storage.

According to a self-storage center manager quoted in a New York Times piece, an increasing number of people are also trying to (illegally) live in their storage units.

Back in October, The Federal Reserve released a startling -- and widely ignored -- study showing that a large chunk of recent home buyers know almost nothing about their mortgages. Here are some findings from the Fed's survey:

• 25% could not identify the APR on their mortgages.
• 25% didn't know how much they spent on settlement charges.
  
• 50% didn't even know much the loan was for.
  
• Two-thirds were unaware of any prepayment penalties.
  
• 75% did not recognize that the loans included charges for optional credit insurance.

Major, major props to Forbes' Josh Zumbrun for digging this up. Zumbrun adds that "It's a point you don't hear much about. Yes, lenders maliciously tricked borrowers, and yes, frenzied speculators bought houses they knew they could not afford. But it's just as true that a lot of well-intentioned people simply signed mortgages they did not understand."

It's too early in the housing mess for there to be a full length book on what went wrong. But The Wall Street Journal's June Fletcher pinpointed many of the factors that would lead to the current mess in her 2005 book House Poor: Pumped Up Prices, Rising Rates, and Mortgages on Steroids: How to Survive the Coming Housing Crisis.

Ms. Fletcher discusses with prescience some of the disturbing trends that led to the current mess: lax lending practices, interest-only/pay-option/reverse amortization adjustable rate mortgages, home ownership costing far more than renting even with a big down payment, and speculative "investors" playing an increasing role in the nationwide run-up in housing prices.

As a description of an era, this is a great book. It falls short as an advice book however, because it was written as a word of caution during an irrational time. For instance, Ms. Fletcher advises readers to only invest in rental properties at prices where they'd be OK if the property is vacant 6 months per year. That's not realistic, and her advice that people should cancel credit cards is dangerous because it can lead to FICO score problems.

Still, it's worth reading because it essentially outlines all of the problems that led to disaster, and provides a great answer to the question "How did we get into this mess?"

As the real estate market continues its decline, the number of short sales -- a sale of a home for less than the amount owned on it, with the lender forgiving the differences -- are booming. The National Association Realtors estimates that short sales currently account for about 18% of all home sales nationwide.

While you might be able to find bargains in this segment of the distressed real estate, it can be a minefield full of long waits, confusion, and red tape. In a normal home sale, the buyer and the seller simply have to agree on a price. In a short sale, the institution servicing the loan must agree on the price, and sometimes takes months to approve the offer. If they approve it at all. The Wall Street Journal quotes (subscription required) Molly Kay Hamrick, president of Coldwell Banker Premier Realty in Las Vegas, as saying that 20% of short-sale offers in the area lead to completed sales, compared with 85% for traditional sales.

The USA Today is looking for interviews with struggling homeowners facing foreclosure victims:

Victim of foreclosure?

We want to hear from you. USA TODAY is looking for people who have gone through foreclosure or who are facing foreclosure, who would be willing to share their stories during the current housing crisis.

I certainly have sympathy for many people who are on the brink of losing their homes, but there is another, perhaps less tear-worthy, side to this. Consider:

• Many of these wonderful people facing foreclosure are trashing their homes before they leave: knocking holes in walls, dumping paint on carpets, etc. All because they couldn't make the payments they contractually agreed to make.
  
• Some are even leaving their pets behind, not even having the decency to take Fluffy to a shelter.
• A large chunk of the subprime loans in foreclosure are the result of mortgage fraud. Speaking on CNBC, Larry Kudlow suggested that 70% of subprime borrowers in foreclosure lied on their loan applications.

So here's who I'd like to hear from: people who lied on their loan applications, are facing foreclosure, and acting like 4-year olds about it. If you have taken no responsibility for the plight that you yourself created but are ready to fess up, we'd love to talk to you.

If we use your story, I'll send you a free package of Kashi Mountain Medley granola.

In a story released today by the Associated Press, RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure reporting firm, reported that year over year foreclosure rates jumped 57% when compared to March 2007. It seems foreclosures just won't stop and it's the fault of all those subprime and alternative mortgages that are resetting to higher rates and people simply can't afford them. Oh really? In another slant on the very same data, CNBC reported that yes, foreclosures are still up nationally, but they actually are FALLING in other states such as Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey, Hawaii and Delaware. This little tidbit, oddly enough, was stuck in the very last paragraph of the article. But wait a minute...if all these loans that are adjusting at higher rates are causing more and more people to be foreclosed upon then why are these other states immune from the very same problem? Hmmmmm?

Could it be that it's not the loan type that's been the problem? After all, subprime loans have been around for twenty years and so have their hybrid brethren so why has this foreclosure "crisis" being blamed upon subprime loans and the brokers that pushed them?

WalletPop's Bruce Watson wrote an excellent piece in favor of a housing bailout -- I disagree with him, but he makes the best case of just about anyone I've seen. Bruce writes:

As homes remain vacant, yards get overgrown, windows get broken, and property values plummet. After all, it's not as if there are scads of responsible borrowers waiting in line to buy overpriced tract homes in suburbia. If subprime borrowers fail en masse, as they seem likely to do, property values will drop across the board, hurting the very people who are currently baying for the blood of failed borrowers. To put it more bluntly, self-righteousness is not a hedge against a failing economy.

First of all, there are plenty of people lining up to buy tract homes in suburbia -- just not overpriced ones. Let the damn prices fall and the buyers will come! Artificially supporting prices is just bad economics. When I hear people warning that allowing housing prices to reach equilibrium on their own will result in plummeting property values, I have to ask: is the widespread availability of affordable housing such a serious problem that we need to do everything in our power to prevent homes from being more affordable?

A few years ago, my wife and I contemplated buying a duplex in a shabby-but-promising area of Roanoke, Virginia. It was located near the bustling downtown, close to an emerging arts center. Housing prices were depressed, as the neighborhood was in the beginning stages of gentrification, and many first-time homeowners were homesteading the area.

Neither my wife nor I made a lot of money, but our credit was decent, and we were able to qualify for a variable-rate mortgage. For the first five years, we would have had a very reasonable fixed rate, after which the rate would have risen sharply. Our plan was to get the house, make some improvements (I'm very, very handy), work on our credit, and refinance before our interest rate skyrocketed. While our lender couldn't promise us that we would be able to refinance at a lower rate, he led us to believe that, with our credit history, we would have a very good shot at getting a decent fixed rate.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you that individual consumers aren't the only ones having money problems these days. Businesses are struggling too, and it's showing in the bankruptcy numbers. One website reports that so far this year, 24 public companies have filed for bankruptcy protection, which is more than 60% higher than the same periods in 2006 and 2007.

What happens when the companies go into bankruptcy? Hopefully they are just looking for a little more time to pay their bills, and creditors eventually get the money that's owed to them. Most times, it doesn't go that way, though. The creditors race to get in line to see who is going to get paid and who is not. The creditors almost always lose at least some part of the money that's owed to them.

Why do you care? When a person or a company ditches out on the debt they owe, we all pay the price. Someone's got to make up the difference, and we will see increased prices for goods and services and higher interest rates for our financing. And issues with borrowers can impact markets around the world, as we have seen with subprime mortgage problems.

Not to mention the fact that the shareholders in the public companies filing for bankruptcy usually lose their investments. The effects of bankruptcy, especially corporate bankruptcy, are wide-reaching, and that's why consumers should care about the issue.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

The market mavens this morning are gnashing their collective teeth over the government's bailout of Bear Stearns (yes, that means you and me; look who took on the risk on the company's craptastic mortgage-backed assets). Many are caught between relishing the taste of just desserts for one of Wall Street's bad boys and fear that its bankruptcy would act like a snowball dropped at the high point of a snow field.

The government's largesse, routed through JP Morgan Chase, demonstrates the peculiar nature of large debts, one familiar to many failed small businesses. When you allow a customer's debt to represent too large a percentage of your cash flow, you yield power to him. When he can put you out of business by delaying paying his debt, you are no longer in the position to control your own destiny. He owns you.

Bear Stearns appeared to have reached a similar point, at least in the view of the Fed. Despite being responsible for fouling its own nest, the prospect of BS's bankruptcy caused the Fed to blink. In the short run, investors may be heartened by the rescue. At the same time, I envision corks popping in other investment banks, where the pressure to minimize risk has been alleviated. The line has now been established, I guess; any investment less foolhardy and reckless than those of Bear Stearns now has the government's stamp of approval.

Meanwhile, a few more billion of your public dollars are now backed by subprime loans. This morning, I feel sorry for the suckers of the Nigerian Scam. If they had a few billion at risk, the Loan Arranger, played by Ben Bernanke, might have ridden to their rescue, too.

I love roller coasters, especially when I'm riding in the back. My favorite part is when you start to go down the first drop. You've just been pulled up the hill by a ratcheting engine, and you have that little moment when you can anticipate the next few terrifying minutes. The twists and turns haven't happened yet, but you know what's about to happen, even if you've never ridden on the coaster before. It's too late to go back and you now realize that you're about to face a terror that you previously only imagined.

Looking at the subprime mortgage mess, I'm getting the same feeling. This time, though, I'm really not looking forward to the ride.

About three years ago, my wife and I contemplated buying a house in Roanoke, Virginia. Our credit wasn't very good, so we considered a subprime mortgage. The theory was that we would get a decent, fixed interest rate for five years. With interest rates incredibly low, we would have been able to buy a nice little duplex at a great price. Our mortgage payment would have been lower than our rent, freeing up some money so we could get our financial house in order. By the time the rate went up, we hoped that our credit would be better, and we would be able to refinance with better terms.

I feel like I dodged a bullet.

I've hit a wall. A realization. The point in my life where I have realized how bad I was with money. It started with my tracking my spending for a week. It was ugly. Then came a big time in my life...refinance. We got one of those variable rate loans...you know the ones...where your interest rate blows up after two years?

Well, we are about 8 months from that point. So I go out and look for refinance options. Get lots of great schpiels, quick talking salesman, but that's about it. I can not get help getting refinanced. "Your scores are too low," they tell me.

It's horrible. I feel like crap now. I even left work just so I could come home to mull around. Our house payment is about to go up. I've seen a lot on the news about sub-prime problems, and I never really understood what it was all about. But now I do. It's about ME!

Am I in danger of losing my house? No. Not even close. But we are living paycheck to paycheck right now and I don't like the fact that I don't know where my mortgage will be in a year.

So now I feel like I'm back at Square One, with nowhere to go, and no idea what to do. I submit my plight to you, readers. What would you do in my position? I'm all ears.