The foreclosure crisis has been a huge drag on the economy since the economic collapse of 2008. Warren Buffett has explained that we won’t have an economic recovery until we have a housing recovery.

One of the controversies, however, involves bad practices by the banks, and whether consumers should get a break in the face of this misconduct.

Mitt Romney apparently doesn’t think so, as he is arguing in Las Vegas that foreclosures should speed up.

“Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney said when asked by the Las Vegas Review-Journal what he would do to jump-start the floundering housing market. “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.”

The administration, Romney said, “has slow walked the foreclosure process … that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.” Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto sued Bank of America in August, accusing it of foreclosing on homes without proper authority. Nevada is beset by economic turmoil and foreclosures. Last year, one in nine Las Vegas homes received a foreclosure notice.

On pure economic terms he has a point, but he seems to ignore how millions of American were screwed over by the banks. Yes, many home buyers made mistakes, yet it’s clear that the banks were jamming through mortgages just to rack up fees.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

For shallow fools like Donald Trump, net worth means everything. Yesterday he was bragging that he was worth more than Mitt Romney, as if that mattered when judging someone as a businessman, let alone a President or a person.

Net worth does not equal happiness, and it doesn’t always reflect ability. Of course we want to increase our net worth, as it helps to make your life less risky and more comfortable. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that net worth means everything. If you do that, you’ll neglect things like family and relationships.

Also, as we’ve seen over the past decade, net worth can be the result of many things, including luck and sometimes fraud.

Donald Trump has been a very successful real estate developer and self-promoter. He deserves credit for that. But he also started with significant resources from his father, and he happened to make a bet on New York City at the right time. That said, his business ventures outside of real estate have not fared very well (other than his turn as a reality TV star, and we’ve seen from the likes of Snookie that you don’t need much in the way of talent in that arena).

Mitt Romney was a very successful business consultant. He was successful in a range of businesses, so Trump’s net worth crack is just silly and demonstrates how shallow some rich people can be.