Just read this charming spirit's piece
at tompaine.com
(no relation of mine)
on the pending debacle in mortgage-backed securities.
After reviewing the waves of dread passing across the
face of the financial waters, she asks
"What about the angle involving real people who are
actually going to lose their homes?"
The great lot bomb has not really exploded, so immediate swarms of houseless folks is not in the cards. It just can't happen that fast, given the specific mechanics of that market. But a great social crime was nonetheless committed here -- all foreseeable and, I suspect, in some important places, foreseen. In fact, any toadstool saw it coming, what with all that credit pumped into the house lots of America like so much helium; and sure enough, it's started to show its hideous second face, as these over-yeasted values collapse, but ever so slowly, like the world slowly drained after the 40 days and 40 nights of rain.
And like a bee's-eye multiple of that Biblical tale, many a family ark will be left teetering high and dry on a mountaintop -- in this case, a mountain of debt. Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth this will bring. And since along the same lines as Jehovah's flood, this was a purely arbitrary willed cataclysm, perhaps the House of the people's representatives oughta start looking into its author, one Alan Greenspan, late of the Fed chair, by way of the Rand cult and a vote of confidence from Wall Street. Barney, start your Kafka penal colony machine, baby.
Hey, a guy can dream, right?
Comments (10)
This line's even clumsier.
I have high hopes that predatory lending could become the moral values issue of 2008.
But I rather liked her article. She reminds me a little of my brother on his first trip to the city. "You mean there are people who live in the streets? How can they allow that?"
Now the brokers are going to take some losses and switch to trading something else—fine for them. But what about the millions of marginally middle-class people stuck up to their neck with higher and unaffordable monthly payments? Their futures hold delinquency, defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcy.
Posted by Stanley W. Rogouski | March 16, 2007 5:21 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 17:21
"Their futures hold delinquency, defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcy"
she got that right eh stan
Posted by op | March 16, 2007 7:29 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 19:29
She edits a ribald (I've always wanted to use that word.) magazine called Heeb and yet she can't say the obvious.
But what about the millions of marginally middle-class people stuck up to their neck with higher and unaffordable monthly payments? Their futures hold delinquency, defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcy.
They're fucked.
Posted by Stanley W. Rogouski | March 16, 2007 7:40 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 19:40
More on Anya.
She's an Obama fan.
Why?
Because he's a Muslim (even though he's not).
Who better to reengage with the so-called "Arab street" than President Barack Hussein Obama? How great an effect would it have on the Islamic world to have the most powerful man in the world saying, "I was taught the wisdom of the Koran, and I believe in the Constitution too" ?
Yes. I'm sure the poor bastard in Iraq who has his power turned on for 90 minutes a day, gets his door kicked in by US Marines and his mother called a Haji bitch by some white trash methhead, and is currently watching his future disappear would give a rat's ass about a Christian president of the United States with a Muslim sounding middle name.
As far as my own ethnicity goes, I think my father described Edmund Muskie in three words.
"He's an asshole."
Posted by Stanley W. Rogouski | March 16, 2007 7:54 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 19:54
Stanley, you have an unerring eye for the painful. Those quotes are likely to trigger St. Vitus' dance in the unwary reader.
Posted by Scruggs | March 16, 2007 8:44 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 20:44
Oh I'm not going to hate on her that much. She seems well-intentioned.
Maybe I'm a little jealous how she's been able to leverage her connections into that so many published articles and 5000 dollar speaker fees at 25.
The youth angle gets a bit tedious though. It reminds me of, well, exactly of the first few years of the Clinton administration, when I was her age.
Young people with shit jobs getting screwed by debt and a crappy future. Sounds like a variation on "Slacker" or "Reality Bites".
She's like the Douglas Copeland of her generation.
Posted by Stanley W. Rogouski | March 16, 2007 9:41 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 21:41
I wonder if she remembers S 420 and HR 333, in addition to the Thumbscrew Act of 2005.
Relevant roll call votes:
Senate
House
Posted by Scruggs | March 16, 2007 10:39 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 22:39
your going to hell stan....
so enjoy yourself
sherman
our friend stan here
is satan .....without all the A s
Posted by owen p | March 17, 2007 9:35 AM
Posted on March 17, 2007 09:35
Aperçu her blog:
Senator Carl Levin (who kinda looks like a senator in a movie) (...)
Sweetie's no sage, but she has got herself a bankable shtick: telling her peers that their mountainous debt isn't their fault. The shit just cost too much.
Thing is, I rather like that this meme is getting loose. She's not entirely wrong.
No doubt she can give voice to populist urges with her bewailing usury, "rich geezers," lost American Dreams, etc., even if what it appears to represent is a firm belief in the shopping mall sprees of America uber alles (just not uber-charged, please).
Posted by Reechard | March 20, 2007 3:24 AM
Posted on March 20, 2007 03:24
Heck...my mountainous debt is 110% my fault. Please feel free to toss in a quarter or two as you pass by on the sidewalk.
Posted by Brian | March 20, 2007 12:25 PM
Posted on March 20, 2007 12:25