Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktCaptain Kirk Climbs the mountain:
Star Trek: The Next Generation. Is that Dr. Beverly Crusher pimping The National Enquirer? Why, yes it is:
I was looking for a Firesign Theater bit from Eat or Be Eaten called “The National Toilet”, to follow up the National Enquirer commercial. Couldn’t find that, but I found this (part 1 of three) video of Firesign Theater performing Nick Danger at The Improv.
Finally, the wit and wisdom of Milton Freidman.
When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction…
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
A Foreclosure Fraud Lawsuit has been filed by Martha Coakley, MA.Simply put, Coakley seeks penalties for “unfair and deceptive practices” in violation of state consumer protection laws, in particular the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act. The top list of complaints tells the story: 1. Engaging in unfair and deceptive foreclosure practices by conducting foreclosures when the defendants lacked the right to do so and misrepresenting to homeowners their roles as mortgagees or as the holders of the mortgages; 2. Engaging in false documentation practices to facilitate their foreclosure practices; 3. Deceiving homeowners in the course of servicing mortgage loans by misrepresenting to borrowers regarding its loan modification programs, acting deceptively in implementing loan modifications and deceiving borrowers regarding foreclosure proceedings; and 4. Failing to comply with Massachusetts’ registration statute.That’s a pretty clear rendering of what went on. Notice that she tags robo-signing and document fraud (in #2) as a facilitator for the main crime, which is to foreclose on borrowers without the legal standing to do so. To prove this, Coakley cites the Ibanez decision, and the upholding of it recently in Belivacqua, which clearly states that, under Massachusetts law, “any effort to foreclose by a party lacking jurisdiction and authority to carry out a foreclosure under the relevant statutes is void.” The layman’s term for that is “stealing homes.” Coakley is accusing banks of stealing homes. They didn’t have the proper proof of ownership to take control of the homes in a foreclosure, and they did it anyway, by forging documents and committing fraud upon state courts.This seems rather important. Requiring the defendants to take all action necessary to cure defects in title resulting from their failure to register all assignments or transfers of beneficial interests in mortgages secured by registered land in the Commonwealth.This is a big deal. In some cases there isn’t really a way to cure title: the true ownership of the property has become confused, or the statute of limitations on fixing the securitization has run out. The only way I can see where satisfaction could be reached is on a new mortgage, with the expectation of a mass principal write-down or some other accommodation, that cures title.
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"Inquiring minds want to know" Say what you want about the commercial or the magazine, but if a tagline survives 30 years, it is a winner.
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Evening all. Another hit-and-miss check in by me. From now through February is hell for me at work due to various annual deadlines unavoidably converging, so I will not be here much. But thank God I still have a job. My first grant of the "season" was submitted today. Yay.Brent, good point! Who doesn't recognize that phrase after however many years? LOLAnd I offer my personal thanks and support to Coakley. Hope she sticks to it. I have to note that I have been amused catching up on some of the discussions. I am pretty sure I am the only one on this board who is actually in the income bracket everybody wants to generalize about. Try living it and telling me my opinions are "obviously" and "clearly" wrong. Pffffft.
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okie: I am pretty sure I am the only one on this board who is actually in the income bracket everybody wants to generalize about.You are in the top 1%?
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scott, ha ha.
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I would never have recognized Dr. Crusher. That is an amazing catch.
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Hi okie, good luck with all the work stuff. This is our slow time except for Amazon sales which are pretty easy to maintain……..we're not exactly living the high life here ourselves. We managed to put some aside and hang onto our first home as rental property but income wise we're crying the blues around here. Our youngest will be the big winner income wise in this family and our son's doing pretty darn well with his brewing company. The rest of us just putz along paying bills and trying to stay healthy…………….not easy at our age right? And I count myself lucky compared to the people I work with at the food bank and even hospice, as most of them are truly fixed income seniors.
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Hi, okie, good to see your "Girls Gone Political" around here. I've also been slammed at work lately, and will be through the end of the year. Much, much better than the alternative, though!I feel very lucky in that my personal standard of living has gone up a bit this year. Two cannot always live as cheaply as one! :-)Scott and qb, one of these days I'll write a post about what I meant when I said "rugged individualism vs common ideals" and we can discuss. I haven't been able to post or comment much, but I've really been enjoying reading everything. . . and I was really glad to see Dave! jump into the water a lot today.
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Michgoose: Two cannot always live as cheaply as one!No kidding! Nowhere near, in fact, and as one you get to make financial and time-allocation decisions based strictly on your individual priorities. As the sole breadwinner of a family of four, I can tell you even though I'm not anywhere near being the top 1% (in America), I'd feel like it, except other people are expensive. 😉 We're all in the top 1% globally, which is no small thing to be thankful for, even when our personal financial times are hard in comparison to spoiled rich people on reality television.
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lmsinca: Our youngest will be the big winner income wise in this family and our son's doing pretty darn well with his brewing company.That's great. That's a thing I worry about. I'm not going to be able to support my children as adults, and I'm not likely to have a lot of money to leave them, so I'm really hoping they end up in career paths that are both personally satisfying, but also monetarily rewarding. Preferably in industries that don't completely vanish after their first decade in them. 😉
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Unemployment rate down to 8.6%Non-farm payrolls up 120k, up 140k excluding government jobs.Revisions from last month also up 20k.On the surface, good numbers.
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okiegirl: Try living it and telling me my opinions are "obviously" and "clearly" wrong. Obviously, your opinions are "obviously" and "clearly" wrong. You have a subconscious bias towards maintaining your elite and privileged lifestyle, Thus, any position you take is suspect. So you need to be Occupied by us 99 percenters! So you can see that we're irritable, and unwashed. 🙂
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The 99%: Someone needs to be held responsible for my poor educational and career choices!I am the 99%.
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ScottC: Don't you suspect that business cycles will eventually lower unemployment and improve GDP . . . even if the government does nothing but maintain the status quo? People gotta eat. There's work to be done. Eventually, don't we all collectively get back to it? I think it was a quote by Milton Friedman that talks about how 90% of employment used to be in food production, and how now 2% of employment is in food production now, and what a huge amount of unemployment that represents . . . in a world where new jobs weren't created based on technological innovation and time availability. A lot is made of present-day productivity increases leading to perpetually high unemployment, but I think productivity increases just tend to free up time for other types of jobs to come into existence, although it may take several years for new job markets to become robust.
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Kevin: Don't you suspect that business cycles will eventually lower unemployment and improve GDPYes. I've said before that government policies don't "create" jobs. They create an environment that will either accelerate or restrict the job creating process, but government does not "create" jobs. At least not self-sustaining jobs.A lot is made of present-day productivity increases leading to perpetually high unemployment, but I think productivity increases just tend to free up time for other types of jobs to come into existence…Yes. This is precisely how economies grow and wealth gets created. It is not quit the same as, but is related to Frederic Bastiat's classic broken window fallacy.More efficient production frees up resources (including human resources) to do other valuable things. Thus, wealth is created. To think that an increase in productivity efficiency will lead to perpetually high unemployment is to think that we have reached a summit of value or wealth creation. Which seems silly to me.
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