It’s really getting serious: last weekend a woman in Ohio tried to commit suicide after her house was foreclosed on. This week a man killed himself and his entire family after being out of work so long he just couldn’t take it.

Anybody ready to admit to a recession yet?

These two tragedies were isolated incidents, but they do show the level of financial and emotional strain people get under when money gets tight. Desperation is clearly a powerful thing. Just keep one thing in mind: no matter what happens, money, a house, a job — they’re all things that can be replaced. Life is more precious.

You always hear tales about people diving out windows the last the stock market crashed. Mostly it’s a myth, but this financial crisis has brought an incident a lot more real and very tragic. A 90 year old woman in Cincinnati shot herself over the weekend after her bank tried to have her removed from the home they had foreclosed on.

Fortunately, she lived, but unfortunately, it’s very possible we might see more acts of desperation in the months to come if the economy stays as bad as it’s been.

If you saw any news last weekend you had to hear about the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If you didn’t, you still need to know what it means because it will affect the whole economy. Here’s a quick rundown: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are companies that make it possible for millions of people to buy homes by purchasing mortgages from banks. Banks use that cash to do more mortgage lending. But so many people are behind on their mortgages, Fannie and Freddie have been taking one big financial “L” (that’s a loss, get it?).So after some background power moves over the weekend, the feds announced they were stepping in to take over both companies so they didn’t fail, which would have the potential to tank the entire economy since Fannie and Freddie own nearly half the mortgages in the entire country.So what’s that mean to you? First, the feds will put up a bunch of money to allow Fannie and Freddie to lend more, which should be good for some borrowers. Its been hard to get a mortgage because banks didn’t want to take the risk, so Fannie and Freddie having more money to buy mortgages will help. It should also mean banks will lower some interest rates on mortgages, so if you’re looking to buy a house soon, it could get cheaper — but only if your credit is good.On the other hand: once again, you’re paying for the bailout with your tax money. 

It’s a dream come true: you’re down on your luck and the good folks from ABC decide your story would make for great television. They swoop in and build you your dream house, for free, then hand over the keys and deed.

Then three years later, you wind up in foreclosure. Sigh.

It happened to a family in Atlanta, who faced foreclosure on their 5,300-square-foot, five-bedroom mini-mansion after they used it as collateral for a loan to start a construction company. I know: it’s wrong to pass judgment on folks for trying to live out their dreams. At the time, I’m sure the crib seemed like manna from heaven — a paid-for haven from sleeping in a van with enough equity to launch an enterprise. I can’t say I wouldn’t have at least considered doing the same.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that any number of cliches apply. Something about looking a gift horse in the mouth maybe? or how about leaving well enough along?

Seriously, though, if there’s any lesson to be learned here its that coming up a winner through contests and game shows isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. Luck, in these cases, requires planning of the tax and financial variety. How many times have you read about somebody hitting the lottery for a kajillion dollars then filing bankruptcy the following year? Or somebody who wins a car but can’t keep it because they forgot that the car counts as taxable income and they can’t pay the bill?

Point being, there’s nothing wrong with luck, but if you do find yourself that lucky, try a little discipline along with it.

Bush finally signed a housing relief bill yesterday that’s supposed to help people stay in their homes by providing affordable, government-backed loans for people who can’t afford and need to refinance out of their current mortgages.

The plan also has some other tenets in it, like $3.9 billion in “neighborhood grants” (can’t wait for the indictments on the first people to get caught bilking the system on those) and more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They’re the government-backed mortgage companies that are also getting bailed out under the new bill.

Anyway, how many people are ultimately helped by the bill remains to be seen. But it still brings up an old question for me: how many people are really “deserving” of said help as opposed to those who simply got too greedy and bought cribs they knew they shouldn’t have? I don’t mean to sound cruel, and surely there was a ton of predatory activity in the housing market. If you got vic’d by some shark of a banker, I’m all for you getting help on my tax time.

But what about people like myself, who stayed renters while other fools dove nose-long into crap like interest-only loans, 40-year mortgages, ARMs and the like — where’s my help in buying a house? Might it not make more sense to let some of the froth out of the market by letting those folk lose the house so someone who can actually afford it might pick it up at a decent price?

I had an interesting conversation on the radio yesterday about the housing implosion and its impact on black wealth. I was on-air with Kai Wright, who wrote a story in the New Yorker about mortgage fraud and how it devastated some black families and threatened generational wealth. He also wrote about the topic this week on TheRoot.com.

I actually expected to get into more of a debate with Kai given I’m not as willing as he is in his writing to give borrowers a pass for making bad decisions. There were plenty of scams and schemes cooked up by mortgage lenders to dupe people into bad loans, and many of them were aimed at black folk. But not everyone was tricked: some folk knew better and just got greedy, or decided to take the ‘easy’ route to a new crib instead of saving until they were ready.

In the end, though, we found a lot of common ground. Here’s the show.

So you go to buy your first house: it’s a great time because you’ve got money saved up, home prices are down and someone else’s foreclosure just might be your good fortune! That is until the company that was foreclosing on the previous owner fails to check and see that the house was sold and and you’ve moved in, hires some professional jackers to break in and take ALL your ish (including the food out the fridge) while you’re at work, and then allegedly gives all your stuff away.

And did I happen to mention that all this just might be legal? It happened to a Nigerian family now living in Texas (why people move down there, I’ve no mortal idea. Just a bad idea.) Check out the story here.

The good thing is the family is suing and hopefully a judge or jury will be VERY punitive for what happened to them. The bad news is there’s a local prosecutor who doesn’t think anything illegal happened because “a terrible mistake is not necessarily a crime.”

WTF? This guy can’t be serious. This is a case that falls under the “it could happen to anybody” category and as such, you’d think law enforcement would look at it with that level of gravity. Guess maybe not.

A major reason for all the turmoil in the housing market is that for a few years, so-called creative financing got way too creative. When I lived in Boston, I had people tell me that I could afford condos that were way overpriced (a Dorchester two-bedroom in the $400s? Please). All I had to do was get me an interest-only loan. Or an 80/20. Or an ARM. Or a 40-year mortgage.

Sound crazy? EXACTLY the point. People should understand by now that buying a crib is complicated, but not rocket science. If you need a mortgage that feels like you’re jumping through a flaming hoop wearing a kerosene thong, the house  is too expensive. And if you’re not an experienced investor, anything outside of a regular old, 30-year, conventional mortgage, or maybe a 15-year with a fixed rate, is putting your ass on the line.

Guess not everyone was paying attention, though. I’m watching “My First Place” on HGTV and they showed this couple who got the CRAZIEST mortgage: The place cost $279 grand; to afford it they took out two loans, one for 80 percent of the purchase price at 6.75 percent and one for 20 percent of the price with an  8.875 percent interest rate. And the 80 percent loan is INTEREST ONLY for the first10 years, so they’re not building ANY equity for the first decade!

Even with all that going on, their monthly payment was $1,885!  I’m amazed that anyone would still go for that.

One born every minute, I suppose.

Seriously, folks: can you help solve the worst mortgage crisis in history if you’re a politician who got the hook up on his own mortgage from the biggest subprime lender?

That might be a question Congress has to take up soon, as two senators who have been in the middle of the subprime debate may have gotten nice deals on a shiny new morgtage.

Shady.

Having bills that you can’t pay can put you in the poor house? But can it also put you in the crazy house or the hospital? Maybe so, according to a few stories I’ve seen recently. This USA Today article says that mental health workers are seeing a ton of people coming in for depression and stress related to being in or near foreclosure on their homes. And this story from the Associated Press says that the stress of debt is also causing physical health problems, from headaches to sore backs and worse.

None of this should surprise anybody: any level of stress can affect a person’s physical and mental health, so financial pressure will certainly be no different. The ironic thing is that if you’re already under the strain of poor finances, having worsening health could make things worse, creating medical bills that add to the pile, which adds to the stress and perpetuates a vicious circle.

Yet another reason to be disciplined with your cash and your health. I think I’ll go for a walk now, and have a salad. A cheap one.