I don't want to pay your bills!

I'll be the first to say I know nothing about the stock market, or banking, or economics, or really anything more than "large, positive numbers are generally better than negative numbers."

But as I understand it, the past week of "aw crap time to stuff your mattress with cash" can pretty much trace it's roots back to the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe, in which banks were stupid by offering people loans they couldn't afford, and then consumers were even more idiotic by taking out loans they couldn't afford to pay back. So to sum it up in the crudest terms possible, Americans are idiots who can't do math and think they have some god-given right to own a house.

And now the government is putting together some sort of jaw-droppingly expensive plan to try to fix this by buying up all the worthless loans. No, I don't understand it in any more depth from that, but what I do wonder about is: is this not a catastrophic failure of the idea of personal responsibility? For both the individual consumer who is about as smart as the bricks their McMansion is made of, and also for the leadership of the banks?

I mean, I understand the need to do something to try to stabilize the market, because everyone panicking and running out of money is generally a bad thing. But as a taxpayer who has the common sense not to take out loans I can't pay back*, why the hell is my money going towards bailing out these dipshits? Why aren't we first tapping the CEO's who got obscenely rich off these schemes, then involving the government? In short: where is the outrage over this?

And additionally, to everyone, everywhere: You have the right to a place to live. You do not have the right to a mortgage, you do not have the right to own a house or a condo or anything like that. Home ownership, like driving, is a privilage, not a right. If you can't pass the drivers test you can't drive; if you can't afford a house you can't buy a goddamn house!

*insert student loan joke here.