The other day I listened to an ad, where a mortgage bank was arguing that, although mortgage interest rates have recently gone up, they are still relatively low at historical rates. Never mind the wisdom of fighting a crisis of too much leverage with more leverage, consumers hopefully have learned their lesson from the past few years that it matters if they can afford the mortgage payments in the future, not just in the first month. And, current economic data show that mortgage payments are probably less affordable now than at any point in the past four years.
