President Bush announced today a voluntary program that the administration has worked out with mortgage lenders to ease the avalanche of single-family mortgage foreclosures expected over the next 18 months. But what about the flood of foreclosures already in the courts?

Who is trusting that this voluntary program will actually be observed by members of an industry that was living in a fantasy world of never-ending value increases in the best of them; and, was preying on people with a dream of home ownership, in the worst of them.

It was heartening to hear yesterday that the FBI has opened a unit to investigate the predatory lenders. But are any of the lenders, or the underwriters who packaged these mortgages into securities, not in at least some small measure at fault and to blame for this debacle? Shouldn’t that industry bear the brunt of the blow, instead of average Joe American busting their butt to attempt to reach the dream of having a place they can call their own?

Will anything short of a federally-mandated moratorium on foreclosures prevent mass-homelessness?