"Then the law has failed and no one need worry about it."

I think failure or success should be judged in terms of the intent of the law. The law was apparently passed to protect the interests of the lending industry by making it more difficult for borrowers to shed their debts. I believe that lenders have been able to recover more money from borrowers who get in trouble, so perhaps it should granted at least a measure of success.

If you think the law was passed for the general good of the American people, then I think you are mistaken. Congress doesn't do that kind of stuff.

I think we're disputing a matter of degree.

I agree with you that the new bankruptcy law cannot guarantee that a lender will get all of their money back. You can't get money from someone who is completely broke. Even debtor's prisons were unable to accomplish this.

However, the new law does allow lenders to recover more of their money. How much more is a matter of the circumstances of each bankruptcy. Debts that might have been dismissed under the previous laws may survive a new-style bankruptcy. How much good this does a lender is a matter of dispute: A person who still has significant debt after going through bankruptcy might be so far behind the 8-ball that they just give up on trying to earn a living and become homeless.

"Unless Texas has significantly expanded, it's western most tip is actually in the Mountain Time Zone."

The last time I spoke to a Texan, I got the impression that the western end was somewhere near China.

... it's usually because it works for them. The question to ask is how does this behavior work for Chris Matthews?

"My fondest hope is that once Clinton or Obama takes office they dispatch a black U.N. helicopter to confiscate your computer and Bible."

Now there's a thought. Does anyone remember the flap about the FBI files that happened during Bill Clinton's presidency? Just imagine how much fun Hillary could have with the new executive powers that will be the legacy of Bush's presidency.

What happens to the Republicans if a Democrat president uses the executive powers that Bush has established and politicizes the DOJ the same way Bush has done?

ISTR a little Clinton-years flap about "The FBI files", which were supposedly FBI files about Clinton's political enemies that mysteriously ended up in the White House. I'd think a president could do a lot better now with all of the unchecked spying powers that were added during Bush's term.

... the fact that many people who serve on boards of directors are also executives (although usually not in the same company).

The usual justification for this is that boards of directors benefit from the inclusion of experienced executives.

The downside is a huge conflict of interest: Boards tend to be generous with executive compensation because they want the same generosity returned when their own performance as executives is judged. The result is a big circular back scratching club that takes care of its own members, often to the detriment of stockholder interests.

I generally agree with the points you have made, but I think there's an important one you may have overlooked: The lending industry helped to create this mess by pushing easy loans that inflated house prices beyond reason.

You might argue that buyers should have known what they were getting into, but I've heard the pitches that lenders made to prospective buyers and IMO they tended to paint rosy pictures that were intended to deceive. I think lenders should take a fair share of the blame and the loss.

Which approach do you think would have a better chance of stopping the death spiral in an orderly manner with minimal damage to all involved parties?

My gut feel is that many lenders gaming the system as they each attempt to minimize their own losses will probably lead to even greater instability.

Ahh, yes. The good old Wall Street Journal. I notice that their article lists many ways a borrower might be acting in purported bad faith, but completely ignores the lending industry's role in creating this mess.

"It's not fair to the lender to require them to lower the principal value, just as it's not fair to the borrower to arbitrarily raise the principal value for houses if they go up in value."

What about a situation where manipulation by lenders resulting in artificially high valuations on houses?

... at how willing companies are to poison their own wells just to make this quarter's bottom line look better.

Nobody is surprised that pests evolve resistance to pesticides. When this happens to a GM-produced pesticide, the GM crop that produces that pesticide loses value. The GM crop can lose all value if such resistance becomes widespread: The farmer might as well plant plain old non-GM crops.

I'd think that Monsanto would want to extend the lifetime of products created by their research efforts, but instead they work to obsolete these products by encouraging overuse.

"He's never claimed to be a guardian of public morals."

He inconvenienced wealthy and powerful people, but failed to pay even lip service to the "social issues" crowd. How did expect to evade the Bushies?

... that she simply did what she thought best at the time. We could spend all day arguing about what we think might have been better things to do, but we were not there and we don't know all the facts.