Should the government decide who gets a mortgage?

One way to cut back on mortgage defaults would simply be to have the government regulate who could get a loan and who could not.

If a home payment would be more than 25 percent of someone's gross income -- no loan. If the house a person wanted to buy was in a region where home prices were still falling more than 1 percent a month -- no one would be allowed to get a mortgage. If the government thought there was a 20 percent chance that someone might lose a job because of the company or the industry where he worked -- no home loan.