SOURCE: NPR

The big question: Should the federal government bail out lenders and borrowers in the subprime mortgage crisis?

Financial institutions are in trouble. If they falter so too might the economy. On the other if the government uses its powers to help ailing lenders and homeowners then risky behavior will likely continue.

"Bailing out the lenders is unconscionable," agrees Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C. "They made buckets of money on these subprime loans, and now they need to suffer the losses. In a free market, you should feel the pain" and pay for your mistakes, she says.

Still some companies are so connected to the U.S. economy that they cannot be allowed to fail. Worse yet is that residential loans were bundled and sold to investors all over the world, so America's subprime lending crisis is now a global problem - one that has rattled stock markets from Europe to Asia.

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