MELISSA BLOCK, host:
It's time now for your comments. And we're starting today with some that you've posted to our Web site.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
There were many responses to our story about two entrepreneurs who were trying to buy up toxic mortgages and turn a profit. Former hedge fund manager Raj Bhatia and mortgage broker Albert Behin are finding investors to buy up bundles of mortgages that are underwater, meaning the homes are worth less than the mortgages.
Mr. RAJ BHATIA (Former Hedge Fund Manager): We got together and basically said, you know, there's going to be tremendous opportunities in buying some of this residential debt that I basically helped create over the past six, seven, eight years.
BLOCK: Well, listener Janie Whit(ph) writes from southwest Florida that she admires Bhatia and Behin's entrepreneurial spirit. She tells us she was laid off in October and is trying to avoid foreclosure herself. And she adds this, I think these two men would make an excellent addition to the Obama administration.
SIEGEL: Many more of you had less favorable things to say about Bhatia and Behin. Alok Sumani(ph) posted this. Raj and Albert and the bankers with whom they are dealing should be ashamed of themselves. Profiting from another person's misfortune is unethical. He continues, instead of trying to make a buck, these guys should put their smarts and knowledge of finance to work helping homeowners renegotiate their mortgages with their banks in exchange for earning a modest fee.
BLOCK: My conversation with Harper's magazine editor Roger Hodge about the 25th anniversary of the Harper's Index struck a chord with listener with Becca Paige(ph). She writes, I'm a little sentimental about the Index, as my husband and I used to go through it together before we had kids.
Usually I would read the index items, and he would guess what the number was. The prize being me saying ding several times if was right on the money or at least impressively close.
SIEGEL: Well, finally, to a conversation we aired about a new book that's out, a compilation of letters written to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's called "Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man." Well, Linda Lindroth(ph) of New Haven, Connecticut, heard the story and offered one of her own.
She writes, when he was 18 in 1938, my father, the oldest of eight children, wrote to FDR asking for help. The door of the family home in East Patterson, New Jersey was to be padlocked for failure to pay the mortgage and homelessness imminent. FDR received the letter and provided sufficient assistance so that my father, his parents and siblings were able to continue to live there.
BLOCK: And there's more to this story. Ms. Lindroth continues, when I was in the second grade, I took the newspaper clipping describing my father's letter to FDR to school for show and tell and lost it along the way. I've always hoped that someday I would find another copy of the news story that began, "18-year-old Saves Family Home."
SIEGEL: Well, if you have any tips on that or just thoughts about our program, please email us. Go to npr.org and click on, Contact Us, at the top of the page. And please tell us where you're writing from and how to pronounce your name. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.