SOUND OFF: BETTING THE HOUSE

As the economy has cooled in recent months, the subprime-mortgage meltdown has resulted: People who had been granted mortgages for which they likely shouldn't have qualified are finding themselves unable to make the payments on their houses and are faced with eviction.

Is it the lenders' responsibility to help keep people in their homes, because they enticed customers to take out mortgages that the lenders knew they might not be able to afford? Or should the borrowers be held solely accountable, because they entered into lending agreements that they should have realized were beyond their ability to repay?

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Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.

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