Everyone is waiting with bated breath for the unveiling of today’s subprime mortgage fix. If you’re too risky, the Treasury Department says, you may just have to become a renter again (which makes some sense — perhaps home ownership wasn’t really right for you at the time). And, of course, those who can make payments at higher rates won’t benefit, either. The plan is to help people who can refinance to a lower mortgage by changing the rules, and by helping those who can’t refinance, but who can make payments with the teaser rates, keep their rates for a little bit longer.

What I love, though, is the Wisebread take on how you can move yourself out of the category that doesn’t get any sort of help (#1 — people who can afford the higher payments) into a category where you would get help:

But maybe there’d be some way to borrow the money and then spend it not
on high living, but rather something of lasting value. Depending on
exactly how the rules end up getting written, it might be something as
simple as savings bonds; it might have to be something risky like land
or a long-term, interest-free loan to your brother-in-law. Then, once
you’d kept your loan from reseting, you could probably get your money
back–if whatever you bought really was a thing of lasting value–and
pay off that extra loan that put you into category four.

Of course, as Wisebread also points out, the chances that such a move would be "allowed" is dicey. After all, the idea is to keep the people paying for as long as possible — just keep ‘em afloat so the financial institution can cash in. Savvy "regular" folks who look for such loopholes don’t usually get rewarded in such a manner.