Paulson: Foreclosures Inevitable

Faced with record-high foreclosure rates, the Bush administration has been scrambling to keep people from losing their homes, but many are beyond help, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. Lax lending standards that accompanied the once high-flying housing market allowed people to buy homes they could not afford, Paulson said. "Many of today's unusually high number of foreclosures are not preventable," he said in prepared remarks to a mortgage-lending forum meeting in Arlington, Va. "There is little public policymakers can, or should, do to compensate for untenable financial decisions." Paulson said that there were 1.5 million home foreclosures started in 2007. He said some economists estimate there will be about 2.5 million foreclosures started this year.