Pure and utter bollocks

GM says new Volt to get 230 mpg in city driving

The EPA guidelines, developed with input from automakers, figure that cars like the Volt will travel more on straight electricity in the city than on the highway. If a person drives the Volt less than 40 miles, in theory they could go without using gasoline.

[Yahoo AP]

According to this bogus claim, actual fuel used- if your test consists of driving the vehicle for under 40 miles at a sedate pace- is actually none at all (not counting the coal burned to charge the batteries).

Which is infinity, or ∞mpg.

Why not run with that as the lede?

I guess that angle seemed too unrealistic, even too grandiose that the GM spokes-holes didn’t think such a tall tale would fool even idiotic AP beat writers (really?). Little did they know these glorified stenographers just jot down what they hear without question, and it gets published. Now I bet they wish they’d not restrained their inner Gecko.

This is the kind of spin which strains credibility, so typical of glorified beancounters, detached as they are from the real world. Especially true in the case of GM, which, judging from the desperation such gimmickry reveals, is probably not a good bet to survive.

Do they really think the public is that stupid?

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“You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.” -Scott Adams

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Alabama retards

Not only can’t these tards get the truck in the bin (too small? perhaps they should have thought this through), they apparently feel it’s perfectly fine to trash a perfectly good vehicle because they made a (taxpayer subsidized) sale. Big whoop.

And you and I get to pay for this lunacy.

Of course, Alabama doesn’t have the market for ‘tards cornered, no sirree Bob- we got a an entire nation of them. To paraphrase Howard Dean, they’re in California, and Montana, and New York, and Florida, and Texas… etc.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

State proposal could steal borrow millions from cities

Last week, the state’s Department of Finance informed cities of its proposal to steal borrow as much as 8 percent of local governments’ property tax revenues — giving the state an extra $2 billion. The cities could in turn borrow the money from the private sector, the proposal suggests, but city leaders scoff at the notion.

[Mercury News]

The muni’s can borrow (at interest, of course) from the private sector to make up what the state takes? Good luck with that!

We’ve got trouble at every tier of .gov.

We’ve got a president sorely deficient of any depth of knowledge of how business should be conducted (not that he’s much worse than the leechfucks populsting Wall St.). He relies on goons to set policy, and all these leechfucks know how to do is spend.

These ass-klowns  have already committed to MORE THAN ONE-HALF OF THIS NATION’S G.D.P. to turn private banking institutions into what are now essentially GSE’s.

Spending isn’t the answer to our problems, the PPiP-tards just think of this as the easiest way out; not the smartest; not the best; just easy.

What else would you expect but a predictable and pedestrian response from bureacrats-for-life.

And they’ll be long gone from the party before the bill arrives.

And arrive it will.

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When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Big Daddy Economy

Won’t You Join Me and Raise a Finger to the All-powerful Welfare Class?

Most Americans think we live in a country that is governed by democracy, a country where capitalism has free expression.

The truth about this, which surprises most Americans because it wasn’t what was emphasized (much) in school,  is that we live in a republic, where socialism is practiced most profitably at the highest levels of society (‘old money’ investors, coporate interests), and favoritism (‘crony capitalism’, ‘corporate welfare’, lobbys) in fact reigns.

The recent disasters in banking, equities and politics has exposed cracks which are quickly being patched over. The cracks are still there; however most Americans are too busy (or too frightened) to peer in and see just what those cracks reveal.

Among the many travesties we have witnessed these past two years, one aspect that gets little recognition, but which helps explains much of the motivation of why things got done the way they got done (‘bailout’), is that America has become a manifestation of the “Big Daddy” economy.

Let me explain, using our most recent ex-president as an example.

George W. Bush was by reliable accounts a feckless businesman [1]. If it were not for family connections, he’d be hard pressed to find regular employment (‘day job’). What he personally lacked in intelligence and creativity, he absolutely made up for with lazy, entitled ambition. Apparently the acorn fell pretty far (but not too far!) from the tree.

W’s ’success’ in the business sector would be later spinned by the Reuplikrats during campaigning to ‘prove’ his ’success’ and ‘free market’ bona fides. In fact, W was the living embodiment of the Peter Principle, succeeding upwards with each failure. In that way he resembled his most avid supporters.

Running companies into the ground, only to be bailed out by his daddy’s cronies, became his modus operandi true calling, as we came to see (“when the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” [Wiki]). W and many of his cronies contemporaries (Steve Forbes, Bill Simon, 1,000 others) would inevitably fail in life at achieving personal success outside the shadow of their fathers; but they would succeed in carrying this undercurrent, this message of tough-talking incompetence with a safety-net (see the double meaning of “too big to fail” [2]), into this nation’s very psyche, informing and interfering with it’s economic operation, materializing into the now-familiar bailout mentality… similar in many ways in which mail carriers go postal.

Preferred ‘clients’  (cronies, ‘fortunate sons’) are bailed out, rather than allowed to be free to fail (the banking lobby’s recent success at mythologizing ’systemic risk’). As if failure is bad thing, rather than simply a part of the overall capitalist experience.

Ordinary people, untethered to the rightful welfare class, who have succeeded in life and business, are not being politely asked by the crony class for a ‘hand-up’- they are not even being told to pony up. They are being imperceptibly pick-pocketed by the tag-team of Treasury and Federal Reserve, Inc., the latter which has the power to inflate currency. Thus, lowering the value of your dollar; thus, stealing from you and your future earnings, in order to buy ginormous amounts of spackle for the banking community today (RUSH JOB!).

Everywhere you look, from Benron Bukkake, to Hanky (Panky) Paulson, to Elmer ‘Dicky the goldfish’ Fuld to <insert your fave crony capitalist here>, there are connected (or ‘made’ boys men) acting like surrogate daddies to their ideological offspring (I got yer ‘neo liberal bias’ right her Faux Nooz). Yes, they have succeeded in ways their fathers never imagined; instead of stewarding a system where hard work and fresh ideas are rewarded in the marketplace, and commercial growth is stimulated in organic ways, they’ve rigged the game so they can reap the benefits of your success, make your success theirs too, in ways feudal lords could only have dreamed.

All-in-all an immense improvement over the divine right of kings, who in olden times would rape your daughter and bugger your son. Today, they only want their/your money!

Isn’t crony capitalism a wonderful thing? What’s that you say, you aren’t a crony?

Sucks to be you!

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1. Arbusto Energy (sometimes referred to as Arbusto Oil) was a petroleum and energy company formed in Midland, Texas, in 1977, by former US President George W. Bush and a group of investors which included Salem bin Laden of the Saudi Binladin Group. This fact became controversial after the September 11, 2001 attacks due to Salem bin Laden being an older, half-brother of Osama bin Laden, who planned and financed the attacks. Payback is a bitch!

2. The Too Big to Fail policy is the idea that in economic regulation the largest and most interconnected businesses are “too big to [let] fail.” This means that it might encourage recklessness since the government would pick up the pieces in the event it was about to go out of business. The phrase has also been more broadly applied to refer to a government’s policy to bail out any corporation. It raises the issue of moral hazard in business operations. Often incorrectly interpreted by Joe Six Pack to mean fail was not possible, the phrase’s true nuance has become the wish that came true, and is now an eyesore to this intrepid blogger as each time I am reminded of who is really footing the bill.

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Consume less and enjoy a better quality of life.

.0000025 Success Rate

Last summer, Congress passed the Hope for Homeowners Act, setting aside $300 billion to help people refinance into more affordable mortgages. But the program has been a total flop.

When it was first introduced, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the program could help 400,000 people keep their homes.

But more than six months after the program was launched, the Federal Housing Administration says only one homeowner has made it all the way through the government program and received the FHA guarantee.

Hope for Homeowners was sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)…

I suppose that is all one needs to know.  [NPR]

Sing-along: #you’re out of touch#

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“It could be worse… they could be batting a negative average!”

Bitch done set us up

But now, the government’s plan to “save” the economy is to “save the banks,” along similar lines to the West trying to save its banks from their adventure in the post-Soviet economies. This is the basic neoliberal economic plan, after all. The U.S. economy is about to be “post-Sovietized.” The U.S. giveaway to banks, masquerading as “help for troubled homeowners”

The Obama bank bailout is arranged much like an IMF loan to support the exchange rate of foreign currency, but with the Treasury supporting financial asset prices for U.S. banks and other financial institutions. Instead of banks and oligarchs abandoning the dollar, the aim is to enable them to dump their bad mortgages and CDOs and get domestic Treasury bonds. Private-sector debt will be moved onto the U.S. Government balance sheet, where “taxpayers” will bear losses – mainly labor not Wall Street, inasmuch as the financial sector has been freed of income-tax liability by the “small print” in last fall’s Paulson-Bush bailout package.

The Treasury will take on the bad debt that banks are stuck with, and will permit mortgagees to renegotiate their monthly payment down to 38 per cent of their income. But rather than the banks taking the loss as they should do for over-lending, the Treasury itself will make up the difference – and pay it to the banks so that they will be able to get what they hoped to get. The hapless mortgage-burdened family stuck in their negative-equity home turns out to be merely a passive vehicle for the Treasury to pass debt relief on to the commercial banks.

In the mean time, bad private-sector debt will be shifted onto the government’s balance sheet. Interest and amortization currently owed to the banks will be replaced by obligations to the U.S. Treasury. Taxes will be levied to make up the bad debts with which the government is stuck. The “real” economy will pay Wall Street – and will be paying for decades!

Calling the $12 trillion giveaway to bankers a “subprime crisis” makes it appear that bleeding-heart liberals got Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into trouble by insisting that these public-private institutions make irresponsible loans to the poor. The party line is, “Blame the victim.” But we know this is false. The bulk of bad loans are concentrated in the largest banks. It was Countrywide and other banksters that led the irresponsible lending and brought heavy-handed pressure on Fannie Mae. Most of the nation’s smaller, local banks didn’t make such reckless loans. The big mortgage shops didn’t care about loan quality, because they were run by salesmen. The Treasury is paying off the gamblers and billionaires by supporting the value of bank loans, investments and derivative gambles, leaving the Treasury in debt.”

-Prof. Michael Hudson

It’s a lock

Giver her a break

I read this woman’s depiction of her plight. In the end, she’s just another person with a sense of entitlement. She’s obfuscating her bad decision-making by cloaking her true desire/motive/agenda: she wants her bailout (handout) too.

In her update, she’s says she’s not… but c’mon! Gimme gimme gimme. Me me me me. She has a victim mentality, but that just rings hollow. At 65 years of age, she should act like a grown up. Instead she still has the inclination to rely on her daddy.

Her attitude is representative of the pigman’s disease. She wants to socialize her losses, too. If Big Daddy is bailing out them big bad banks, “why not meeeee too?”, she asks. She could try holding her breath until she turns blue? Heh. She should try living within her means (that means being able to “afford” a 30-year fixed not a 5-year I.O. with HELOC at bubble peak- c’mon!)

Life is not without risk. She gambled and lost. She over-financed in order to overpay for her home. Deal with it. Getting out of her mortgage by reneging on her contractual obligation (mortgage), while repugnant to the prudent-minded, is still (always) an option. Unfortunatley for her, this door will only open when she defaults. That will happen when she comes to finally accept the contingent penalties (fico score, etc.) as reasonable.

The other side of the coin to her story  is, someone else will buy her home, at closer to its true value.

What is it’s true value?

The market establishes that.

We’re a long long way from there.

Many of the commenters see right through her.

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“Why is our government penalizing the people who played by the rules and rewarding the people who didn’t?”

Numbers make her brain hurt

Erin Burnett is a clueless cunt

Obama, seriously dude

A tax cheat in the Treasury?

The I.R.S. is a part of the U.S. Treasury. I can appreciate irony but this fucking redonculous!

This dude Geithner did his taxes with TurboTax? Seriously? And he used TurboTax? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine product, but… shouldn’t the role as Treasury Secretary be for a person that can do- or have done- his taxes properly? Without relying on the f limsy excuse that it was all TurboTax’s fault? Puh-leaase. He signed the 1040, right? He was aware that being self-employed carries with it certain responsibilities? One of those is to do your taxes properly. He’s a bean-counter, right? Even more to the point.

And if you hold yourself out for a gummint post this, erm, important- but so recently stained with by the skid marks of guy who shaves his frikkin’ head- you and your actions should be above reproach, and withstand scrutiny. After all, you want to get the new adminsitration started off on the right foot.

Clearly this candidate is wrong.

Hey, wasn’t he at the scene at the Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, Wachovia, and AIG implosions? Grrreeeeeeat, those worked out splendidly for the taxpayer. He had a major role in this fiasco.

C’mon dude, seriously… it’s not quite a Harriet Myers, Jr. move, but this appointment should inspire confidence- not letting the citiznes/taxpayers out there wonder if this is just more of the same old same old.

UPDATE
Felix Salmon suggests that Geithner is getting very good at absolving himself from responsibility for things gone wrong. [Portfolio]

ALSO
Geithner Doth Speak With Forked Tongue (Dollar Edition) [naked capitalism]

ANOTHER UPDATE
Should We Bailout Geithner Too? [New Geography]

Finally, it is a simple matter to compare Geithner’s activities at the Fed to those of Ken Lay at Enron. Remember all those “partnerships” with cool names derived from Star Wars movies? Geithner’s New York Fed created Delaware Limited Liability Companies with the name “Maiden Lane” which is the Fed’s street address in New York. They are using unregulated companies to make loans and to buy and sell assets completely outside the view of the public. The Senate Finance Committee approved Geithner’s nomination on January 22, 2009 in an Open Executive Session. Geithner has proven he can hide the ball; let’s not let this scheme move to Treasury.

Bull Shyster

Merrill Lynch paid billions of dollars of bonuses to its employees, three days before completing its life-saving sale to Bank of America, reports the Financial Times.

The money was paid as Merrill’s losses were mounting, forcing Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis last month to seek additional government support for the deal. Merrill’s compensation committee agreed to pay bonuses on December 29, at least one month earlier than usual, the paper said.

Bank of America said Merrill had a $21.5 billion operating loss in the fourth quarter. Despite the massive losses, Merrill set aside $15 billion for 2008 compensation, 6% lower than a year earlier. About $3 billion to $4 billion of that compensation were annual bonuses.

[Financial Week]

John Thain spent $1.22 million of Merrill’s money to refurbish his office. Thain’s largest expense was the hiring of celebrity designer Michael Smith for $800,000. This is the same guy who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for only $100,000. Thain had Merrill pay that designer $700,000 more for the redesign of only his office. Again, are you kidding me?

Persian Area Rug =$87,000
Egyptian Silk Curtains =$28,000
Mink Guest Chairs =$87,000
Roman Shade Fabric =$11,000
Mahogany Pedestal Table =$25,000
19th Century Credenza =$68,000
Hand-Stitched Polynesian Sofa =$28,000
George IV Desk =$18,000
Wall Sconces =$2,700
6 Antique Chairs =$37,000
Private Dining Room Mirror =$5,000
Dining Room Chandelier =$13,000
Commode On Legs =$35,000
Regency Chairs =$24,000
40 yards of Fabric For Wall Panels =$5,000
Parchment Waste Can =$1,400
Additional designer Expenses =$30,000

Finally, in addition to the above ridiculous numbers, documents show Merrill paid $230,000 for Thain’s personal driver for one year’s work, which included the driver’s $85,000 salary and bonus of $18,000, and another $128,000 in over-time pay.

[Street Insider]

Your tax dollars hard at work making CEO’s comfy.

It is one thing when the best-paid people seem to be the smartest and the most accomplished. Those who make much less may not like it, but the differential seems understandable. It is another thing when those people are shown to have committed huge blunders that would have driven their companies out of business, and them into the unemployment line, but for government bailouts.

So it is now with Wall Street. In both Europe and the United States, antipathy toward the bailout is rising amid complaints that the money has not helped the economy by encouraging loans, but has kept the bankers in Champagne and caviar.

Are financial workers overpaid? And if so, will it continue? The answers, according to a new study by two economists, are yes, they are overpaid, and no, it will not last.

“Wages in finance were excessively high around 1930 and from the mid 1990s until 2006,” wrote Thomas Philippon of New York University and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia, in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper released this week, “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry, 1909-2006.”

[NYT]

Is it pitch-fork and torch time yet?

[Hat tip 1] [Hat tip 2]

Puh-lease

Is it cynical to think that the CEO’s of BofA and JPM bought a few token shares (doesn’t this just scream CONFIDENCE!?) of their stock while they are at all-time lows? BTW why is the share price at all-time lows? Should the money used be considered ill-gotten gains conisdering the industry-wide fraudulent activites of just over two years ago? Is this ironic? Moronic? Assinine? Absurd? Should not this money have a claim placed agasinst it for the people of the United States of America and confiscated under the RICO statute? Why so many questions?[The Big Picture]

Harriet Myers, Jr.

Liar’s poker, homeowner edition

The past eight years of affluenza is continuing to take its toll.

The post du jour, courtesy of patrick.net:

Foreclosure Stories Ignore Foolish Greed Of Borrowers

Re: [MSNBC video]

Hi Chris, I have to say that I think your profile on forclosures was completely one sided. Almost all of the piece was about the sad reality of people being evicted from ‘their’ homes. Hardly any time was spent on how they got into the problem in the first place. The Alverez family in Florida had their mortgage payment double, however these people obviously had taken out an exotic loan in the hopes that housing prices would continue to rise and interest rates would continue to stay at historic low levels forever so they could refinance. They should have never have put themselves in that situation. A school principal said she did not read the contract when she refinanced her mortgage. I hope she did not do the same when she was managing the contracts for her school. As an educator she should have been saving money for her daughters school from the time her girl was born, however that would take sacrifice and how much easier was it for her to use the house atm.

For your next piece you should spend some time talking to the real victims of this crisis, the responsible people who did not take out mortgages that they could not afford. Because of the absurdity in the housing market many familys with good incomes were priced out of the market because they were not willing to take exotic mortgages. These were the people that realized that by taking an adjustable rate mortgage, option arm, or interest only loan there was a possibility that things could go underwater very quickly just like it did. Many of these people ended up renting, loosing the tax breaks that come with home ownership, and maybe saving money which due to the bail outs, is worth less and less each day. These people responsible people are the true victims, not the people who bought houses they could not afford with loans they did not understand. I hope you spend some time discussing the reasons why these people put themselves in such bad situations in the first place.. I think that you will find that the main motivation was either greed, trying to keep up with the Jonses, or choosing to spend their money on other things.

Anonymous

Be sure to watch the video. “Read” between the lines. I’m sorry if I sound a bit harsh, but these folks- claiming to not know the terms of their loan, and are now soured that their bet on perpetual home appreciation was wrong- are prevaricating. Having bet “the house,” the only tactic left to them is playing the sympathy card (the joker?), which only buys a little time.

The mainstream media will always be there to pimp them out as victims (who nevertheless could have avoided this entire fiasco if they had done five minutes worth of basic math)- but you and I know better.

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Common sense tells you that if you gamble, most of the time you will lose.

Throwing down the gauntlet

Timothy Geithner, it is time for you to man up.

Chris Whalen (Institutional Risk Analytics managing director) has a few choice things to point out to the people of these united states about you:

• His principal ‘beefs’ with Geithner including his ‘lack of real financial markets or business side experience’ and connections to powerful and influential factions on Wall Street
• He believes America has been held hostage by a ‘criminal gang’ from Wall Street, who have bought their way into politics and have been directing financial services policy for many years, though their days are now numbered
• People will be surprised next year when the depth of the economic trough in the US becomes apparent
• The US will likely see the nationalisation of Citi, JPMorgan, a big government stake in Bank America and Wells Fargo and the rest of the industry’s going to have to be rebuilt around US Bancorp and M&I Bank
• He does not support an automotive bailout saying Chrysler should disappear, Ford is already massively leveraged to the banks and GM is in desperate need of complete restructure.

The challenge: a public debate.

Is widdle Timmy man enough?

Of course he isn’t. Geithner is the beltway insider (protege of Kissinger, fer chrissakes) that was at the center of the Bear Stearns bailout, the Lehman no-bailout (talk about sending mixed messages), and apparently couldn’t detect that aura around the anus of AIG was indeed a black hole.

The fetid stench would have even clued-in a Clueless Numpty ™ like me.

This fucktard has Moral Hazard tatooed around the rings of his anus, where nobody but Benron Bukkake can see it.

He could no more send a consistent message than a waffle.

[Business Spectator]

Let’s not let Barry Hussein off the hook: he should encourage his nominees to openly debate their critics. After all, the thing lacking most in this economic downturn, and the return of which would boost it immeasruably, is confidence.

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Capitalism without loss is like religion without hell.

Welcome to the courthouse steps

No takers today?

Condo sales turn sour
“Market-distorting rebates and incentives helped move units at Vintage Grand, and banks are left with bad loans”

We have a tag team of assholes today:

“That was certainly the case with nine loans secured by Tampa real estate investor Michael Chadwick. In late February and early March 2007, Chadwick’s Sarasota real estate agent, Pat Brester, bought nine Vintage Grand units and immediately resold them to Chadwick at much higher prices, enabling the Tampa investor to get loans that exceeded original purchase prices by nearly $90,000.”

Sweetheart deal!

“‘I could not have carried the properties otherwise,’ he said.”

Smart move, dickhead.

“’All in all, it was just a bad real estate decision,’ Chadwick said. ‘I didn’t know how bad the market was going to get.’”

He was a victim.

“Chadwick filed for bankruptcy protection, listing $3.04 million in debts and $2.095 million in [declining] assets.”

Bailout Biatch alert!

[Hat tip]

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Don’t lose a finger… catching a falling knife

Schadenfreude overdrive

Financial troubles continue to mount for Daniel Sadek, the subprime lending company founder The Register profiled last year as the “high roller of home loans.”

A mortgage broker (“Quick Loan Funding”) being done in by failure to repay loans and pay his property taxes.

I guess the Ferrari isn’t the only thing this guy helped to crash. His company. A crappy movie. A “girlfriend’s” career.

Next up: the economy.

Why the guy who founded Oakley would fritter away any part of his fortune to help this feckless cunt defies logic. Surely he never expected to get back his $7.5 mil?

Oakley’s are so 90’s anyway. Back to Ray-Ban, once I remove the stench of this asshole off my monitor.

Institutional bribery takes a holiday

[SF Gate]

The National Association of Home Builders has a way to solve the housing and economic slowdown: Give a tax credit of $10,000 or thereabouts to anyone who buys a newly built house.Congress declined to include this blatantly self-serving proposal in its first economic stimulus plan.

The builders group responded by halting all contributions to federal congressional candidates and their political action committees.

Heh. They’re taking their bribe money and going home to pound the floor. Wah.

Vanity plate sold for $14 million in UAE

“I bought it because it’s the best number,” said Khouri, whose family made its fortune in real estate. “I bought it because I want to be the best in the world.”

Criminy.

Waaah.

Homebuilders Lobbying Group Cuts Off Contributions to Federal Congressional Campaigns [Yahoo]

Oh it’s a howler:

The lobbying group representing homebuilders is cutting off contributions to federal congressional campaigns, saying lawmakers and the Bush administration have not done enough to stabilize the housing market.

Perhaps the got their skids greased all too well back when it all began.

Looking for someone else to blame here just look in the mirror. Keep moving.

Mortgage fraud! Say it ain’t so!

When the stock market was bubbling way back in the last half of the ’90’s there were lots of rumors being squleched (that’s how you know that they’re true) about the greedy fingers of organized crime busily pumping and dumping one stock after another. That would be in addition to the ‘legitimate’ criminals pumping out IPO’s for companies with pretty shiny business plans but no tangible business. I think the Sopranos even had an episode about that (when a tv show brings forth something that the mainstream sources of news fail to deliver on, it kind of dilutes the reality of it and everybody just sort of learns to accept it, which is good for the mainstream because then they don’t have to report on the reality of the country being sold out and risk being shot as the messenger).

After it all played out and the market farted out the bad gas that had been expanding the balloon, it was amazing to see how nobody went to jail, nothing significant really changed, and we grudgingly learned we had no choice but to accept this as the status quo. (The smarter kids tried to figure out how they could join in the next time and still keep out of jail.)

And I do recall some goomba calling in to Howard Stern’s radio show and, attempting to talk about it, got cut short while the conversation was steered away to a different kind of boob.

So it would be a stretch to presume that the black hand hasn’t gotten garlicky smears on more than a few “financially engineered for your convenience” mortgages, wouldn’t it?

Nobody’s coming right out and saying so though [NYT].

This article tells us enforcement for this type crime is difficult. And the reports all across the country are legion. So in some innocuous way the media is communicating to US we should not expect justice to prevail, and we should get used to the idea that the bad guys will generally get away with it.

I would add that since nearly everyone is doing it (i.e. committing fraud), many folks might start realize if there is little-to-no-risk of getting caught and/or incarceration why not me too?

Hellfire, why should anyone care anymore if it is even illegal if the law does not get enforced? Where is the downside exactly?

Rampant fraud- the subtext in this article is IMHO, how did mortgage fraud become so widespread and prevalent in nearly every real estate market across the nation (if not the globe- see Spain, Ireland, Bosnia)?

These crimes were apparently very well organized. What should we call that?

Well now that door of opportunity to this particular wave of crime is closing. But with the next ‘bubble crime wave‘ one might expect to have even more participants. And why not I ask you?  If the risk of getting caught is so low. I cannot imagine what the next bubble opportunity will be- but then I never realized this particlar ‘home-based-business‘ was going on in all of our neightborhoods, behind our collective backs. Very few of us had noses with such a highly honed sense of smell we could recognize the stench of fraud. Not that anyone was listening to those who did and proceeded to wave a red flag. Many of them were branded freaks, banished from the mainstream of society as being alarmist.

And of course enforcement, most commonly by the FBI, has been weak because of a lack of resources. Many agents have been re-assigned to chasing bin laden’s shadow- but this is vitally important for ‘national security,’ no? And of course getting stripped searched for carrying a bottle of shampoo in your luggage or for being a middle aged white male, has been proven by the government to be very effective way to deter terrorism.

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Church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.   - H. L. Mencken