Everyone is quick to blame the mortgage lending lobby and lawmakers who can be swayed by special interest money for the rise in home foreclosures over the past few years. But someone else is at fault also: borrowers.

It is true that lenders the scandalous subprime lenders acted from greed to attract people with poor or no credit to their mortgage schemes. These schemes included setting low, or at least manageable, interest rates for the first few years. The financing was applied to homes that these borrowers realistically could not afford.

Then the fine print kicked in; the borrowers found they had signed on for adjustable rate mortgages in many cases, exploding ARMs that drove up their monthly mortgages beyond their ability to pay.

Lawmakers were content to stay out of the subprime marketplace assuaged by lobbyists perks and campaign contributions until the foreclosure fallout became so shocking and the lenders behavior so outrageous they no longer could label their regulatory temerity as support for free market enterpreneurship.

Still, the borrowers should have known better. They should have educated themselves on the fiscal responsibility that home ownership is, pardon the pun, built on. As the old folks always told us, you cant support champagne tastes on beer or soda pop income.

Borrowers should have remembered the adage: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Home ownership is an American dream, not a delusion. But subprime borrowers deluded themselves into believing they could have what lots of other people struggle to achieve savings that could be used for a down payment, good credit and a credit history that would allow them to get loans during bank hours, not from businesses advertising on late-night television, along with ginsu knives and age-defying potions.

Then by the time they woke up, they were living a nightmare from which they only could end up evicted.

Yes, it is wrong for lenders to take advantage of the ignorant and economically ill-educated.

It is too bad the government waited so long to protect the people who elected them instead of bankrolling their elections.

But it also is always has been, always will be wrong for people to think they can get something for nothing. It is costly to believe that acting responsibly, whether that includes their finances, their work ethic or any other attribute, is something only other people have to do. It reflects bankruptcy in the common sense department.