Occasionally I have someone tell me that they have to subscribe to corporate media because they need to know what “they” are saying. I understand how these people feel. I broke down two years ago and subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. For someone who works hard to avoid putting money into the pockets of folks like Ruppert Murdoch, it was hard to write the check.
Those who practice the most material omission and offer a venue for lots of self-serving spin, can also afford to hire and keep incredible talent like the WSJ’s editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, and columnist Peggy Noonan.
Noonan hit a homer today on a subject of great importance. Here it is: Look at the Time
Catherine,
What is sustainable? We saw a rash of banks trying to expand their profits when there was no growth. BAC and C kept expanding both horizontally and vertically to capture all the business. They became unmanageable and became insolvent. I believe it was not from sheer size, but from corruption and the belief that there is more business out there when it isn’t. Instead of becoming service oriented and competitive, they just became large.
Growth is a mandate when there is no growth to be had. Why can’t people be happy with sustainability and forego growth?
Like the worthless junk bonds, the brokers concocted similar vehicles and have sold them to people pretending that they have value. The most bizarre situation arose in Wisconsin where several schools were enticed to buy things they thought were bonds and weren’t. What is worse, they borrowed money to do it. Now they are suing the parties involved.
There is an investigative piece that links the “junk bond king” to much of WS here. Wisconsin School Districts Sue Royal Bank of Canada and Stifel Nicolaus and Co. in Lawsuit Over Credit Default Swaps
Five school districts in Wisconsin are suing Stifel Nicolaus & Co., Inc. and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) for losses incurred after the bank and brokerage firm sold the districts “Credit Default Swaps,” (also called “CDS” or complex credit derivatives) worth $200 million resulting in some $150 million in losses. The school districts claim that the bank and brokerage firm told them that the CDS investments were safe even though they knew otherwise.
The “junk bond king” is a live and well and has a network and all that was learned about junk bonds was forgotten. http://www.deepcapture.com/bernard-madoff-the-mafia-and-the-friends-of-michael-milken/
The group think is that regulation can’t keep up with “innovative products”… These innovative products are frauds and worthless. We don’t need innovation when they are bogus products designed to defraud. It is all part of the unwillingness to recognize what is sustainable. When they can’t make profits from legitimate business, they turn criminal. The greed from the top makes these guys do both irrational and criminal things to justify taking huge salaries.
Politicians must guard their e-mail carefully while in office. It’s handy when “procedure” allows their records to be wiped clean. This State of Texas legislator recently lost control of the Texas House. He got to wipe clean many electronic files.
TEXAS HOUSE: On Craddick’s last day, computers wiped clean
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/02/05/0205speaker.html
“The higher I go, the crookeder it gets.”? It seems that as officials step down, their tracks are also wiped clean…The weaker they get the cleaner their trail?
Brad
thank you.
Someone told me this. I did not believe them. So I got out my mortgage and read it. There was no such clause.
Someone tried to post this. It never got posted so they e-mailed and asked it to be posted.
“BANKS FORECLOSING ON [PEOPLE WITH MORTGAGES AND] PERFECT PAYMENT
RECORDS.”
Is that even legal, you might be asking…..
Well, yes and no is the answer.
Remember the trigger that began the great depression? It was “Margin
Calls”. Millions of people who ought to have known better had gotten
themselves waaaaaaay overextended into stock ownership via so-called margin loans where they could put say 10% down on the price of a stock they wanted and borrow the rest of the purchase price FROM THEIR BROKERS (backed by banks) using the stocks themselves as
collateral. Fine, in a hot rising market. But these “contracts” all had a so-called “margin call” provision whereby the banks could call the loan on you at any time and for any (or no) reason. And you, the over-extended stockholder, would have to pay up, which was normally only possible for many if they immediately sold their stock.
WHEN THE BIG BANKS DECIDED IT WAS TIME FOR PROFIT TAKING AND CONSOLIDATION (OF THEIR HOLDINGS) THEY BEGAN CALLING IN THESE LOANS IN A MASSIVE WAY……IMMEDIATELY CRASHING THE MARKET…..
That was their trigger device then. I don’t know if those “contracts” were legal or not. Oddly, I have never read a single word on that subject, not even when I was in law school and studying “contracts”. [Nor do I know whether the banks of that era had themselves bought stocks (or even “shorted” them!) to roughly match what their borrowers had pledged for all those margin loans. Quite a thought, yes?] But the DEVICE and how it impacted the over-extended market is clear. And I guess I will add here…..that the INTENT of those big banks is now also clear.
IF YOU OWN ANY REALESTATE that you bought using a bank mortgage anytime in the last, say 30 years or so–even with a so-called flat rate mortgage loan, but certainly with any ARM loan–I suggest you get your mortgage and loan papers out and READ THEM! And I have ten
bucks here that sez, if you do that, you are going to find a clear statement in there to the effect that THE BANK CAN CALL YOUR ENTIRE LOAN IN AT AMY TIME FOR ANY (OR NO) REASON, EVEN IF YOUR PAYMENT RECORD HAS BEEN PERFECT FROM DAY ONE AND FOREVER!
Is that legal? Yes and no. Can they do that? They have begun.
So, let’s get real technical: IS THAT A VALID, ENFORCEABLE “CONTRACT”? I say no, even though a lot of courts are clearly going to support a lot of banks throwing a lot of good folks out of their
homes in the coming months. Courts may very well say that these totally one-sided mortgage “agreements” are in fact enforceable “contracts”. Others may hear the poor bank’s pleas “in Equity” and rule in their favor even though the “agreements” may not actually beenforceable contracts “under law”.
In this, the legal/economic situation out there is exactly the same as it is under that other huge, over-hanging cliff: the Credit Card Mountain.
Everything in this economy may be resting on air if these ubiquitous hugely one-sided “agreements” turn out to be unenforceable……or fraudulent.