Cab Driver Nuggets
Doing bunches of traveling, as I have and I promise it's over for now, those Flat Earth moments do happen. It made me giggle to realize that now I would have to give in to the impulse to post on my latest cabdrollery.
The drivers to and from DFW have all been Latin Americans for the past four trips, so going to Chile for Habitat made them pretty friendly. I got asked by the last driver, รก propos of mentioning the economy, if I didn't think that poor people buying more than they could afford was the main cause of the crisis. You can easily guess I said NO not by a very long shot.
When he asked who did cause it, of course I fingered Alan Greenspan and told the driver as I've told you. Greenspan has even admitted that knowing AAA ratings were being given falsely to toxic mortgage packages, he hadn't stopped it because he had thought the effects would be spread out too much to make any great impact. If nothing else, the occupied White House's standard of 'consumer confidence' has been forever proven not to be adequate backing for our money supply. But I digress.
The driver was just waiting, as I should have guessed, for the opening to tell his own stories. It turns out that he had had a recent encounter with a real estate agent who wanted to sell a big loan. He related the events, which since you're not taking a relatively lengthy ride, I won't include entirely. It boiled down to having a house in pretty bad shape used as a lever to get his sister into a mortgage that was entirely over her head. The line used until the subprime meltdown, that the price would keep going up so she could refinance, has been replaced. This time it is that a fixed rate 30-year mortgage is sublimely secure, and the only sort of arrangement the reputable realtor would offer to her esteemed client. The driver thinks that because she speaks Spanish, the realtor thought she would be trusted. Then he insisted on a tour of the house, and did the math. You've guessed it was trash for treasure by now?
Selling for a finance company rather than for a real estate company has become the norm since subprimes came into prominence, and of course we've learned not so long ago that the agent placing a loan with great profits for the financing company was being offered great bonuses. That doesn't seem to have changed, when it's repossessed properties the salespeople are pushing. It may have become a tougher sell, though, as anyone who's been following this in the news by now has been taught that the customer for a house can count on encountering some one pushing another interest than his/hers.
My driver was nodding away when I mentioned to him that it was his long term agreement, not his satisfaction with a house, that the agent makes her living on. He had another story, too, about his first house buy. The loan he was sold took into account the repairs the house needed, and was more than the purchase price. It took him quite awhile to pay that one off. As he noted, he'd been stupid, and paid for it. Note, he paid it off.
Like most of us, the house buyer who's gotten in over his head is going to do whatever he can to honor the contract, no matter how deceived he was in getting into that contract. That's the underpinning for the subprime breakdown - agents selling the toxic loans grew ever more confident that the victim would make it somehow, anyhow. Like the cretin in chief, they knew that Good Merkins were taking third jobs to get by. When the jobs disappeared and the salaries shrank, the financially abusive just assume you'll get by if it kills you. That's okay with the crooks. Sillies. It was the economy they killed.
Wonder how long before the world forgets that the U.S. sells bad loans to them rated AAA, based on our financial community's belief that the public can eat cake when they don't have bread? My guess, like my driver's, is that hard lessons stay learned - once bitten, twice shy.
Cabbies and their fellow workers aren't to blame for our credit crunch, though I've heard the wingers insist that what went wrong was dastardly Dems cozying up to the poor. Your cabbies and their fellow worker bees, though, are fixing it, a little at a time. Their votes are going to be a large part of the fixing process.
Tips go both ways.
The drivers to and from DFW have all been Latin Americans for the past four trips, so going to Chile for Habitat made them pretty friendly. I got asked by the last driver, รก propos of mentioning the economy, if I didn't think that poor people buying more than they could afford was the main cause of the crisis. You can easily guess I said NO not by a very long shot.
When he asked who did cause it, of course I fingered Alan Greenspan and told the driver as I've told you. Greenspan has even admitted that knowing AAA ratings were being given falsely to toxic mortgage packages, he hadn't stopped it because he had thought the effects would be spread out too much to make any great impact. If nothing else, the occupied White House's standard of 'consumer confidence' has been forever proven not to be adequate backing for our money supply. But I digress.
The driver was just waiting, as I should have guessed, for the opening to tell his own stories. It turns out that he had had a recent encounter with a real estate agent who wanted to sell a big loan. He related the events, which since you're not taking a relatively lengthy ride, I won't include entirely. It boiled down to having a house in pretty bad shape used as a lever to get his sister into a mortgage that was entirely over her head. The line used until the subprime meltdown, that the price would keep going up so she could refinance, has been replaced. This time it is that a fixed rate 30-year mortgage is sublimely secure, and the only sort of arrangement the reputable realtor would offer to her esteemed client. The driver thinks that because she speaks Spanish, the realtor thought she would be trusted. Then he insisted on a tour of the house, and did the math. You've guessed it was trash for treasure by now?
Selling for a finance company rather than for a real estate company has become the norm since subprimes came into prominence, and of course we've learned not so long ago that the agent placing a loan with great profits for the financing company was being offered great bonuses. That doesn't seem to have changed, when it's repossessed properties the salespeople are pushing. It may have become a tougher sell, though, as anyone who's been following this in the news by now has been taught that the customer for a house can count on encountering some one pushing another interest than his/hers.
My driver was nodding away when I mentioned to him that it was his long term agreement, not his satisfaction with a house, that the agent makes her living on. He had another story, too, about his first house buy. The loan he was sold took into account the repairs the house needed, and was more than the purchase price. It took him quite awhile to pay that one off. As he noted, he'd been stupid, and paid for it. Note, he paid it off.
Like most of us, the house buyer who's gotten in over his head is going to do whatever he can to honor the contract, no matter how deceived he was in getting into that contract. That's the underpinning for the subprime breakdown - agents selling the toxic loans grew ever more confident that the victim would make it somehow, anyhow. Like the cretin in chief, they knew that Good Merkins were taking third jobs to get by. When the jobs disappeared and the salaries shrank, the financially abusive just assume you'll get by if it kills you. That's okay with the crooks. Sillies. It was the economy they killed.
Wonder how long before the world forgets that the U.S. sells bad loans to them rated AAA, based on our financial community's belief that the public can eat cake when they don't have bread? My guess, like my driver's, is that hard lessons stay learned - once bitten, twice shy.
Cabbies and their fellow workers aren't to blame for our credit crunch, though I've heard the wingers insist that what went wrong was dastardly Dems cozying up to the poor. Your cabbies and their fellow worker bees, though, are fixing it, a little at a time. Their votes are going to be a large part of the fixing process.
Tips go both ways.
Labels: Credit Crunch, Dirty Tricks, Republican Lying
posted by Ruth at 9:00 AM
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