Mortgage lenders are rightly terrified that more and more of the 22 percent of American homeowners whose homes are now worth less than their mortgages are going to exercise their borrower’s right to default on them. At this point, most home defaults are still involuntary, but according to the paper cited above, more than one-quarter of them already consist of what the mortgage industry calls “ruthless defaults.” And yet, why shouldn’t homeowners be ruthless in their disregard for the financial interests of the home lenders when the lenders themselves have been utterly ruthless – and utterly stupid – in squeezing every last drop of potential demand out of the American public?