It is of public record that my patent "Quantitative Supply And Demand Model Based On Infinite Spreadsheet" (Pat. No. 6,078,901) software for price prediction predicted both the US Savings and Loan Crisis and the recent Subprime Woe.

In June 2006, I wrote to the Federal Reserve about the rising interest rate, which was causing the increasing mortgage rate to be close to the decreasing rate of return and was soon to cause a real estate crisis. The Federal Reserve wrote back that it had no interest to "continue the dialogue" (meaning my past comments to Alan Greenspan, who responded frequently through the media). Within a month of this rejection of my prediction by the Federal Reserve, the Subprime Woe flared up, for the first time.

When I risked another comment to the Federal Reserve early 2007, it regretred its past rejection and responded that my comments "will not be ignored." Ben Bernanki even influenced the US Treasury to set up a public comment system (for me to comment?).

My first comment to the Treasury, it turned out, could have some real significance in the valuation of the insurance premium for Mortgage Backed Security. Even today, there is no definitive answer as to what caused Fannie/Freddie and AIG to fail. My answer is simply that the failure was caused by the use of actuarial analysis in the valuation of insurance premium. The insurance premium should be proportional mainly to the equity, the difference between the market price and the mortgage. Mortgage defaults are generally not accidents, which can be studied by actuarial science. ### Hugh Ching, Post-Science Institute 5-21-2009

I have a great deal of sympathy for those who were and are poor and uneducated and found themselves in mortgages that they could not support. Your story relates the woes of an educated, elightend consumer who gamed the system and now seeks a bailout at my expense. Shame on the newshour for giving this "reporter" and his book visiblity. Basically the man knew every step of the way what he was doing and he still insists that his fellow citizens bail him out.

As a Cold War kid I am not of the opinion that the Communists have much to brag about, but there is an extent to which I wonder if the surviving purists among them don't have a bit of a self-satisfied smirk on their collective faces right about now given the comments above. If a professional business journalist can wind up in a position where he is about to lose his home based on "a huge gamble", then to what extent can we seriously hold less erudite consumers responsible for doing the same? Indeed, our entire system of celebrity seems predicated on a mindless worship of those gamble when in fact it is at marginally more sensical to follow a well defined path, even given the layoffs and innumerable stories of disgruntled workers in our economy. Maybe what is called The American Dream is more rightly refered to as The National Delusion. As youngsters we are told that if we work hard we can grow into any lifestyle we choose, when the fact of the matter is that a mere fraction of those who aspire to significance actually achieve it, while the vast majority spend a disproportionate amount of effort laboring at jobs they have every right to despise under bosses who all too often seem to have robbed of their humanity as though it were a special skill one might list on a resume. Yet as a culture we have a contempt for the disenfranchised, as though they have failed and not the system in which they struggled under. One can hardly watch an hour of television without some call to send charitable donations to Africa or Asia or some other "backward" part of the world. Meanwhile, our neighbors are going hungry, being denied health care and now are losing their homes. As it has been said, it is no sign of superiority to be well adjusted within a sick society. Our society is sick, and the evidence is finally becoming undeniable.

Mr. Solman,

Edmund Andrews' new wife has declared bankruptcy twice, in spite of having more income that most Americans can only dream about.

Mr. Andrews is not a victim of the evil bankers, but would likely have gone bankrupt at any rate.

I would like to see him a little more remorseful and less greedy. There's not much moral difference between this charlatan and his wife and the evil bankers he's blaming.

And I question your journalistic integrity as well. For shame.

Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has a story that Ed Andrews's wife has declared bankruptcy twice, a fact that Mr. Andrews left out of his book, his article in the NY Times, and his interview with you.

http://tinyurl.com/q95mec

Did you ask him or his wife about his wife's spending habits? At least, he mentioned her habits in his book, but excused them as caring about others.

Your journalistic failure to look deeper into Mr. Edwards story than what he told you is shocking. Ms. McArdle at the Atlantic made the scoop of the year by revealing the 2 bankruptcies of Patty Barreiro. Can you please revisit this story in light of this new information? These people are shameful and so are you for going along with their story. We, the public, are paying for their greed; our children will pay for it. Can you please do some responsible journalism here and redo the story, looking more closely at the facts? National PUBLIC Radio: you owe us this.