Bush's ballyhooed "Paulsen subprime plan" to help typical Americans, his so-called mortgage assistance for those borrowers in danger of losing their homes in the subprime debacle is just more smoke and mirrors and no substantial help at all.  It doesn't offer any assistance to those whose homes have already been foreclosed.

Bush's plan was led by the mortgage industry not by the government, is voluntary, and only assists a small number of borrowers. It's another example of government of, by and for corporate cronies.

Folks who purchased homes with conventional mortgages are fortunate that they were dealing with ethical lenders.  Meanwhile many avaricious lenders steered thousands of borrowers who qualified for conventional mortgages to sub-prime. 

This debacle was caused by the greed of lenders, appraisers who inflated the value of housing stock, and others in the home mortgage industry who ensnared unqualified buyers with the Republican false mantra of the "ownership" society while making billions for themselves and creating a housing bubble that has burst with a vengeance.

Now the mortgage lenders who are part of the problem have fashioned a "solution" that Bush touts or doublespeaks as helping borrowers.  Wall Street will benefit from a plan created by mortgage lenders and mortgage investors.

Bush and Cheney's corporate cronies have made out like bandits amassing billions in profit from the Iraq debacle, the Katrina disaster, and other situations of the Bush administration's largesse to the have's and have more's.  Bush's financial corporate thieves will use the "Paulsen plan" to acquire even more billions from a mortgage catastrophe they created.