The Washington Post had another one of those articles over the weekend where they try to blame everything on the recession. It seems that “the recession” has given many people yet one more excuse for their own poor decision-making.

This time the story portrayed a woman, Daverna White, who supposedly “took a chance on the American dream” [of home ownership] but failed, leaving she and her four children homeless. The Post introduced the article as

“as the recession shows signs of easing and the economy begins to recover, the families most affected by it, such as Daverna White’s, are starting to recover, too.”

Please note: no one can rejoice in the fact that this woman and her four children do not have home. Problem was, this lady’s story had absolutely nothing to do with the recession. It had virtually nothing to do with losing “her home.” It was, if the facts reported by the Post are correct, nothing short of attempted theft gone bad.

According to the article Ms. White makes about $15,000 a year and relied on food stamps from time to time. She ran a small daycare business out of the house that she rented. Nothing wrong with that and all credit to her for trying to better her life.

Somehow, she got it into her mind that she could buy a house that cost $698,000. She was college-educated. She knew better.

She got hooked up with a mortgage loan officer, identified as Wendy Zhang, who offered her this deal: she could buy this house and have it 100% financed. Zhang would give her $27,000 to deposit into her bank account to make it look like she had resources to buy the house. Zhang would also create paperwork that showed that White had $163,320 in annual income.  Zhang agreed to pay her first two months mortgage. White knew that her monthly payments would be $5635 and she knew that she couldn’t afford it. She even called a friend before signing the papers and her friend told her “don’t sign.”

She signed. This was no “gamble on the American dream.” This was, pure and simply, an attempt to obtain a house by false pretenses.

Not surprisingly, White lost the home to foreclosure several months later. The Washington Post reporter even went so far as to describe the day that the bank threw all of the family’s belongings out onto the front lawn, including a copy of Napoleon Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich.”

Too bad Mrs. White didn’t read the chapter in Think and Grow Rich about “accurate thinking.”