From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. Bob Garfield is away. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Of all the many moving parts of the ongoing great recession,

the part that really chips away at our collective confidence

is the one that puts people out on the street, literally.

It's the foreclosure crisis.

You could tell that story with statistics.

More than 288,000 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July, September quarter.

That's up from nearly two-

One in five homeowners, now in some sort of trouble.

One in five.

But now that crisis has deepened into a full-blown scandal.

Attorneys general from across the country are expected to investigate allegations that some

banks use fraudulent paperwork to kick struggling borrowers out of their homes.

You have banks sending people to change the locks on houses that aren't in foreclosure.

You have all sorts of craziness.

J.P. Morgan Chase has now admitted they've made a mistake.

They're intoxicated with power, and it's wild.

It's the wild west.

Turns out that many big mortgage companies lack the proper paperwork to foreclose and may have done so in error.

Advocacy groups and some Democrats have called for a national moratorium on foreclosures,

but the top dem in the White House opposes it.

Should you blame the borrower or blame the lender be?

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