Excel as a moral compass...

This afternoon a friend of mine (who is a Computer Engineer) and I were talking about walking away from an underwater mortgage. The discussion included the implications of bankruptcy, credit ratings, how companies look at assets and make similar decisions, and finally the morality of making such a decision. He was specifically going to try to convince a relative that it would be in their best interest to walk away from their mortgage.


Some paraphrasing:
Him: "Banks just look at it like a spreadsheet."
Me: "But I made a commitment to fulfill an obligation, regardless of how they look at it."
Him: "I'm going to make a spreadsheet to show them that it's better to walk away."
... Some moments of silence ...
Him: "I just saved my Excel document... it said I had a minor loss of fidelity."


I thought that was pretty dang funny. Of course, Excel was referring to compatability differences between the Office 2003 and Office 2007 versions of files, but I like to think it was trying to tell us all something more profound.