re: "What would Congress and/or the executive branch have to do to put a halt to the payment?"

Why would they do that? This heist of $700+ billion was never intended to be for the benefit of "the people". It was for lining the pockets of the global banksters.

This collapse has been many years in the planning and execution. The rich, inbred Skull and Bones bastards have purposely brought this about, in order to bring everyone to their knees and force them to accept a complete dismantling of the America we all knew and loved in favor of their fantasy of global domination -- by themselves, naturally.

The imperial grand strategy is based on the assumption that the United States can gain “full spectrum dominance” through military programs that dwarf those of any potential coalition and that have useful side effects. One is to socialize the costs and risks of the private economy of the future, a traditional contribution of military spending and the basis of much of the “new economy.” Another is to contribute to a fiscal train wreck that will, it is presumed, “create powerful pressures to cut federal spending, and thus, perhaps, enable the administration to accomplish its goal of rolling back the New Deal,” a description of the Reagan program that is now being extended to far more ambitious plans.

-Noam Chomsky, Dominance and Its Dilemmas

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/chomsky.html

Thanks, but Grandpa just keeled over when he realized that most of the money he invested for his retirement has evaporated, and the remainder will shortly be useful only in the bathroom.

What is disheartening is the absolute adherence by both candidates to the required Washington orthodoxy:

1.) "I love Israel" -- What kind of malarkey is this? Israel is a foreign country that is both fanatically religious and possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons, to boot! They have horribly mistreated the Palestinian people! I'm tired of having billions of my tax dollars support them!

2.) Iran is a danger -- Total baloney. Not only is there NO evidence that Iran has a nuke, even if they did, so what? Israel has hundreds and we have thousands. We dealt with a nuclear-armed to the teeth Soviet Union for decades! Sheesh, who is Iran going to attack without themselves being reduced to a sheet of glass in retaliation? Gimme a break!

3.) Worship of the military -- TWO wars that have gone on longer than WWII with no end in sight that are sucking us dry financially, coupled with ever-more macho talk about "protecting Israel" from imagined enemies. We need a military that is lean and mean and protects the United States -- nothing else!

4.) Messianic vision of America -- We can't even lead our own country down the right path. Only Americans in their self delusion think that the world is awaiting salvation from us. This cult mindset is dangerous!

Neither Obama nor McCain offers anything fundamentally different. Their grand plans are just so much window dressing, as each will have to face a nation in serious economic decline with a homeless, jobless population.

The choice is this: Whose face do you want on our military-corporate-banking controlled government?

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

re: "It should have been pretty obvious from the articles getting published back then."

Which leads us to only one of two possible conclusions:

1.) The people running the show are complete idiots and were totally blindsided by all of this; or

2.) The people running the show are fully aware of what they are doing and have purposely crashed the economy in order to destroy the last remnants of the America they hate in favor of a new order controlled by the global banksters.

Take your pick. Either choice is equally ugly in its implications.

You have it backwards.

Home prices are dropping because they were hyperinflated by a combination of uber-low interest rates and totally flaky mortgage products. Without the easy credit and zero-down, no-qualification types of mortgages, home prices had to fall. It is the necessary fall in home prices that has sparked the wave of foreclosures, not the other way around.

Home prices must continue to fall. As I have posted many times, a return to traditional lending standards means a return to traditional pricing. How the hell else will anyone be able to qualify for a mortgage? You cannot have both the very necessary tightening of lending standards and hyperinflated prices!

Any attempt to prop up prices is thus both totally counterproductive and doomed to failure.