How much will taxpayers shoulder?

[Concillian]

It is outrageous that the tax payers are bailing out this mess.

Why?

Taxpayers created the mess.

Sure you can put some blame on the banks for not using the right qualification criteria, but every single person I've talked to who has been in a foreclosure situation got into a loan that it would not take a mathematician to figure out they were eventually going to default on the loan if the economy stayed flat. Maybe they could have afforded it for another couple years if the economy didn't change, but payments would still eventually balloon to something unbearable.

Taxpayers made the decision to put us here. They had to sign on the dotted line and initial 2 dozen other sheets of paper on loan applications.

I bought a house 5 years ago. Yes, I was marketed some atrocious loans. However, that does not absolve me of my responsibility to only get into loans that I can afford. Blaming the banks for this is akin to someone with huge credit card bills from buying junk they don't need blaming commercials and mall salesmen. You can't trust commercials and salesmen as your only source of information, especially on a quarter or half a million dollar purchase. A rather substantial portion of the population did just that.