Deliberately walking away from mortgages

Voltron says: No surprise, when people's houses are worth less than the mortgage, they walk. The government is trying to trick people into refinancing their mortgages into full-recourse loans to prevent them from walking away, but most people aren't that stupid. The banks are not willing (or able) to eat the loss by lowering the principal amount of the loan, interest rates are already effectively zero and the government is broke. The only way the government can keep the banks solvent is through inflation.

Article has some updated statistics:

http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-harney12-2009jul12,0,3674775.story