I’m not much of a drinker these days.  That wasn’t always the case.  David “Danger Dave” Lampsen closed a few bars in his earlier years, if you catch my drift.  And that meant that I would occasionally wake up at some point during the following afternoon with an agonizing headache and that sick burning nausea that so often follows a round of binge drinking.

My preferred response?  A wise man would opt to rehydrate himself and to swear off the booze.  I, however, subscribed to the “hair of the dog that bit you” theory of hangover elimination.  I fought fire with fire, hangovers with Wild Turkey.

In time, I learned the wonders of moderation and of maturity.  I avoided the hangovers in the first place and certainly wouldn’t respond to their occasional returns with a series of shots.

Why am I writing about my own history with alcohol in a post about Chase Home Finance?  Well, it isn’t part of a twelve step program, if that’s what you’re wondering.   I bring up the old “hair of the dog” colloquialism because it seems a fitting description of Chase’s strategy for dealing with mortgage crisis.  Instead of backing away from lending, they’re doing more of it.  A lot more.

By now, we all know the basic outline of how the housing market went down faster than Jager shots at a frat party.  The banks made generous loans to folks who were ill-prepared to handle them.  As these sub-prime loans began to go bad, it set off a chain reaction that has encouraged our current yucky economic state.

One of the lenders who made more than a handful of those doomed mortgage loans was Chase Home Finance.  They managed to put themselves in enough trouble that they’re now slated to receive a huge chunk of change from Uncle Sam just to insure that they don’t fail.

So, what do you think Chase Home Finance has been doing lately?

Well, they’ve been spending a great deal of time in courthouses, for one thing.  That’s because they’re filing suits left and right as they’re forced to foreclose on a city’s worth of defaulted mortgages.  If you do a Google News search for “Chase Home Finance, LLC“, you’ll find yourself staring at a seemingly neverending list of people Chase is dragging into court because of they’re inability to make payments.

A serious analysis of the data indicates that anecdotal evidence like that does give us a fairly clear picture of what’s happening, too.  Foreclosure numbers remain very significant–and that includes those with which Chase Home Finance is involved.

But that’s not all they’re doing.  They’re also making a point to take a healthy dose of the hair of the dog.  Woof!

You might think Chase would be reluctant to go after more and more home lending in the aftermath of the last few years.  You’d be wrong.  They’re strategy seems to be to solidify their place as one of the biggest home lenders out there.

A recent New York Times report explains that one of the reasons Chase’s first quarter numbers for ‘09 look a little better than one might expect is because they’ve been acquiring more notes:

As independent mortgage companies and brokers closed last fall, and major players like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo swallowed up troubled rivals, lending profit margins widened, doubling at big banks amid a refinancing wave during the first half of the year, analysts said.

Right now, Chase is picking up more mortgages and they’re playing the game on our dime.

So far, it’s working.   Their numbers are on an upward trajectory.  We can only hope that this means they’re cherry-picking the right assets from the mortgage companies that bit the dust and that Chase isn’ t picking up too many weak mortgages like the ones currently involved in all of those foreclosure suits.

Then again, if the folks at Chase Home Finance were capable of making those quality decisions while avoiding the urge to overextend, we might not be having this conversation in the first place.

It’s enough to drive you to drink.