What should we do about the "I don't want to be held responsible for my actions" crisis?

Here's the scene in Cleveland, Ohio.

At 9422 Chagrin Street, a hand-scrawled sign attached to a window indicates someone lives there: "Please Used."

After three rings of the bell, Sarah Evans, 60, opens the door with a mixture of curiosity and alarm.

She says she is one of the last people left on the street. And she is on the verge of losing this two-bedroom house in which she has lived for more than 30 years because she simply cannot afford her monthly payments.

It is a complicated story. She refinanced in 2003, but did not realize the document she signed included provisions to radically increase the interest rate.

She stopped making payments in 2006 and shows her unpaid bills totaling 24,000 dollars.

Her bank is in the midst of eviction procedures.

As well it should be. I am quite certain that, if Mrs. Light Bulb and I were to fall $24,000 behind in our mortgage payments, it wouldn't take over a year for our bank to evict us from our home. I'd guess six months at most.

But why did this happen in the first place? According to the fourth paragraph, "it's a complicated story." Really? How complicated can a refinance be? From the same paragraph:

She refinanced in 2003, but did not realize the document she signed included provisions to radically increase the interest rate.

Did not realize? Let's translate that into reality, shall we? "Ms. Evans did not read the document she signed." And so, instead of living up to the agreement to which she legally committed herself, she has decided to purposefully become delinquent in her mortgage payments. And just who is to blame for this?

For county treasurer Jim Rokakis, the greed of the banks is to blame for this man-made disaster.

"All you needed was a pulse to buy a house. Some loans were written with no money down, no proof of buyer's incomes. They did not even check what people were saying. Most of those folks were jobless," he said in an interview.

"Shaker Heights was the perfect storm: poor folks, unemployed and a desire to get a piece of the American Dream."

Ah yes, the greed of the banks. Because, you know, the banks came into town and held a gun to the head of each home owner and made them refinance their fixed rate mortgages into adjustable rate mortgages. Those nasty banks.

I gotta tell you, I'm sick to death of hearing about these cases. I do have compassion for these people; losing your home must be an awful, awful thing. But if they want to find someone to blame, they need to look in the mirror. For most of us, purchasing a home is the single biggest financial transaction we will ever make in our lives. If you and I don't read every single word on every single page of our mortgage agreements, shame on us.

What should we do about the "I don't want to be held responsible for my actions" crisis? As Michelle Malkin says, "Suck. It. Up."