Protect the Amish Country Popcorn Factory from Terrorists!

The Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tennessee (which, according to the city’s website, draws over 200,000 spectators each year for the week-long event) is part of the National Asset Database, as well as the Amish Country Popcorn Factory.  What is the National Asset Database(http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33648.pdf)? A list of over 77,000 "national assets" that are critical to the nation's infrastructure.  Indiana had over 8600 "critical assets", almost as many as New York and California combined.

Who put these "critical assets" on the National Asset Database?  A bunch of local politicians and officials across the country, mostly in hopes to secure more homeland security funds.   The two "assets" above are just examples of how ridiculous these unnamed officials and politicians can be.  How do you actually take these people and who they represent seriously? 

These "politicians" are the people that represent the vast majority of our country, in congress as well as the senate.  Seems like Wall St has been bailing out Main St for as long as there has been a United States.  I can tell you personally that this is why I write these weekly articles.  How stupid do you think I am?  How stupid do you think we all are?  My 4 year old has a better sense of what is critical to the nation's infrastructure, and he can even say "national infrastructure", which is more than some of these politicians and there constituents can say.

How do these politicians, and the idiots who elect them, go on to become senators and high ranking politicians who manage committees that spend our vast majority of tax dollars where it matters?  The general media (extreme left OR right) prop up these people and their "Mule Day parade" or "Popcorn factory"  into positions of national prominence.

The Big FU goes to these politicians, and the morons that keep electing them.  I am educated, as are my friends and family, so stop shoveling this "mule" crap down our collective throats.  If you want our country to run properly, stop the "Mule Day" master of ceremonies from having a say in matters of national importance, after all, a mule is just another type of  "ass".

Next week, the tea party.  Apparently, its more than a bunch of little girls talking to their teddy bears, but not much more.

The Mortgage Meltdown: Stop Blaming the Banks!

"I'm a cleaning lady who makes $200,000.00 a year.  I want to buy a 2 family investment property home for 450,000.00 so I can collect the rent.  I do not want to put any money down, and I cannot verify my income (because I'm self employed?)."

This was a potential client sitting in front of me in a top 3 bank in the United States, wanting to apply for a mortgage.  My first reaction was, I should quit my job and become a cleaning lady, because I do not make that much money.  Aside from the fact that I am not a woman, I do not believe I could become a cleaning lady, at least one that makes $200,000.00 a year.  I do not clean that well.

Unfortunately, her credit score was actually very good (well over 700), and she would qualify for what we called an 80/20 stated/stated loan.  What this means is that I could give her a first mortgage of 80% of the purchase price, and a second mortgage of 20% of the purchase price, and just state her income and assets on the application.  When reviewing her credit, she had her current mortgage (for about a year) and 4 other accounts (a store card, and a few small credit cards) with minimal balances and limits, with about a 2 year history.  She banked with us, and had minimal money in the bank (hundreds of dollars, not hundreds of thousands).  In over 10 years of reviewing credit reports, she did not make enough money to qualify for her current home, let alone another one.  The rent she could possibly receive would only cover two thirds of the new mortgage payments, not counting property taxes and insurance.

I declined the loan.

A year later she comes back to the same bank, sits in front of me, and demands I help her refinance this mortgage she has with our bank?  I remember her and told her I declined her mortgage.  She said we have the mortgage, and sure enough, it is in the system.  The realtor who sold her the home referred her to an "in house" mortgage broker who brokered it to a subprime lender, and subsequently sold it back to the bank I worked for.  She could not make the payments, she did not make 200,000 dollars a year, and she was not receiving any rent.  Her current home's mortgage payment (her primary residence) was also not being paid.  She demands that I (we) help her, to which I replied, "I did, when I told you that you did not qualify a year ago".

How did she get this mortgage, and this house?  The government said she HAD to, because she is no different from the random doctor (who is self employed and states that he/she makes 200k/year) with a 10 + year credit history and a demonstrated capacity of paying larger, longer term debts, all on time, because her credit score is the same as his/her credit score.

 No, actually, they are not the same, but the government told me they were, and I could lose my job if I do not make the loan.  I could be personally fined as well as the company I worked for and even worse, lose my career.  All because I refused that loan when she first applied.  I was right, but that did not matter. 

Fast forward three years and that same cleaning lady cannot get a mortgage, and neither can the doctor.  Not unless they show all of their income and assets, pay taxes on their income (it has to show on their 1040s), and we will pull our own copy of the 1040s direct from the IRS to verify it was the tax return they filed.

Who created these stated/stated loans?  The banks, to cater to those with higher credit capacities, and a low tolerance for disclosing 1000's of pages of personal documents.  Who was placed into these loans?  Everyone, because it was easier to qualify, and the government said that everyone should be equally placed into them, regardless of my ability to ACTUALLY analyze and interpret a credit report and credit capacity.   Who made these loans?  Unscrupulous loan officers and mortgage brokers who didn't even need a high school education to complete one of these mortgage applications and figure out that "there was money to be made".  Who bought these loans?  FNMA and FHLMC, those same private government agencies claiming they did not know.  In fact, the goverment monitoring processes in place forced lenders to give these loans equally to people who really did not qualify.  I (and the experience and ability I have) were taken out of the equation. 

And as for the subprime loans and the mortgage backed securities associated with them that collapsed:  These loans began life as "subprime" and the banks that made these loans were forced to buy them back by the investors who pooled the loans into mortgage backed securities (MBSs) because of "early payment default".  The people who were given these loans had a history of credit that was in past and present default, and that is why they had a high rate of return.  Why would investors expect a secure rate of return that high?

 If you have a pool of loans that are subprime, made at a higher rate due to a higher associated risk, yielding a higher rate of return, and only 5 or 10 percent of the loans are experiencing an early payment default (not foreclosure) out of a group that is made up with 100% of people with some sort of past and present defaulted credit, 90 to 95% of your portfolio is performing, isn't it?  Why would investors demand you buy back the bad loans?  I would demand the good ones too, and all the profits that came from them as well.

What most people seem to forget is the word "investment", which normally means "RISK".  If you want a guaranteed rate of return, put your money in the bank and make .2% interest.  You want 10%+ returns, you can lose your investment, or not.  Just don't cry about it, because now, no one gets a loan, except the people who do not need one.  They are the only ones that qualify, and guess who's buying those loans?  The government.

The BIG FU SCREW goes to us, the people, who cannot get a loan, unless we do not need one, and the government, who wants to blame the meltdown of the economy on banks and Wall St, when their regulations are what forced banks into "bad lending policies and guidelines" which they decided and determined.  If they can't balance a budget, what makes them think they can understand finance and investing? (Just google government deficit)


Next week, why are all of our high ranking politicians people from "nowhere".  I still cannot get over the fact that they cannot pronounce words like "nuclear" (its not "nucular" George, if you had the power to push the button, you should have been able to read what it says), and we rarely have heard of them.  For example, take a poll, and ask a person who the mayor of NYC is, and then one of the two senators of their own state.  9 out of 10 will know the mayor of NYC, and 1 out 10 will know the name of their senator.  And why do we allocate homeland security dollars to protect:  national treasures in Indiana? (What is it, the first popcorn factory?  http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/files/homelandsecurity/priceofperil.html)

Burn the Koran? On 9/11? Are You Morons?

The Koran is a translation/interpretation of the Torah (Hebrew) or the Old Testament as we call the translation/interpretation as Christians.  Burning the Koran?  You are burning a version of the Old Testament you idiots.

Not that I believe any religion is right or wrong, I pretty much believe they are all wrong.  If there is a "God" or "Allah" or whatever you want to call him (or her), bad things would not happen to good people.  I do believe there are forces out there we cannot explain that do cause the unexplainable, but these forces cannot consciously decide what happens when, and why.

These same people who want to burn the Koran, also would want you to believe in "Creationism" when it has been scientifically disproved.  These people (extreme religious right, tea party patriots, uneducated middle of the country people, extreme right wing republicans, insert your favorite synonym for idiot or inbred, etc.) went so far as to call it "Intelligent Design", though intelligent in this case is an oxymoron.  Intelligent Design is actually the "PR" name for creationism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation%E2%80%93evolution_controversy), or as I like to call it, dumb ass ignorance(a double entendre, not oxymoron). 

How could people be so ignorant?  None of the people I know, work with, speak to on a regular basis, even come into contact with in a normal day believe this crap.  I still am amazed at how impressionable these people could be.  Christian terrorists? Yes, they are.  They want to teach their religious extremist ideas in school, and raise their children close minded and insulated from the outside world.  They kill people at abortion clinics (another oxymoron) to justify not terminating pregnancies.  Maybe they are afraid that they would have been aborted, and people like themselves would be as well.  Maybe if their father/uncle (it is possible for your father to also be your uncle where these people live) knew there was an abortion option, they would never have been born. 

All major religions preach along similar lines:  be good to others, don't steal, cheat, murder, etc. but all religions have another common theme:  terrorist extremists.  Israelis?  Check.  Christians?  Check.  Muslims?  Check.  (Buddhism is probably as close as you get to the truth, a wise fat guy who grants you wishes when you rub his belly, kind of like Santa Claus, but no extremists, just wise old sayings.  Maybe I'm partial because I am a fat guy who doesn't cheat, steal, murder, etc.)

Religion is great for people who want to believe, and more importantly for people who need to believe.  Some people like to hear the rules over and over, while others need to be reminded of them constantly.  That is fine, I wish I had more time to practice at golf, I would probably be a lot better at it, but the rules to life, I'm good.  Religion is not so great when religious leaders bend and twist the rules (IE: interpret them) in a way that condones violence, acts of terrorism, and hatred towards others.  Unfortunately, all major religions are guilty of this as well.  The problem lies with the religious leaders themselves, not because they aren't good people in general, but because of the simple fact that they are humans (not God, prophets, or Intelligent Designers) and are subject to human nature, just like the rest of us.

The power does get to them.  The followers give this power to them.  Ultimately, ambition gets to them (they want to move up the ranks, to grow their "flock", to stake their claims to land, to convert others to their faith, to influence politicians and government) and this goes against every religious belief system, but you cannot eliminate human nature or emotion, proof of evolution again!  If people wonder why religion and politics should not mix but always do, re-read the previous 3 sentences, and then think about what religion resembles most closely.  Wouldn't you guess the Government (any country's government)?

Both tax you, both want your votes, both tell you the rules (to your private and public life), both use your "taxes/donations" to further promote themselves and their beliefs, and both have fundamental (for the mental) extremists.   They both promote peace, and both promote wars, which brings us back to today, 9/11. 

War does not protect the innocent, obviously, or terrorists would have attacked our military bases and our government, not a densely populated major city known as the capital of the world.  My only concern with this is why did we wait so long to fight back, and why didn't we just eliminate every single person known to be a terrorist or extremist?  Why are we supposed to fight a war with different rules?  Is our country's public relations department so incompetent that we cannot justify fighting back under our own terms?  The Koran itself speaks of "an Eye for an Eye" but the world would be outraged if we turned the mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan into a parking lot.  All of these terrorist attacks are because of religion?   Because we defend Israel?  Because we defend democracy for all who need defending?

If you hate Israel, attack Israel, or are you afraid to?  The one airline you never see getting hijacked is El Al, the Israeli airline.  That's because if you try to hijack one, you get killed.  No questions asked, bad PR be damned.  The world might hate us, but they will think twice before attacking us again.  And another newsflash, the world already hates us (Americans), so why are we so worried about what everyone else thinks?  Probably because our politicians (past and present) always have something to gain financially through war, and they just can't justify a war to be solely about the safety of the American people, which brings us back to bad PR.

The Big FU goes to the people who burned the Koran, and the people who wanted to, for being too stupid to realize that it is their own religion as well, and to our leaders who should take their dress off and fight the war we should have fought.  The burning of the Koran will just get more of our soldiers killed, its just more bad PR.  Go after the terrorists, and if they hide behind civilians, eliminate them.  I do not remember seeing any of our soldiers hiding at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on 9/11/2001, but for some reason, they hit not once, but twice, into two buildings filled with civilians of all faiths, who were just going to work that day, or just visiting tourists.   




I was about to finish writing the mortgage meltdown article I was writing when I realized what date it was today:  9/11/2010.  It has been 9 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The mortgage meltdown could wait another week, it happened already, but my opinion above could not wait.

I am fortunate enough to have many family members and friends who live in the area and work in the area who all survived that day.  Some are police officers, some firemen, some who worked in lower Manhattan, mostly all living in the vicinity. 

I remember working from home on my computer, "sportscenter" in the background on ESPN, and then my cell phone ringing.  I answered the call and that is when I started listening to sportscenter, but it was ABC news in NY on ESPN, and my friend on the phone saying "Do you know what is going on right now?"  I went to the TV and saw the 2nd plane crash into one of the World Trade towers, the other one already smoking.  My friend yelled "did you see that!?", I said yes, what the hell is going on?  Eventually everyone found out.  The news seemed to be on a continuous loop for days.  Cell phone service went out and was intermittent for days.

The only thing I could not figure out that day was the last plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, on its way to Washington, DC.  I recall hearing on one news report that there was one plane unaccounted for, and not responding (all other flights had been grounded/rerouted) and that military fighter jets were following this plane.  They did not mention which plane and where it was, but it makes sense when you hear the phone conversations people had with their family and friends who were on that flight that went down in Pennsylvania, and one of those people/recordings mentioned that the wing was on fire before they fought their way into the cockpit. I know I tried to switch to multiple channels and news sources, but I only heard that one brief report about the fighter jets, and it was never mentioned again that day, or any of the subsequent days after the tragedy. The recordings and phone conversations came much later, I believe days or even weeks after 9/11, but still no mention of the fighter jets and that last plane.

 I do not know if anyone else might have remembered, but feel free to comment about any and all of the above.

Main Street DID NOT bail out Wall Street, and here is the Ugly Truth

Main street cannot spell WALL Street, let alone bail it out.  The media sensationalized the news using this ludicrous explanation:  "Main street had to bail out Wall St".  The described 'government bailout' of Wall Street included interviews with the average uninformed person from a "middle of nowhere" state (you pick:  Mississippi, Montana, Missouri, etc)  saying they didn't believe their tax dollars should have been used to bail out investment/banking companies that have global economic impact.  If they cannot spell Wall St, they definitely do not understand "global economic impact."  

The truth is the average ignorant person does not even contribute a little bit (if anything at all) to the government in federal taxes.   In fact, most states (almost all of the "middle ones") received more federal spending than taxes paid  (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html#ftsbs-timeseries-20071016).  Out of the remainder of states which do pay more in taxes, only a handful actually contribute a substantial dollar amount toward any possible bailout or budget item for that matter.  The top 3 states contributing more than they receive (numbers are net for 2005, most recent year available at tax foundation link) are California with a 47 billion dollar net contribution, New Jersey with a 27.5 billion dollar net contribution, and New York with a 23.9 billion dollar net contribution.  The only other state with a significant net contribution (above 10 billion dollars) was Illinois (thanks to Chicago) with a 19 billion dollar net contribution.  What do these states all have in common?  Major cities that employ many of the people who work at these Wall St banks and investment firms that generate enough income to pay the taxes the government needed to bail out these firms.  Those top 4 states also happened to pay the majority of taxes (644 billion dollars) to the government. 

If your tax dollars are supposedly being used to pay for a bailout, you have to actually pay tax dollars, not receive back more in benefits from the government.  This is the part the media does not tell you because it isn't popular and just doesn't make a compelling story. 

The most ironic part of the bailout is that most of the companies that received bailout money were forced to take it, and did not want it.  These companies' competitors who did need the money would not borrow it unless the majority of the industry did.  Most of the money was used to acquire companies in trouble, and all of it was a LOAN, not a bailout, and a substantial portion of it has been paid back to the government, and at a better return on investment than any of the middle states could contribute in the next ten years.

So who gets the Big F.U. Screw?  The ignorant middle states and their politicians, who couldn't bail water let alone bail out Wall street.

Comments welcome, responses will not be immediate (I do have to work and pay taxes).

Next week-The mortgage meltdown, caused by the government (with help from FNMA and FHLMC), not Wall St, from an insider with over 13 years of experience, and a perspective at the point of sale.  Come back to see the next Big F.U. screw.