Since the world's financial markets are headed south, it's likely Santa won't - and this year we can all look forward to the hard coal of fiscal reality in our stockings.

Added to that are ominous reports that the mortgage mess triggering our free fall is likely to get worse: An eye-popping report on "60 Minutes" last night outlined the second and third sucker punches from the housing market slugfest, sparked by reset loan fees socking us through the roofs of our once wildly overpriced homes.

To stave off those further rounds of mortgage defaults, eviction and market detonations, how about a fixed-date freeze on Adjustable Interest Mortgage (ARM) resets?

Let's disarm the ARMs. And then - how about doing away with the egregious adjustable interest rates altogether? 

The "60 Minutes" report by Scott Pelley is nothing less than a late-season Halloween horror tale:

"The trouble now is that the insanity didn't end with sub-primes. There were two other kinds of exotic mortgages that became popular, called "Alt-A" and "option ARM." The option ARMs, in particular, lured borrowers in with low initial interest rates - so-called teaser rates - sometimes as low as one percent. But after two, three or five years those rates "reset." They went up. And so did the monthly payment. A mortgage of $800 dollars a month could easily jump to $1,500. ...Now the Alt-A and option ARM loans made back in the heyday are starting to reset, causing the mortgage payments to go up and homeowners to default."

During our high-flying, bulllish, go-go market era of, say, three months ago, all these risky mortgages were bundled up and sold, virtually as commodities. It seemed a win-win investment, after all, since the housing marking was forever (it seemed) appreciating in value. If some long-shot joe fell behind and was booted from his home, it could always be resold - at a much higher price - to some other sucker.

Pelley reports that the process degenerated into traffic in so-called "ninja" loans - borrowers could tap funding with "no income, no job, no assets". Everyone - home sellers, realtors, commission-hungry loan officers - made money on the deal, pushing it up through the "money community" and out to an investor; the market saw this "bundled" debt as sure-fire payoffs.

...As long as the housing market appreciated in value.

Problem was, all this feverish selling and loaning and buying and bundling created a huge bubble in the housing market. The property was only as valuable as the fevered market could sell it for. When reset-driven loan defaults began, and housing vacancies multiplied, the bubble popped.

Homebuyers who stumbled into these low "teaser rate" deals now and will be paying exorbitant interest rates for homes now worth considerably less than the amount of their loans. But it will set up the economy for even more-disastrous corrosion should they default on their loan repayments, lose their homes and add even more empty units to an overstuffed inventory of unsellable property.

A just "correction" would be for the banks and loan companies to take the hit - renegotiate the loan for the diminished price the property now is worth. That will be a hit for them - since the previous owners have already walked with the small fortunes created by inflated selling prices. Absorbing those losses will put even more finanical giants out of business and tank the system. Fairness could put us all on the streetcorner, hawking spongy apples and stolen watches.

But slowing the reset formula may provide a cushion for everyone. After all, ARMs were supposed to be a temporary fix for the high interest rates of the early 1980s. When banks discovered they were so profitable, applying a formula in which lenders almost always make astonishing profits, the system became permanent.

And it was a favorite with the property "flippers" who helped puff up the bubble:

"Historically, people have loved taking ARMs because they would qualify for a larger loan amount, or could be making interest only payments on a house they didn't want to keep for long... Many people take hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (3/1, 5/1, 10/1) to benefit from the lower rates and flexible repayment plans for a limited time and later refinance into a fixed rate mortgage, or sell the house."

Now, adjustable rates are applied to most loans and credit - including credit cards. The "teaser rate" that so entices college kids to never settle for anything but the best also delivers to them the shocking denoument of nothing but the highest debt.

Somehow, this country got through 200 years of existence with a mostly fixed-rate loan system. Maybe it's time to just the adjustable rate and let banks go back to getting their money the old-fashioned way. Earning it.