If you have not had a chance to check out previous visits with Mr. Geeai, you can read them at…
Chink in the Armor – Mr. Geeai, MERS, and the Search for the Truth…
Last weeks post discussed The American Lion or the Barbary Lion? If you haven’t read that post, I suggest you do before continuing below…
Whatcha Gonna Do Mr. White Shoe Boy When the American Lion Comes for You?
~
Do you hear the drums? I do. They ain’t for me but I sure hear them. Do you?
~
Do you hear the roaring? I do. That’s them baying for your destruction. They just haven’t figured out how to do it yet but eventually, the story of MERS will make mainstream and people will start to act on their own.
~
“I’m not going to be here next week” is how Mr. Geeai greeted me on a delightfully cool morning last week, “so your readers are going to have to live without me. You can come and hang out, but you have to bring your own coffee.”
“Is this the annual Geeai family campout?’
“Indeed it is”, he replied. “Chris is coming up from California and we are all going to hang for a week. So you and your readers have to live without me next week.”
“That’s OK. I’ll take notes”
“So what new has happened this week?”
“The jerk who is making hundreds of millions by throwing people out of their houses? Yes, I remember him.”
“Want to know the name of his 130 foot yacht?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Su Casa es Mi Casa”
And then Mr. Geeai did something that really surprised me. With all of the emotion of a great white shark coming in for a kill he said, “Ok, that’s a knee cap buddy”. And then he formed his fingers into the shape of a pistol and unloaded on my kneecap. “Bang” he said, and looked at me with dead eyes, “That’s just for naming your boat what you did. It shows who you are and that’s worth a kneecap without any other consideration. Oh, I’m sorry, is that painful ? Good. Now, let’s talk about what your real punishment is going to be.”
It didn’t surprise me that he blew away the kneecap so much as the totally uncaring, nonchalant attitude he took towards the action. It was as if he were telling one of his tenants they were responsible for a late payment. Totally emotionless, you’re a mark in a book. ‘Oh, it says here I blow your kneecap off. *bang* Scratch that one, what’s next on the list?’ That’s not like him. I know him as a man of great compassion but all of that was gone as he thought of dealing with the ones responsible for ripping off the whole country for their personal aggrandizement.
There is a seething anger in this country and them that are responsible best take heed. If Mr. Geeai can seriously consider blowing off a kneecap … and then consider what might be appropriate punishment … then there is real trouble brewing. Mr. Geeai is as laid back as they come.
There was a MERS story this past week from www.wallstreetoasis.com. Wall Street Oasis bills themselves as a place where “monkeys” (their terms, not mine) from investment banks, hedge funds and private equity firms can come to relax, trade barbs & quips, rant, and generally find an outlet for the frustrations built from breathing the rarified air of corporate finance.
In order to comment on any of their blogs, you have to be a member and in order to become a member, you have to fill out an exhaustive series of questions such as, where did you go to school? Where did you get your MBA? What was your GPA? I was reminded of standing in the little boy’s room in grammer school competing with all of the other boys to see who could step the furthest away from the urinal and still arc a flow into the bowl. Doug Jones was the best at two steps away from the back wall, his closest competition was four but then Doug was the best athlete on the playground so we weren’t surprised. We were awed. Qualifications to become a member of Wall Street Oasis are just as meaningless as arcing a flow into the urinal if you ask me. I suppose some people are in awe just like I was with Doug Jones but I’ve grown up a bit since then. I digress.
Edmundo Braverman, Senior Neanderthal, (again, their monikers, not mine) wrote an essay bemoaning the move amongst some in the home owner class who are taking a strategic default (http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/strategic-foreclosure-back-door-bailouts). It seems homeowners are seeing with all too much clarity they have been dealt a raw deal and want to fold. Who can blame them? They have a house they are so underwater in it will be 30 years under the best of circumstances before they see equity in their house. So they walk. It’s not that they can’t afford the payments, they can. They just see no point, so they walk from the house, strategically foreclose and start over. Just like in poker, why bet a bad hand? Or worse yet, bet on a rigged game?
So they are defaulting. In record numbers. And it is a real problem for the banks. A typical scenario: You put $50K down on a $500,000 house and now carry a $450K mortgage on a house that is worth tops $375K. If you go to the bank to try and work something out, they flick you away as an annoyance so you walk, leaving them with a $450K mortgage, no payment stream, and a house they might be able to offload onto a glutted market for $350K.
It apparently is becoming such a serious problem that there is a move underway to ban such people from ever qualifying for another home loan for the next 7 years. This upsets people over at Wall Street Oasis. Some bemoan the loss of people who can afford the lower mortgages such regulations will remove from the market. They see such a move as suicide. Many of them are calling in the moral argument of ‘you agreed to pay, you still can, here’s a .45 Morality to the back of your head, pay’. Some of them understand that a strategic default is just that. Fold your hand and wait for the next deal.
~
If the Street Gang themselves choose to tag themselves monkeys and neanderthals………..I guess we should just acquiesce to their preferences?
Spray paint, anyone?
The “you can afford to pay” argument is funny considering that they know without their government benefactors they couldn’t afford to insist on full payment.
That is, they would have been so starved for cash they would have been forced to take — or their Chapter 7 trustee would have been willing to take — almost anything. That $500K mortgage that’s trading for a penny on the dollar; sure — we’ll take $10K in satisfaction.
Of course, the gilded oligarchs who made bad bets, and those who trusted them with their money, would have ended up in the street rather than their victims and that would have been awful public policy.
They knew this, of course. They also know that banks routinely engage in strategic default; the Mortgage Bankers Association itself defaulted on a $100 million loan for its own building in Washington, D.C.
They’ve just come to feel entitled to win or, if they lose, to have the rules reset so they win. They act like the spoiled