What really caused the mortgage meltdown?

Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown says Stan Liebowitz in today's WSJ. "The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected." Take a look at the "do you qualify" page at The Obama administration's "Making Homes Affordable" plan, and you'll see the government throwing more money after bad at homeowners with negative equity. The government is leading the way to a deeper recession with its higher taxes and poor policies.