There's been a lot fuss about the advice Clark gives out to callers who are upside down in their mortgages. For those in an owner-occupied property, Clark suggests a workout -- as is often done in commercial real estate. The reality is that lenders would rather renegotiate the terms of your mortgage than have to foreclose and play property manager.

Now even the FDIC is getting involved in the workout game. After the failure of IndyMac, the FDIC voluntarily contacted the bank's mortgage customers who were upside down with offers of a workout. Why? The federal taxpayer benefits more this way than if the feds have to foreclose, mismanage a property and finally unload it as a distress sale.

So far, the FDIC has lowered monthly mortgage payments for IndyMac customers by $430; they're adhering to a flat 38% of the homeowner's income. Meanwhile, other workouts are being orchestrated by Bank of America for their Countrywide division. For more on that, see Clark's discussion of the topic earlier this month. Simply put, workouts are a smart business move. It's cheaper to cut a deal with a borrower than to put them out on the street.

On the other side of this issue, you have the question of fairness. Is it fair that you pay your mortgage as agreed and get no help? No, it's not fair. Workouts do protect the value of your neighborhood by preventing too many foreclosures. But if you drill down to you as an individual borrower, it's obviously not fair. The world is grey sometimes -- even though we'd prefer it to be black and white.