First, some full disclosure: In my day job I have a number of mortgage lending industry clients.  None of them knows about or were involved in this post in any way.

Dean Baker has a post today using his usual excellent analytic abilities to dissect a story in today's New York Times about the current state of the mortgage issue.  While I don't always agree with Dean's sense of outrage, his post is definitely worth looking at after you read the Times.

One thing the article and Dean fail to point out is that the housing/mortgage crisis isn't really one problem; it's a steady series of different problems that absolutely defy a single or simple solution.  Lumping them together as "The Crisis" as the Times does complicates the public policy process.

The problems may have started out when some (but hardly all) subprime borrowers were not able to make their monthly payments as their adjustable rate mortgages adjusted. 

But it then included prime borrowers as well.

Not all of these problems were caused by ARMs.  As the economy has continued to change, some homeowners with life-changing events such as the loss of a job also began to have a problem. 

Other homeowners are having problems for more traditional reasons -- because one of the wage-earners in the family died or the marriage ended and neither of the now divorced partners can afford the home by themselves.  But this too is being lumped together even though the rate of death and divorce has not changed much.

Property values have also fallen for a number of different reasons including overbuilding of new homes and a changing market that has made it much harder to sell existing homes.

Credit is also more difficult to come by and more expensive.

This has led to homeowners having to go to closing with cash or to propose short sales which may not be acceptable to first and second mortgage holders.  It has also led to some homeowners simply turning in their keys and wallking away from their homes.

And, as a number of stories in recent weeks have revealed, some renters are being thrown out of their homes because their landlords have defaulted on the mortgages to the buidlings in which they are renting.

Add to this other things such as falling property values that have made the homes worth less than the mortgage or the mortage plus the home equity loan.

Everything being discussed today in Washington or elsewhere only deals with one part of an already complex issue that is getting more complicated as conditions change. Simple solutions that only deal with one part of the problem won't end the overall condition and no one shodl expect that to happen.