STOP THE BLEEDING

by Ted Rall

A Plan to Bail Out Scared Homeowners

Evictions must stop

Feds should bail out troubled homeowners

Government would take equity stake in home mortgages

Cost less than Iraq War

NEW YORK--Unemployed and desperately worried about losing his home in a California gated community, Karthik Rajaram shot his wife, kids and mother-in-law before turning his new handgun upon himself. "We believe this individual had become despondent recently over his financial dealings and the financial situation of his household," Los Angeles police said. One of his sons, age 19, was a Fulbright scholar.

The previous week, a 90-year-old Ohio woman tried to commit suicide when cops tried to evict her from her foreclosed house. Fortunately, the gunshot wound wasn't fatal.

The financial crisis has claimed a number of lives, but few as poetically as that of Ian Beach of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Like a character in a Kate Chopin novella, the 47-year-old father of two "apparently took painkillers, drank a bottle of whisky and walked into the sea," reported The Daily Mail in 2006, when the current epidemic of home foreclosures began to ramp up. "My trade in electronics gradually faded away and profit margins collapsed," Beach explained in his suicide note. "I was not able to get another trade going to support us in time, and meanwhile debt built up. Bankruptcy was an option but the house problem was the last straw."

He figured his wife could use his life insurance to keep their family home. Guess again. Death by suicide is usually exempt.

It's time to stop the bleeding. It's time to stop the evictions.

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