Masters of the Universe category archive

Job prospects for process-servers continue strong, according to the Chicago Trib:

According to Fiserv, a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6 percent by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35 percent below the peak reached in early 2006 and marking a triple dip in prices.

Several factors will be working against the housing market in the upcoming months, including an increase in foreclosure activity and sustained high unemployment, explained David Stiff, Fiserv’s chief economist.

Should home values meet Fiserv’s expectations, it would make it the third (and lowest) trough for home prices since the housing bubble burst.

To Dr. Gerry Mander, the therapist the stars trust, at the Guardian:

Dear Dr Mander

I’m fed up with people saying I’m rich. My basic pay is quite modest and the tributes I get are approved by my remunerations committee. Yes, I got an increase of 49% last year. So what? I am a wealth creator. Attacking me is just the politics of envy.

King Croesus of Lydia

Dear Croesus

The “wealth creator” line might be more persuasive if your empire wasn’t built on plunder and slavery.

See the rest of Dr. Mander’s column at the link.

Andrew Ralmsley, writing in the London Observer, demolishes the notion that participants in the “Occupy” protest don’t know what they want. It’s a long and detailed rebuttal of that idea.

Frankly, the pundits who promulgate that notion are doing the pundit equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going “Na na na I can’t hear you–and neither can anyone else.”

The default response of establishment opinion is glibly to dismiss these protests as a passing spasm which cannot achieve anything because the movement is either wildly unrealistic in its aspirations for a new world economic order or too vague in its demands. It is true to say that the protests vary in their tactics and are disparate in their goals. Movements like this are often woven from multiple threads of grievance, a tapestry of dissent which can be both a source of initial strength and an ultimate cause of weakness. But they are loosely united by common themes: fury at corporate greed, resentment at lack of economic opportunity, concern about social inequality and alienation from a conventional politics that appears incapable of doing anything serious to address and redress public discontents.

(snip)

On top of the billions of taxpayers’ money already committed to rescuing the banks, the eurozone leaders have just signed up to providing billions more. Yet from the nabobs of finance there is still not a whisper of a hint of a scintilla of humility or penance. The Institute of International Finance, the main industry organisation, reports that banks are handing more guaranteed bonuses to new employees than they were before the financial crisis. Governments have neither punished those who wrecked the economy nor taken adequate steps to ensure that they will be more accountable and responsible in future. Sir Fred Goodwin – why the hell is he still Sir Fred Goodwin? Three years have elapsed since the bubble burst in 2008 and yet we are still waiting for the fulfilment of promises of systemic reform. The wonder is not that people have been provoked to occupy parks and squares in every continent but Antarctica. The wonder is that this did not happen earlier.

Apparently, some banks are reconsidering debit card dipping:

Chase and Wells Fargo are joining the list of banks that won’t be charging customers to use their debit cards, as the backlash over Bank of America’s planned $5 monthly fee continues.

The retail banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. will stop charging $3-per-month fees for using debit cards when its current pilot in Wisconsin and Georgia is completed in November, a source with knowledge of the bank’s plans told The Associated Press. The individual asked not to be identified because the bank has not officially announced the program will not go forward.

I still carry cash for my Wawa cup of coffee.

When I sold my house in Delaware, I did not take in as much as I had hoped (though I was not under water, having instinctively distrusted all those banksters who wanted me to “refi to take the cash out”), but you have to play the cards you are dealt.

Apparently, not waiting was the correct strategy:

New Castle and Sussex counties fared best in terms of year-over-year sales, rising 5.3 percent to 1,241 in Sussex and dropping just 2.5 percent to 3,328 in New Castle. Kent dropped 11 percent to 888 homes sold in the first nine months.

Sales prices slipped 10.5 percent over the year to a median of $170,000 in Kent and 6.6 percent to $198,100 in New Castle. Since 2008, median prices have fallen 20.1 percent in Kent and 13.9 percent in New Castle.

That’s all the counties in Delaware.

Yesterday was a ho-hum day on the responsible fiscal front. Only one bank got blanked. (I was busy watching the ball game.)

All American Bank, Des Plaines, Illinois

Greg Palasi, writing at the Guardian, reports that Goldman has started an offensive against the tiny People’s Federal Credit Union because People’s providing banking services and moral support for Occupy Wall Street. A nugget:

In 2008, the US Treasury handed Goldman Sachs a check for $10bn from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (Tarp), the bailout funds given to desperate commercial banks. A few eyebrows were raised: Goldman was not desperate, and it certainly was not a commercial bank. Yet – abracadabra! – Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson transformed investment bank Goldman into a commercial bank overnight. (Paulson’s prior post was chairman of Goldman Sachs. Just saying.)

But there was a catch: Goldman would have to return a chunk of the public’s billions in the form of loans for low-income customers and members of its “community”, as required by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. Problem: Goldman has, it seems, no low-income customers, nor a “community”. Goldman was directed to find poor people and a community and hand over some cash.

So Goldman looked down from its riverfront tower in lower Manhattan and discovered Peoples. Over 80% of Peoples member-owners have low incomes. At least 65% are Latino.

Follow the link for to see an interview with the author.

From Bloomberg:

Credit-rating companies routinely award higher rankings to debt issued by banks and corporations that pay them the most, . . . .

’nuff said.

Details at the link.

Will Bunch.

The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at the real estate bust in Nevada.

The death of another family’s American dream shows in subtle ways: a front yard shaggier than the neighbors’; windblown leaves piled against a padlocked door; a foreclosure notice pasted to the garage.

“These people over here just walked away,” said Dave Johnson, gesturing toward the empty stucco-and-tile home next to his on Diazo Street.

Johnson and his wife bought their place for $249,000 41/2 years ago, when he had steady work as a truck driver. Now he has an agreement to sell the house – for $65,000.

Persons such as this are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the crash.

The perpetrators don’t even have to be driven by their chauffeurs through these communities as they travel between their corner offices and their country clubs.

Via the Brad Blog.

More responsible fiscals honored by the lifting of their responsibilities.

Bank no more on these:

Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro, Georgia

Decatur First Bank, Decatur, Georgia

Old Harbor Bank, Clearwater, Florida

Community Banks of Colorado, Greenwood Village, Colorado</ul>

Remember, these are the financial geniuses whose guidance we are supposed to respect because, as we all know, access to large sums of money ipso facto signifies virtue.

Also, pigs, wings.


October 21, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Masters of the Universe | Bookmark this post

I read this entire article about degress of* sociopathy and there was no mention of Wall Street.

_______________-

*That’s of, not in. A degree in sociopathy is called an “MBA.”

Shaun Mullen takes a look at Occupy Wall Street. It’s a good read.

A nugget:

To see the Dom Perignon and Beluga caviar set standing on chair chairs in their penthouse suites hysterically shouting “Eek!” at the Occupy Wall Street mice tells you all you need to know about how jealously they guard their prerogatives, which of course include controlling the lives of the 99 percent. And that they are less concerned about losing those prerogatives than people knowing just how rigged the system is in their favor.

Whoops.

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled that a homeowner who bought a foreclosure that hadn’t been properly conducted by the foreclosing bank in 2006 didn’t have legal ownership of the property.

By all rights, when banksters steal something, it’s supposed to stay stolen, dammit.

Via Atrios.

I cannot help but wonder whether these folks could have found work with a Wall Street bank.

Banks were giving short shrift to short sales.

Now there’s a drift to a shift in the shrift to short sales.

This may give the market a lift.

There has been a “dramatic shift” in banks’ willingness sell a property for less than the mortgage balance to avoid foreclosing, said Ron Peltier, chairman and chief executive officer of HomeServices of America Inc., the second-biggest U.S. residential brokerage.

The transactions, known as short sales, typically change hands at a discount of about 20 percent to homes not in financial distress, compared with a 40 percent price cut for bank-owned homes, according to RealtyTrac Inc. Short sales jumped 19 percent in the second quarter from the prior three months while foreclosure sales were flat, the data seller said.

Barbara Brotman, writing at the Chicago Trib, suggests a strategy for keeping debit card charges in check.

Paying by check.

She describes the experience:

How special it makes me feel. When I take out that little case holding my checks and check register, that quaint handwritten tally reminiscent of Bob Cratchit with a quill, I get serious attention.

Clerks fall silent, perplexed. They summon supervisors to ask what they should do.

At one store, I was escorted to a special register staffed by someone who still knew the ancient ways: The taking of the driver’s license, the request for the home phone number, the electronic petitioning of the check approval gods.

It won’t work, of course. If persons start writing checks for $0.79 cups of coffee, merchants will refuse them (as well they should–remember “minimum check payment” signs?) and banks will levy fees on them.

Flash from the Past:

When I got my first checking account, back before banks discovered that composing seductive deceptive fine print paid better dealing above the board, there was a 10 cent fee per check.

No one thought twice about it.

The bank was providing a service and deserved reasonable remuneration.

It’s when they went after unreasonable remuneration that they turned down the wrong path.

Mike Gruss, writing in the local rag, conjures up the scariest costume of all: Dress as a Occupy Wall Street protestor:

A warning: If you do this act too well, people might become so scared that they’ll start yelling irrational things. They’ll shout “Get a job,” even if you have a job or even if you have two jobs, like many of the Occupy Norfolk organizers. They’ll point and mock. “Looks like somebody lost their Xbox,” even though no one’s really played Xbox in years.

This is what makes this, the protester, such a hideously frightening Halloween costume. People don’t like to be told by scary ordinary folks that things aren’t going well. They want politicians to tell them things aren’t going well. Otherwise, it’s eerie.

Follow the link for costume hints (and an exceptionally good Gruss column).