A few more highlights from the package of articles and features on the debt crisis from Sunday’s New York Times, which I first wrote about on Monday.

“Borrowers and Bankers: A Great Divide” is an analysis of the differences in how the federal government has responded to the financial woes of lenders and investors like Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac (bailouts) vs. those of ordinary borrowers (you’re on your own), and explains some of the reasons behind the discrepancy.

“Work Out Problems with Lenders? Try to Find Them” talks about something I’ve written about in the past: mortgages are sliced and diced into securities and traded among big investors so much that people who want to work out payment terms with their lender are having difficulty even figuring out who they should be contacting. (I would be remiss if I did not point out that a good bankruptcy attorney can help you with this!)

In fact, as Sunday’s front-pager notes, it’s not just mortgage lenders who have been securitizing and trading consumer debt in recent years: credit card issuers have gotten into the act as well. The result has been the creation of a system in which lenders increasingly don’t even care if borrowers will ever be able to pay their debts in full. Securitization allows lenders to see an immediate return on investment (ROI) for issued debt instead of waiting years for the borrowers to pay it off, but it also means that they’re far less concerned with ensuring that borrowers can pay their debts off in full over the long run—as long as borrowers remain current until the lender unloads their promissory note onto someone else, the theory goes, all is well.

The lending industry has become a huge, nationwide game of Hot Potato, which worked well enough in good economic times, but as the economy has faltered we’ve started to see some of the huge problems that exist with a lot of these loans, and the so-called subprime mortgage crisis is looking more and more like it’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.