One of the bigger criminals in the mortgage scam was Former Countrywide CEO Mozilo. The SEC has made a symbolic settlement with him and a couple of his accomplices for seventy two million dollars, not a dime of which he has to pay personally, and which would be peanuts even if he had to pay it personally. As a part of the agreement, all potentially embarrassing details associated with his …
The enormous mortgage-bond scandal
Felix Salmon has found an interesting document in the financial crisis inquiry hearings. It seems the banks not only knew that the loans they were selling to investors generally failed to meet underwriting standards, they were so careless as to have documents lying around saying so in plain English. Seems like they were a bank of morons. When I was involved in criminal conspiracies, none of us would write in …
Foreclosure fraud chaos
Pines and Associates reports that: Most [mortgage] loans are securitized and most investors have filed class action suits. He finds those suits and joins them on behalf of clients as a “special interest†in the suit. This is Armageddon for the financial system. The underlying problem is that finance runs on trust, and these days they are all crooks, so the entire financial system has seized up. Any solution to …
Conspiracy
If you watch the reality show “survivorâ€, you will have noticed that in any power struggle, the winners usually have invisible connections – there is a group that conceals from outsiders that it is a group. Conspiracy tends to be a substantial part of any winning strategy. Conspiracies are therefore as common as cockroaches and crabgrass. Conspiracy theory has a deserved bad name because it tends to be invoked to …
More astroturf
The one nation rally was largely AstroTurf, students bussed by their teachers, unionists bussed by their unions. If it was not hundred percent AstroTurf, it was close enough to one hundred percent that it was hard to see the difference. Jon Stewart’s “March to keep fear alive” rally is looking like it will be more of the same. On the morning of October 30th, we’re loading up a fleet of …
The foreclosure scandal
It looks as if houses are being foreclosed to the benefit of those who merely hold the junior tranches and thus have no right to benefit by the foreclosure, or perhaps do not hold anything at all – it is difficult to tell, perhaps impossible to tell. It is also unclear how much money the people being foreclosed upon actually owe – again, it is difficult to tell, perhaps impossible to tell. When the scammers sold mortgages on to the next guy in line, they tended to pad up the mortgage, tended to exaggerate the amount of debt the borrower had promised to pay.
War with Islam
The Muslim brotherhood has majority support in Egypt, and supposedly moderate Muslim organizations that are linked to western governments, and supported by them, are in large part Muslim brotherhood organizations. Memri translates a sermon by the Brotherhood’s “Supreme Guide†posted on the Brotherhood’s website. … they are disregarding Allah’s commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah’s word will reign supreme and …
Astroturf
Casting Call: It’s a Bit Part Playing a Concerned Ordinary Citizen Shannon Love found an interesting job listing at website advertising acting jobs: Casting Notice Search Results New Casting Notice Search 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next 158 Casting Notices found | Posted Date Casting Notice Summary 10/7/2010 PRESIDENT OBAMA TOWN HALL, DC PRESIDENT OBAMA TOWN HALL, DC MTV, BET, and CMT (prods.) are casting the audience …
Duelling Rallies
Verum Serum compares the rallies: Notice the mass of buses at the left of the “one nation†rally – those were unionists who were bused, government employees, rather than people who chose to turn up by their own individual decision. To judge by the number of buses, the “one nation†rally was 90% astroturf. Had they relied on voluntary unpaid attendance, the rally would have been invisibly tiny.
Falkenblog locates the guilty
Falkenblog has an interesting quote from Harvard, wherein in 2003, back before the financial crisis, Angello Mozilla gives politically correct bullshit justifying every bad thing the banks did to cause the financial crisis on the basis of race and affirmative action. That means there is currently a homeownership gap of over 25 points when comparing white households with African Americans and Hispanics. My friends, that gap is obviously far too …