Amazing: Interest Rate Cuts Won't Help Sub-Prime Borrowers; Such a Surprise!

My neighbor, Alan Abelson, in Barrons:

Indeed, it's doubtful that any of the palliatives being proposed to dull the pain of mortgage holders who can't meet their payments or improvident lenders in the soup are likely to prove very effective. The latest data certainly provide little comfort. The news from the builders is uniformly bleak. And, as the aforementioned Minter and Weiner note, foreclosures on subprime loans alone could result in cumulative losses of -- gulp! -- $164 billion. It's also reckoned, they say, that a 15% decline in house prices -- not exactly outside the realm of possibility -- could wipe out $3 trillion of household net worth.