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POPSBank can't prove it owns the mortgage, Judge writes off $460k debt This is why Rep. Kaptur was telling people facing eviction to squat in their own homes , refuse to be evicted, and make the bank demonstrate in court that the debt is legitimate . Possession is 9/10 of the law. I predict that this is the first tremble of a massive shock-wave about to move through our economy.
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POPSWall Street Derivatives: So complex as to be "Computationall intractable" MORE: In principle, an alert buyer can detect tampering even if he doesn't know which asset classes are the lemons: he simply examines all 1000 CDOs and looks for a suspicious overrepresentation of some of the asset classes in some of the CDOs. What Arora et al. show is that is an NP-complete problem ("densest subgraph"). This problem is believed to be computationally intractable; thus, even the most alert buyer can't have enough computational power to do the analysis. Arora et al. show it's even worse than that: even after the buyer has lost a lot of money (because enough mortgages defaulted to devalue his "senior tranche"), he can't prove that that tampering occurred: he can't prove that the distribution of lemons wasn't random. This makes it hard to get recourse in court; it also makes it hard to regulate CDOs. Everyone on Wall Street... UP AGAINST THE WALL, THE LOT OF YOU BASTARDS!
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POPSHow Weed Won The West - Trailer #1 In Oaktown, we voted to increase our own taxes on Marijuana . Because, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."
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POPSTime to put "Wealth On Trial" again? The Pecora hearings resulted in 12,000 pages of transcripts that are still a primary source for historians of the Great Crash, and important New Deal legislation that for the first time regulated the high-handed, free-wheeling banking industry and protected the public from its excesses -- including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which established the Securities and Exchange Commission -- Pecora was one of its first commissioners) and the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which erected a firewall between commercial and investment banking -- a wall torn down during the Clinton administration, leading to much of our trouble today.
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POPSThe end of beer coasters? As a bartender I can assure you, the beer coaster fulfills a vital function in addition to putting your beer on it: Put it over the top of your glass when you step away from the bar to go have a smoke to signal "I'm coming back, don't take my seat or my drink please".
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POPSGOP Losing Support Among Nearly All Demographic Groups I remember saying to myself back in 2000 that if there was anything positive that could come out of Dubya being president was that they would finally push things too far and the country would turn against them. Remember young Americans: when you think "Republicans", think Iraq, Katrina, massive corporate greed, the Patriot Act, the TSA, and Econopocalypse.
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POPSUp In Smoke: The Deposit Vanishes To everyone who ever described us renters as "People people who throw away their money when they could be owning..." The whole economy is a ponzi-scheme, and it's all coming undone. The people who worked hard, who played by the rules and believed they'd get ahead doing so? They're the ones profiled in this article. And us grasshoppers who've been dancing are watching all the diligently built ant-hills gets washed away by the storm. The ants have moved in to the rental unit next door. I feel sorriest for the ants. They played by the rules and get screwed the hardest. At least us grasshoppers got a few dances in.
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POPSIt's the pot economy, stupid It’s time to end the unjust charade of marijuana prohibition, tax this flourishing multi-billion dollar market, and redirect criminal justice resources to matters of real public safety.Assemblyman Ammiano has done an enormous service by breaking the silence on this common-sense solution.
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POPSSo say the bankers: "Learn to love the AMERO"
This may postpone, but not stop the eventual collapse of the dollar and the worlds consumer society. The dollar which will become basically worthless after the exchange for the Amero and will have little international value, and thus not be transferable to Swiss Francs, Pound Sterling or to the Euro. And thanks to the garbage legislation like the Bail Out Bill and the US Patriot Acts, which included currency controls and banking and secrecy laws aimed at non existent terrorists, few Americans will be able escape the effects by opening up accounts offshore denominated in Swiss Francs or Euros before the announcement of the Amero. But the core problem with our money begins and ends with our own, privately owned banking cartel known as the US Federal Reserve Bank. If you understand who owns the Fed, you will know that US dollars are essentially printed by the same private banking institutions who print the Euro. The Amero is about expanding this bank’s operation out to Mexico
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POPSSuper Rich: The Greed Game An excellent explanation of both how the global financial markets collapsed, and how those at the top made a killing in the process, and why the rest of us are left to pay the bill . But we're supposed to look at them as virtuous capitalists, working hard and getting rewarded for it. What a crock. Parts 2 thru 7 are available on YouTube, The entire video is available via Google Vid, but the available version's audio track gets out of synch around halfway through. See also: - In Debt We Trust - Money as Debt
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POPSAtlas Shrugged (Apdated for the current financial crisis) Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand. Yes, Hank ... claim me ... If we're to win the battle against the leeches, we must get it on ... right now ... Don't let them torture us for our happiness ... or our billions. He tore his eyes away. "I can't. Sex is base and vile!" "No, it's an expression of our highest values and our admiration for each other's minds." "Your mind gives me the biggest boner, Dagny Taggart." He fell upon her like a savage, wielding his mouth like a machete, and in the pleasure she took from him her body became an extension of her quarterly earnings report—proof of her worthiness as a lover. His hard-on was sanction enough. "Scream your secret passions, Hank Rearden!" "Derivatives!" "Yes!" "Credit-default swaps!" "Oh, yes! Yes!" "Collateralized debt obligation." "YES! YES! YES!"
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POPSThe Dirty Secret of the Financial Crisis: Our Banking System's Broken The Levy institute suggests that some banks are "too big to save." … "Time to Bail Out: Alternatives to the Bush-Paulson Plan," by Dimitri Papadimitriou and Randall Wray. Their perspective is Keynesian, not market worship. They argue … that the bailout is proceeding backward. Instead of saving Wall Street first, government should devote its heavy firepower to reviving jobs, incomes and business enterprises. The banks will not get well or begin normal lending until there is overall economic recovery. The financial system, meanwhile, can be managed much as it was during the Depression, with regulators weeding out doomed banks and closing them, putting troubled banks under conservatorship and supervising healthy ones closely to prevent excesses. "If we are going to leave insolvent institutions open, it is critically important to replace or at least control management," the Levy paper explains. "Business as usual would be a disaster."
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POPSRepublican Foot-Soldiers Vacating Washington Forced To Sell Homes In Terrible Market What was that about a "Permanent Republican Majority?" Speak louder, there's an immense chant of "YES WE CAN" in my ear. I have little to no sympathy. These are the foot-soldiers who've done Karl Rove's dirty work for 8 years. The fucking country imploded on their watch, due to their candidate's policies. They were the party in power that caused this massive housing bubble explosion and econopocalypse. Payback's a bitchs, ain't it? Go wander in the wilderness for a while and get your party's soul back. And if someone has to take it in the ass with no reach-around on their house, you're the ones who fought so hard for the system that led to this. Just shut up & go away. You hands-on fuckers aren't the people the John Wayne Chaser was meant for.
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POPSLoan officers @ WaMu pressured to approve loans "No matter what" This is what people mean by "predatory lending". The whole industry went out looking for people who didn't qualify to give loans to. At the same time, they helped rewrite the bankruptcy laws to make it harder for people to get out from under crushing debt. See also: - In Debt We Trust - Where Does Money Come From?
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POPSThe Long Road Ahead -- Are You Ready for the Worst the Economy Has to Offer? The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle. So, that's what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean. There's no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction. And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games.
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