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I have been following the current banking meltdown with great interest and concern. I'm a cynic among cynics, I lived in Texas when Bush was governor here and I've spent most of the past 14 years working in land development, so when talk of a "mortgage crisis" emerged a couple years ago, I was well aware of what could happen. You have to remember that people in Texas only got home equity loans for the first time 11 years ago. Yeah, that bill was signed by, oh, what's his name, the governor at the time? I have to give it to him, though, we did a lot of business back then. There were a lot of surveys to be made and a lot of loans were closed. But if the number of foreclosed homes I surveyed in the years following were any indication, people here just weren't ready for their loan to be worth more than their house.
I'm not saying it's a crooked business on the whole, but selling houses - especially the volume builders throwing up crackerjack boxes in 28 days - it's all about the commission. These people don't give a shit about you once you've signed the closing papers because that sucker is sold. They're brokers, not bankers. My wife and I got the old contract switcheroo when we bought our house. At the closing no less, they ask us, "well, how can we be sure your wife will go back to work after she has the baby?" Uh, because I have to pay for this fucking house, asshole! Because now it's a balloon payment loan since you can only consider my income and you just found this out today while I've got a moving truck ready to go? Thanks, dickhead! Thankfully, I refinanced my loan, 366 days later at the first available opportunity and got out of that scam.
So you could say there were some "really motivated" mortgage brokers out there. Lesson learned. But I can't say I anticipated passing stupidity when it came to irresponsible lending. When friends and coworkers talked about the houses they were buying compared to my modest home, and the ways and means of acquiring the financing, I could see there were people who were willingly getting into loans they couldn't afford. I mean really dumb loans. These jokers couldn't stay in apartments from one lease to the next and now they thought they were going to buckle down and pay a $2500 a month mortgage payment? Oh, that's right, it's really only a $1500 a month payment, because you're going to do the escrow part yourself. Yeah, let me know how that works out...
But trumping the stupidity of those folks came when I was driving to the next cookie-cutter subdivision to survey the next cookie-cutter house (I would actually make one sketch of each of the five different homes these builders constructed and make photocopies to put the measurements on at each job site, so yeah, not an exaggeration to say cookie-cutter). I heard a radio ad for the interest only loan. That's right! Fuck the principle! Pay only the interest! The house will appreciate forever. You're only going to live there 3 years anyway, so why pay too much? Were these people serious? Apparently the loan officers had run out of risky people to sell their mortgages to so they had to resort to selling them to the guaranteed to default crowd. After all, it's a commission business. We don't underwrite the loan, we just sell them.
Now all this I can safely say I saw it coming. I saw the decline in our business in 2006 when sales of existing homes (coupled with the ability of the owner to use a past land survey, so long as there were no changes made to the property) caused our numbers and my workload to collapse. That was okay, though, because we still had the builders. But then the precipitous drop began and by Thanksgiving 2006, I wasn't wondering how big my Christmas bonus was going to be, I was at a recruiting session for FedEx seasonal help at the airport at nights. By December 28 - on my day off - I was layed off. My wife teased me endlessly about that, referencing Chris Tucker in Friday, "you got to be a stupid motherfucker to get fired on your day off!" I still laugh about that now - and it makes me happy to have such a positive person around me, the cynic, but I digress.
Since early 2007 I've worked in civil engineering doing basically the same cookie-cutter subdivision design as I had done previously. And not a day goes by I don't wonder if I will still have a job tomorrow. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm not an idiot. I know the pendulum swings both ways and there is money to be made no matter which way it goes. Right now there's commercial development. It's not much, but it's not unemployment.
But until this week I didn't understand how the bush crew would make this banking/mortgage crisis work for them. They made a lot of money in that home equity deregulation thing here in Texas. They made a ton of money in refinancing when interest rates plummeted. They had to continue making money so they relaxed the requirements to sell loans. Once all those loans had sold, they shitcanned the requirements and made more money. I felt my job slipping away and ultimately saw it disappear. The company I worked for most of my career is a shell of its former self today. So where would they get the money? From the same place, of course: the voiceless masses of homeowners and taxpayers.
That's when it hit me. Bush was talking all those years ago about compassionate conservatism. I knew what he was talking about: stay real conservative on the public services, healthcare, education, the arts, even go bare-bones on defense. Conservative means cut funding for everyone who's not exactly like you. The compassionate part I knew was bullshit. "Oh, we feel your pain!" Yeah, like you republican dogs with your "W04" stickers on your Hummers feel the pain of the bums down by Parkland Hospital that you ignore at the red lights. You don't give them so much as a quarter, but you "feel their pain." When was the last time I saw you drop by the Salvation Army one street over. Never? No, the compassion he spoke of comes now. But instead of helping hurricane victims, the homeless (or soon to be), people with oppressive healthcare costs, it's "go easy on these poor mortgage bankers, these million- and billionaire investment brokers. Feel their pain. Just give them a little help and they'll get the economy rolling again." There's your compassionate conservatism. The same old trickle down bullshit that has never worked for real people.
Guess what, you dumb deluded broke-ass republican supporting assholes? He wasn't talking to you. Every speech, every address, every debate. He was talking to his base, not you. You remember: "some people call you the elite. I call you my base." Oh, well, there was that one time he actually talked to you when he said "I need some patriots to throw in front of IEDs while I make you walk around the desert looking for the WMDs I just lied about." Pretty sure he wasn't talking to his base then. And then tonight. The same spiel again. We need to confront this crisis and do the right thing, blah blah blah. Oh, like the last one? The endless war that creates a demand for new Humvees, Predators, guns and bombs? And young, impressionable patriotic warriors who are dying for your profit? No, I think I'll pass on this one. Chalk it up to a funny feeling.
Bail out the billionaires, huh? Fuck that. Come on, don't you republican bastards remember what you told me? "The helping hand you're looking for can be found at the end of your own arm." "Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" No, no help for you. Oh, I'm going to suffer and the economy is going to collapse? Bring it on! Who's able to deal with that now: me or you? You people think I'm afraid? Not anymore.
Let me give you poor, helpless, corrupt bankers and brokers some advice. Get a piece of cardboard, a piece of coal and scrawl WILL WORK FOR FOOD on it and hang out near Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Don't worry, without your healthcare plan you'll learn where it is real quick. And maybe if I'm feeling generous I'll throw a quarter at you while I'm stopped at the red light. Or maybe I'll just pass you by without a thought.
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