The Mortgage Bankers Association reported yesterday that nearly 60 percent of the sub prime loans in Florida in the fourth quarter of 2008 were delinquent or at the start of foreclosure.

Okay, that's it for the even-handed journalist tone.

Six out of ten loans gone bad? And whose fault is that?

I mean, six out of ten Floridians are not unemployed.

So, if they have jobs, what is wrong?

Is it, perhaps, the loans? Or the lenders who made them?

If, six times out of ten, we tried to make a telephone call but the system could not connect, would we accept it? If the lights didn't go on six times out of each ten that we flipped the switch, would we all say, that's not the electric company's fault?

No. We'd grab those companies and say you're part of our structure. We cannot be a civilized developed country unless this works right, unless there's power and telecommunications.

And we can't function with lenders who do not know how to lend.

If I were a banker or a lender, I'd be standing on top of a hill calling for regulating the whole lot of 'em in the mortgage industry. Hey everybody, here are the new rules and we all play by them.

You want to lend to speculators? Go ahead. But charge a high price because you're taking a high risk.

But you don't wreck our system by paying big commissions to someone who can push a loan on to a borrower you know won't be able to repay.

This is a dream but, Could we perhaps find out who made each of those delinquent loans and send them out to cut the weeds down around the house and to bring the full force of the lending institution into a discussion about what can be done at this point? I mean, they talked to them when they made the loan. They can't talk now, when the loan went bad?

Could we go trailing after the bank and lending executives and their bonuses over the last six years and ask them to pay the money back, to stabilize the system today?

Six out of ten loans gone bad? That's the borrowers' fault?

Apparently 22 percent of loans made in Florida are sub prime, more than the national average. And far more have gone bad here than in the rest of the nation.

That's not the sign of a sick industry?

Or, maybe not. Maybe these lenders are amazing good at pinpointing the deadbeats and turning them all into homeowners.

If they're so good at that, it should be cinch to recognize someone who will pay back a loan because they promised to.

Nationalize the banks? Nope. I don't want to own them.

But regulate them. Or what's left of them.