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You don't need to have empathy for anybody to realize that it takes two parties to make a loan - the lender and the creditor. In the real estate bubble of the late 2000s both the lenders and the borrowers were out to make money "for nothing". Borrowers counted on ever increasing prices, and lenders on ever increasing loan volume and amounts to generate fee revenue. For a bank reselling its loans in the secondary market the revenue is from origination fees, not the repayment of the loan over time.

Neither party was an innocent, and bankers lending into the bubble knew that the risk from many of the loans was higher than other more traditional loans. They just wanted to get clear before the bubble burst, like the developers, speculators, and buyers. But bubbles pop, and when they do a lot of money is lost. Derivative transactions, including those by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac added to the losses.

If the government wasn't up to their ears in the real estate and credit markets, the taxpayers wouldn't have ended up on the hook for the bad loans. And if banks with Federally insured deposits had to pay insurance fees proportional to the real risk they would not have been speculating in risky credit instruments.

The economic mess we are all dealing with can't be blamed on the deadbeat borrowers, as much as the government and the banking industry would like to. The blame must lie also with the lenders who took the opposite side of the deal with the borrowers. Put another way - if you lend a million dollars to a hairdresser in Chicago who has a $20,000 a year income so they can buy a bunch of apartment buildings and then resell those loans as AAA grade securities, aren't you trying to "get something for nothing?"

I have NO empathy for people who thought they were getting something for nothing.

Bad news for you: a LOT of people caught in this mess are highly responsible, hard-working, credit-worthy conservatives who did not think they were getting something for nothing. They bought houses they could easily afford long before the recession started and paid their mortgages faithfully.