I can’t wait to hear how Republicans try to pin this shit on black people and Fannie Mae and Barney Frank.
I’m sure there’s a Reason magazine post blaming this on Pelosi or Carter or Kennedy somewhere. Also, Robert Byrd was in the KKK!
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by John Cole| 78 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Assholes
I can’t wait to hear how Republicans try to pin this shit on black people and Fannie Mae and Barney Frank.
I’m sure there’s a Reason magazine post blaming this on Pelosi or Carter or Kennedy somewhere. Also, Robert Byrd was in the KKK!
(via)
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El Cid
The poor blacks who used ACORN and Jimmy Carter to make banks give them free houses they couldn’t pay for set a corrosively bad role model for our leading wealthy citizens, who couldn’t resist the swaying Mandingo rhythms and walked away in a daze from their responsibilities seeking three star Caribbean-Chinese fusion cuisine.
General Stuck
Apartment in the sky.
Brian J
On a mostly unrelated but somewhat amusing note, JMM describes how The Washington Post is questioning whether the tanning salon tax in the new health care bill is racist. No joke. Because if there’s one way Obama is going to stick it to whitey, it’s going to be by preventing white kids from trying to get tan. I heard he’s also going to reproduce Mr. Burns’ sun blocking machine, only on a larger scale.
Seriously now, I’d be really interested in seeing a subset of people who work in finance and banking who are struggling. Are they walking away from their houses? If so, why? I have no firm proof one way or the other, but I suspect they are more than willing to stick to institution holding their mortgage as long as they come out better in the end, even if they would push a different line professionally.
jwb
“The CoreLogic data suggest that the rich do not seem to have concerns about the civic good uppermost in their mind, especially when it comes to investment and second homes. Nor do they appear to be particularly worried about being sued by their lender or frozen out of future loans by Fannie Mae, possible consequences of default.”
Remind again why these people’s heads are not being paraded around atop rusty pikes?
General Stuck
Obviously, the Bush taxcuts for the rich weren’t big enough to stimulate the economy. The real economy.
liberal obstructionists are to blame satsq
Mark
I volunteer doing taxes for people who qualify for the EITC. I’ve worked for three different organizations: 1) KPMG; 2) a facility run by an IRS employee; 3) ACORN.
Of the three, the KPMG site made the most errors and allowed/committed the most fraud. I saw returns where people had mortgages but claimed zero income (no UI either), people inventing children or calling their girlfriends their dependents because they share a room. And the KPMG overseers didn’t care – they never checked any returns and allowed fraud to recur year-after-year.
The IRS site was better, but we’d still get situations where somebody would be getting paid under the table and we’d literally just make up a bunch of numbers. I trained a bunch of high school kids to process returns too…
ACORN was run by a bunch of hard-asses. Don’t have your slip for $76 in tuition? TFB – go home and get it or you’re not getting all those $9 in taxes back. Every return got checked. Honestly, they were a bunch of dicks, and they probably didn’t trust me because I just showed up to volunteer, but if I was looking for fraud, I’d start with private financial firms first…
NobodySpecial
What kind of pony are YOU looking for?
jwb
@Brian J: “I suspect they are more than willing to stick to institution holding their mortgage as long as they come out better in the end, even if they would push a different line professionally.”
That was more or less the conclusion of the article—it’s not the usual Times line, which generally tries to get us to recognize the great suffering of the rich, so I don’t know what’s up.
“‘[The rich] may be less susceptible to the shame and fear-mongering used by the government and the mortgage banking industry to keep underwater homeowners from acting in their financial best interest,’ Mr. White said.”
I especially liked the ending: “The man spoke on the condition of anonymity because, he said, he did not want his current problems to interfere with his coming reinvention. ‘I’m a businessman,’ he explained. ‘I have to be upbeat.'”
Can we please have our rusty pitchforks now?
Ecks
Nonono, you don’t get it. This isn’t really happening. Everybody knows it’s whiteness-challenged poor people who sponged off the government who default on their houses, and that’s it. End of story. To claim otherwise is to be a boring egghead full of arcane statistics, or a shrill unserious person so utterly lacking in testicular fortitude you weren’t even wrong about Iraq.
And maybe you can point out an instance of a rich person here or there, but those are just ruthless financial dealings of a more sophisticated class of person dealing with asset classes you and I will never understand. You can’t even talk about it in the same sentence, it’s not the same thing at all.
(brief pause to let the dissonance dissipate).
And not that any of the serious people were wrong about Iraq either. It has just been a conversation that has evolved, and if you were a serious person you would know that.
It’s been lovely talking to you, now where did my my Martini get to?
Alan
Yeah, but that’s from the NYT, which automatically invalidates the assertion to any “real” conservative/Beck&Limbaugh listener. The truth is it was the evil ACORN, Franks & Dodd alliance–if only the free market was allowed to be free.
Olive Oyl
Gee, do the big commercial real estate borrowers get hit with deficiency judgment lawsuits?
The Dangerman
Pfffffffffffffffft. Easy.
If the blacks, Barney Frank, and ACORN hadn’t fucked up the economy, white people could pay their mortgages.
Brian J
@Mark:
I don’t know for a moment any of what you are saying is true, but without any specialized knowledge or first hand experience, it still doesn’t make sense. Consider only the word “forced.” So you are telling me that multi-billion dollar corporations, who have a greater influence on the way business is conducted in this country than probably any group, caved when a bunch of community groups demanded something? This is the equivalent of me walking up to the White House and demanding to be let in, only to have the Secret Service run away from me. Even if you suggest that there was some understated pressure in the form of some community group making life annoying or difficult, it still doesn’t make sense. The biggest financial institutions can’t, in this hypothetical situation, survive some bad press from ACORN or some similar group?
Give me a fucking break.
arguingwithsignposts
13 comments and nobody understands the obvious? They’re going Galt, sillies.
burnspbesq
@NobodySpecial:
I got my pony today.
My kid had to fight like hell last year to get permission to take AP world history as a sophomore; his counselors didn’t think he could handle it (and I wasn’t convinced, either, but I let him go for it).
Little fuck got a 4 on the AP test. You have no idea how proud I am of him.
sukabi
not surprising at all…. how many times has “The Donald” bankrupted one of his projects only to get mo money for mo stuff? The rich live in a world of privilege and it doesn’t matter what they do, it’s always someone elses fault when something goes wrong.
Brian J
@jwb:
I might be wrong, but it sounds like you are confusing the “this is how the well off are surviving without buying Chanel” with “this is how the rich people are dealing with their own finances.” The former is kind of interesting in a soapy way, but it’s ultimately forgettable and harmless.
jwb
@Olive Oyl: I’m sure not. These are good people who just got hit with a bit of bad luck, unlike those poor lazy slobs who should never have thought about a home and have to be taught the lesson that when you enter into a contract you are bound to uphold it or you should go to jail.
Polish the Guillotines
Thing is, these are the dot-communists who bidded the shit out of any 1000sq foot matchbox that came up for sale fifteen years ago, then tore it down and built Tara West on the lots.
Thanks to these lunatics, I have a 120 mile round-trip commute (60 in, 60 back) because 10 years ago we couldn’t afford so much as a townhouse near where I work.
At the time, we looked at some 900sq foot bungalow in Redwood City that was listing for $500k. I’m sure it sold for way more than that.
And today, out here in the hinterlands, I get a note from the assessor’s office kindly informing me my real estate taxes are going down because my house is worth less than when we moved in. Pre-bubble-burst. Under water doesn’t even begin to describe it.
jwb
@Brian J: I think you are right, but it’s still an unusual story for the Times.
TaMara (BHF)
@burnspbesq: Totally cool.
KG
my favorite development today is a ruling that DOMA violates the equal protection clause and possibly the tenth amendment. can’t wait to see how the Teabaggers react to that one.
ETA: link
eemom
Well we’re movin on up
(movin on up!)
To the East Side
To a deluxe apartment
In the skyyyyy
Mo-o-vin on up
(movin on up!)
To the East Side
We finally got a piece of the pie
Loved Sherman Helmsley. The 70’s may not have been good for much, but they had some kick ass teevee sitcoms.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
Yay Little Burnsy!
General Stuck
@burnspbesq:
Ha! good for him.
Anya
Everyone know Obama is the mastermind behind the collapse of the housing market so that the rich can pay for enslaving blacks.
burnspbesq
@KG:
Dear Attorney General Coakley,
That makes up for the shit Senate campaign you ran.
Very truly yours,
/s/burnspbesq
Cat Lady
@KG:
I love that when I clicked on that link there was a banner ad for a Natalie Merchant concert. I went to see her a few years ago and never realized most of her fans are gay men. I didn’t know that, and have fine tuned my gaydar accordingly.
ETA: I can’t wait to watch Teabaggers fight both for and against state’s rights at the very same time. Also.
burnspbesq
@KG:
The best part is a Democratic state AG using the baggers’ favorite part of the Bill of Rights to knock it out. Yo, Rush, how bout you suck on my big ten … th amendment.
KG
@burnspbesq: don’t give Coakley too much credit, it’s not like many Attorneys General actually appear in court or write briefs or, well, anything related to being a lawyer.
General Stuck
@eemom: you have a letter or something in the Reply box for website.
trueblood
I tried to read the article, as in I started and finished it, but at times in the middle my vision blurred, probably because I was getting high off the fumes of bullshit coming through my computer.
—–
“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist.
“They may be less susceptible to the shame and fear-mongering used by the government and the mortgage banking industry to keep underwater homeowners from acting in their financial best interest,” Mr. White said.
—–
Or, the rich HAVE MORE MONEY.
—–
“Those with high net worth have other resources to lean on if they get in trouble,” said Mr. Khater, the analyst.
—–
Rich people can walk away from these homes because they don’t need them. Oh, well, that’s good!
I have family around Scottsdale, and when I visit I see the same thing: the wealthy enclaves have these massive, designed-from-the-ground-up homes with fountains and green lawns (yes, in the desert) that are sitting empty, some are even unfinished. And there are still new ones being built.
burnspbesq
@Cat Lady:
That’s funny. I have a similar story about the first time I saw Melissa Etheridge live.
Martin
Nothing new here. My dad was a middle manager for his company but was President of his company’s credit union. Pretty much none of the executives could get a loan from him because they were all leveraged out to the nines. The best credit risks were the company peons. The executives always figured that they could wave the VP or Cxx business card and make their shit go away.
My dad took particular delight personally telling his bosses that they were financial fuck-ups and under no circumstance would he risk the company employee’s capital on them. He was not popular with management.
Nylund
Hey, that’s my home town. Exciting to see it in the paper. That’s where mom and dad have lived since 1969. Bought some land, built a simple house, then watched as the orchards around them turned into giant mansions for the dotcom millionaires. It did nice things to their property value! Its quite a liberal town overall. I tagged along to an incredibly fancy shindig back in mid-2–8 put on by a local financial advising firm (invites only for people with at least 1 million in investments, I so did not fit in), and they brought this Texan out to warn of the coming socialist tax hikes that evil Obama was going to impose on them if he was elected. There was a near revolt of rich Los Altos folks screaming about how they didn’t care about a few thousand in taxes compared to unjustified wars and unregulated corporations running amok. I was in awe. I just sat there thinking, “way to go local rich people! Give the finance guys hell!”
Although not universally true, a lot of the rich people in Los Altos are the types that recycle rain water and install solar panels on their roofs.
Well, truth be told, I’m talking more about Los Altos Hills (an even richer town next to Los Altos that’s in the hills over looking Silicon Valley).
burnspbesq
@KG:
True, but there is no way something that politically explosive gets filed without her sign-off. Besides, if it’s good and it happens on your watch you get to take credit for it.
KG
@burnspbesq: it’s funny, I know a lot of people who support the Tenth Amendment from my time in the Federalist Society circles. I’m not entirely sure they anticipated things like this. Which I always thought was funny, because it’s exactly the kind of thing I figured was coming. But then I’m just one of those crazy libertarians who actually thinks equal protection is a good thing and that society should be ordered in a way where people basically get to live as they see fit so long as they don’t hurt anyone else.
burnspbesq
Links to the opinions here.
eemom
@General Stuck:
?? I don’t have a website.
JGabriel
NYT:
In an article about rich white people walking away from their mortgages, they only guy who will talk to the Times on the record (the pun was unavoidable) is a black rapper?
John Cole:
Looks like the Times beat them to it.
.
Brian J
@Nylund:
I am not sure of how rich you are talking, but they say that after a certain point of being wealthy, people become more open to Democratic tax policies. The usual example is Warren Buffett, but I can imagine it happening to other people who have a lot of money but aren’t billionaires.
Or maybe Southern California has a ton of dirty fucking hippies, rich and poor.
General Stuck
@eemom: Your handle is linked to a broken link. Usually that means in the box above under Leave a Reply below Name and email under Website for linking to a website, if you had one. means a letter or character got typed in that causes your handle to be sent to a google broken link. just right click in that box, click select all and then delete should fix it. Or else people will click your handle thinking you do have a website.
SpotWeld
Why would the GOP blame this on anyone.
This is the perfect example of the austerity measures they think should be followed.
Those poor wealthy people, having to give up their 3rd or 4th home because the investment soured. ANd why, because of all those “other folks” who just weren’t wise with their money. If they had only invested in gold instead of foolishly buying food. Heck I hear some of them live of their income instead of investment dividends… silly fools.
No.. the GOP will see this as what it is. Wealthy people showing how to best deal with the economy.. use their wealth to ignore the situation until they find another hole in regulation to repeat the process.
They are an example for us all!
suzanne
@burnspbesq: Woooot! I love when people know their history. Generally, it keeps them from acting like bungholes in the future. Congrats to your little fuck. ;)
Mark
Brian J@13:
I read your comment a few times and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it relates to what I wrote.
Brachiator
It’s nice that the NY Times is finally getting around to this, but some of this has already been noted in various California and Nevada newspapers, since large part of the housing bust has been happening here.
There have been cases of well-off people buying new houses and qualifying for the long time resident credit even as they let debts on their old house pile up, knowing that they will eventually lose it. They also take advantage of recently passed tax law that lets them exclude some of the debt that they walk away from, which otherwise would be included in taxable income.
In other situations, banks are still willing to do business with these people because they figure, often correctly, that they are still better risks than some poor person who has been ground into the dust trying to save his or her home from foreclosure.
I can only hope that some up-and-coming Bernie Madoff will hook up with the worst of these scoundrels. A little poetic justice is definitely in order for them.
On the other hand, an invitation to fraud does not know class boundaries. Some of the people who worked the best con on the government to get fraudulent First Time Home Buyer credits were prison inmates.
James in WA
Oh, FFS, screw you Cole. Now I’m going to be humming the Jefferson’s theme song all night.
eemom
@General Stuck:
yikes. This is far above my techno-tard pay grade, but I’ll follow your instructions. Thx!
I did find, in the course of googling my screen name, that there IS an eemom.com which is a Chinese website that appears to be targeted to teaching Chinese people English. How’d I get into THAT??
Anne Laurie
@burnspbesq:
You, too? The Not-Yet-Officially-Spousal-Unit and I were about the only opposite-sex couple holding hands at the Tweeter Center during her ‘Your Little Secret’ tour. Our fellow Etheridge fans were giving us “Th’ fvck is *wrong* with you people?!?” glares all evening. Also, I think that’s the only large public venue in my experience where there was a longer line for the mens’ facilities… because the dykes commandered all the most conveniently placed ones, and the outnumbered male concertgoers were NOT going to argue the issue!
Anne Laurie
@burnspbesq:
It may just be the mucker in me, but I got a distinctly “Suck on this, Cosmo Scotty Brown” vibe from Coakley on the news clip…
Calouste
@Mark:
I think he missed the first sentence of your original post, i.e. that you are volunteering to help people with their individual tax returns, not companies with their tax.
And yeah, KPMG, I haven’t seen them give value for money.
asiangrrlMN
Hm. Rich people don’t give a fuck about others? Who knew?
And, they live by different rules. Really? I agree with AWS, though. They’re just going Galt.
fucen tarmal
@El Cid:
don’t be absurd,
it was jamaican jerk and bbq. these people had clearly been deprived of their american values by the system. i pray for them.
Brian J
@Mark:
You said that when you deal with ACORN, they were very serious about being honest, whereas private firms weren’t, which is the opposite of what most people believe. I was agreeing with you. It wasn’t directly related, but I made those comments because a lot of people like to attribute all sorts of shady and/or illegal motives to groups like ACORN, despite having no evidence to back up their claims. Plus, like I said above, some go so far as to suggest that they were essentially holding a gun to the heads of large financial institutions, if only because that’s what an organization like ACORN would do, even if it makes no sense at all.
burnspbesq
@Anne Laurie:
Mine was earlier than that – “Brave and Crazy” tour, before she was officially out, at the Open Air Theater at San Diego State University. As I’m sure you know, there is a HUGE military presence in the San Diego area. The crowd consisted of 99 percent lesbian sailors and Marines, and maybe 40 civilians. My date and I were one of no more than five straight couples there. She made me run interference so she could use the men’s room.
Linkmeister
@Brian J: Hmm. The 60-cent price hike on my pack of cigarettes last week due to a state tax was obviously a slap at my civil rights and thus unconstitutional.
Mark
@Brian J
I don’t usually say “Give me a fucking break” when I’m agreeing with someone, but I’ll take your word for it that that was your intent.
In terms of things that don’t surprise, ACORN had by far the worst free food and drinks of the three sites.
Lysana
@burnspbesq: I saw Melissa Etheridge with my husband on her Yes I Am tour in Mountain View, CA. When the men saw the lines into the women’s rooms, they started gesturing us into theirs. You bet your bippy I took advantage.
And oh, yes, the DH got some hairy eyeballs, but only until they saw me. As soon as I hove into view, the women who were most worried about a man in the venue decided he was safe to ignore. I think it was at least partially because I register on gaydar a lot. This is a good thing, since I’m bisexual.
WereBear
It’s a crime, yes, but they never stick a gun in our face. So it won’t be dramatized; and no one will be afraid of it.
I was listening to the latest Driftglass and Blue Gal Podcast (highly, HIGHLY, recced) and they had a segment about the Last Meals of the Condemned, which is often fast food, or a collection of different sodas.
It’s a case of mindset; how pathetic is it that you get a chance to have whatever you want, and it’s not anything which qualifies as delicious?
When your horizons are limited to the shelves of your local convenience store.
Moral of my ramblings? Never steal anything small.
Michael
“Little boxes, on the hillside
Little boxes, made of ticky tacky…..”
Looks like times are tough in Agrestic/Majestic.
Bulworth
This on the heels of this http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-aspen-aristocracy-festival-nobles.html
means there has be some hippies or teacher’s unions we can punch somewhere.
HillbillyInBC
@burnspbesq:
As long as he knows, it doesn’t matter if we do.
tootiredoftheright
“It’s a case of mindset; how pathetic is it that you get a chance to have whatever you want, and it’s not anything which qualifies as delicious?”
Or anything rare and gourmet. At a last meal deal make it two meals one of the gourmet stuff and regular food if you don’t like the gourmet.
The thing is fast food is actually used as a bribe on prisoners to get their cooperation in criminal cases. You may be surprised that a trip to a fast food joint to a lifer in prison can get them to tell things they would never tell anyone else even if it would have sent them to jail in the first place.
Paris
When the rich abandon their houses, its called going Galt. It is morally superior and demonstrates their individual bravery.
Svensker
@burnspbesq:
That is really nice to hear. Congrats! History geeks of the world, unite! (My kid did the same, is now working toward his degree in an arcane branch of history. Eees guut!)
Svensker
@tootiredoftheright:
We had a friend of ours who is not a criminal but very poor do some work for us and he wanted a burger, so I got him the most delicious hand ground thick juicy burger, char-grilled and salty with fresh tomato and all the fixins on the side. He wouldn’t eat it. I had to go out and get him a MickyDs. He said the real hamburger tasted “funny”.
garry walsh
@jwb:
Why these peoples heads are not on poles.. Well for starters they have a well armed and group of extremely overpaid goons to protect them. After the local constabulary comes the “patriots warriors” who will turn their guns on u if the zombie master sez march. After that comes helecopter gun ships, after that comes cluster bombs and the list goes on.
Oh yea-on the dis-information side u have Republicans, tea baggers and the press to keep Americans confused and in the dark.
Lets add a ridiculous form of government that allows a tiny minority of cracker/senators to block most legislation, a long long way from God obedient Evengelicals and of course my favorite the american legal sytem dominated by corporate sponsored activists right down to the country level.
tootiredoftheright
@Svensker:
It probably did taste funny to him. Even a person tasting a mcdonald’s burger exactly like they did a few decades ago would find them quite different then the burgers sold at mcdonald’s today.
I know a few people who for the first time in their lives myself included tasted steak as well as ground beef from cows that were hand fed grass. The verdict was that it was the best tasting as well as tender meat I and they have ever had. Much much better then anything at a fast food, most chain restaurants, supermarkets. I do say Aldi as far as supermarket meat is way better in quality then walmart often better or equal priced to walmart stuff. Higher quality goods overall from Aldi then walmart.
Rick Taylor
As Atrios frequently argues, there should be no stigma for anyone rich or poor who wants to walk away from a financially disadvantageous mortgage. Hopefully this news will get out and people who aren’t so well off will feel free to do so.
4jkb4ia
You notice that Chamillionaire was a named individual in that article, but maybe he was the only one they could get.
Also notice that the investor-owned homes are the worst. This has to be a drag on the inventory of unsold homes for some time to come.
4jkb4ia
@burnspbesq:
Mazel Tov! Now your kid will know something about Europe between 1600 and 1789.
fucen tarmal
@4jkb4ia:
if the class is anything like when i took it, the boring ass line of english monarchs and their other wise trivial proclivities will be semi permanently engraved in space that could be better used for baseball statistics.
obtw took it as a senior, d’s in the classes, 4 on the test, pissed off the head of my high schools’ soc stud department so much he wrote me a letter after i graduated…my first hate mail.
4jkb4ia
I acknowledge that JGabriel at 40 was there first.
4jkb4ia
@fucen tarmal:
I got a D and a 5 on the test, but that was US History. My history teacher basically knew I could do it because I was one of three non-dingbats in the section.
The list of English monarchs I do know. But when Moldbug expresses an opinion(negative) on the Whigs and what was happening in Parliament, I don’t know, and any European history course I think should teach that. It’s more important for American history than the English monarchs.
Howlin Wolfe
@Mark: I couldn’t either. I think he was reading some other one, and clicked the reply button on yours.
Billy
Thanks, El Cid. Best laugh I’ve had in a while.
ruemara
@Martin:
Tell your Dad I love him.