In “Welcome to My Mortgage Hell” Glamour reporter Meghan Daum tells the story of Karla Hodges, a single mother of two with an income of $92,000 a year and no savings. Hodges’ bank gave her a no-money-down, $500,000 loan to buy a two-bedroom bungalow overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Two illnesses and a family emergency later, Hodges lost the house.

As with most articles in this genre, we hear the borrower’s side of the story, the tale ends with the bank repossessing the house and the lesson to be learned is that “the lending market can be predatory.” According to these stories, the bank is the predator and the borrower the prey, and the bank profits at the borrower’s expense.

In all likelihood, however, Hodges’ bank took a sizable loss. Banks lose an average of one-third of the home’s value on each foreclosure. In Hodges’ case, that would be equal to roughly $167,000 — about what Rep. Laura Richardson’s bank lost when it auctioned off her foreclosed property.

I’m not saying this to defend Hodges’ bank, which never should have approved Hodges for the loan in the first place. I’m pointing it out because way, way too many of these housing sob stories portray the lender-borrower relationship as “predator-prey.” It’s actually more like dumb and dumber.

The U.S. Congress (dumberer?) wants to pass a bailout for both, and stories (like this one) that cast homeowners as helpless victims of the evil mortgage banks (who “behave like they’re dealing rounds of blackjack”) help Congress disguise the bailout as a lifeline to struggling borrowers, when actually it’s a massive subsidy for the lenders that got us into this mess. (h/t Moe)