A new academic paper written by Brent T. White, a law professor at the University of Arizona, calls on 15 million American homeowners to ignore the social messages of shame, and walk away from their underwater homes.

The paper, titled “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” argues that homeowners are losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars by trying to float underwater homes. Click this link below to read the full article on the First Tuesday blog.

http://blog.firsttuesdayjournal.com/?p=2146

Here’s where Economics meet Memetics: This is yet another example of a regulatory value system (ORDER vMEME) unable or unwilling to fully exercise its power to protect the consumer , while an UNHEALTHY ENTERPRISE vMEME continued to lend money to people who can’t afford it and refuses to acknowledge its own past mistakes). I fully support putting an end to the first time buyer subsidy (inducing the HEALTHY ENTERPRISE vMEME under false pretense to prevent real market price discovery) and whatever program that will empower these 15 million homeowners to walk away. Loan modifications by banks are currently a joke thanks to a $Trillion + Bailout where banks took the money to cushion their balance sheet instead of doing the real work of writing down the value of their loans.  Our tax money has empowered the bankers to make us poorer. Reversing that is where the Obama administration should be focused. What do you think?