Get ready for the lawyers: Subprime Lawsuits Piling Up

The Big Housing Scam will keep lawyers busy for a decade. At least John Edwards will have something to do after the race.

The only problem? Getting money out of bankrupt companies like Countrywide and IndyMac, or realtors whose only asset is a box of ramen.

Subprime Lawsuits Piling Up

A wave of lawsuits is beginning to wash over the troubled U.S. mortgage market and the rest of the financial world. American homeowners are suing mortgage lenders. Mortgage lenders are suing Wall Street banks. Wall Street banks are suing loan specialists. And investors are suing everyone.

The legal battles stretch from Main Street to Wall Street and beyond. Homeowners and subprime mortgage lenders are squaring off in dozens of cases that claim some lenders engaged in predatory lending practices and other wrongdoing. Cleveland and Baltimore are pursuing cases against Wall Street banks, saying local residents are suffering because the banks fostered the proliferation of high-risk home loans.

'What strikes me here is that this a tainted system from A to Z,'' said Tamar Frankel, a law professor at Boston University. ''Everybody blames everybody else. If you look at what is being said, there isn't one who doesn't blame another and there is half-truth in everything.''

Do you have any idea how much trouble the realtors, mortgage brokers, lenders, appraisers and mortgage fraudsters have gotten us into?

And to think, it all ties back to stupid f*cking houses. Who would have ever thought.

I sure hope we learned our lesson. This can't happen again. But in some shape or form, it probably will.

Bubbles and manias seem to be ingrained into human nature. Oh, the folly of man. 500 years from now, they'll be reading about this bubble and crash. And they'll all say - "stupid fools - what were they thinking?"

If something good comes of it, it'll be the death of the realtor profession as they know it. And also the end of no-down, no-doc, negative-am, interest-only liar's loan, mortgage-broker-on-commission bullsh*t.