Walk away from that house.

That's what the mainstream media has been repeatedly telling people over the last month, in an amazing—and very populist—spree of American myth unmaking.

In terms of my taking notice, it all began with an article in the New York Times Magazine titled, "Walk Away From Your Mortgage!" The piece put the situation plainly:

Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage — forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. Is this irresponsible?
Businesses — in particular Wall Street banks — make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral — perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with. But the average American, as if sprung from some Franklinesque mythology, is supposed to honor his debts, or so says the mortgage industry as well as government officials.

Then there was this a few days ago:

A provocative paper by Brent White, a law professor at the University of Arizona, makes the case that borrowers are actually suffering from a “norm asymmetry.” In other words, they think they are obligated to repay their loans even if it is not in their financial interest to do so, while their lenders are free to do whatever maximizes profits. It’s as if borrowers are playing in a poker game in which they are the only ones who think bluffing is unethical.
And then this morning, on NPR's Morning Edition, the first question a reporter asked about the news that purchasers of New York's Stuyvesant Town have given the property—bought for $5.4 billion four years ago, and now worth far less than that—back to their creditors?

It was something like:

Is this another instance of the financially powerful doing exactly what Americans are told is irresponsible and immoral?

Pay attention, people who owe more than your homes are worth. The mainstream media—that supposedly elitist peddler of corporate lies—is teaching you how to shed a fishy morality, outsmart shady lenders and their Wall Street backers, and come out better financially in the process.