Richard Day's picture

    MORTGAGE CRISIS; CH. 324

                                               
                                                                          HELL

    The subject of mortgages is back in the news thanks to HUFFPO & the Levin Report.

    I have taken some time to document the fraud perpetrated upon the county recorders in this country.

    Ron Paul and his son Curly Rand have attempted to tell us all that the only purpose of government is to protect property interests.

    The Black Panthers spent decades attempting to tell me the same damn thing.

    The Right is lying,

    and the sun rises in the East.

    Here's today's installment.

     

    From Brad Delong quoting Kevin Drum  describing the misleading  Social Security “statistics” used by  Alan Simpson.

    Drum points out that , since 1940 

     For men, life expectancy at age 65 has gone up   from 78   to 83 .. Since retirement age has gone up from 65 to 67, this means that over the past 60 years the expected payout period has increased by about three years. …….. Alan Simpson  …. has no clue about this.:

    jollyroger's picture

    Prez to taxpayers:"Make my cash problem your friend--Crazy Barry's pay one year, get two, tax bonanza.."

    In the ongoing series, Things Prez Can Do On His Own, a prospective amnesty from the Director of Internal Revenue:  If you prepay your 2011 tax (due April 2012) now we'll double it, and carry the extra into your 2012 tax bill.

    Provided you filed this year showing less than 100k agi.

     

    Jamie Friedland's picture

    Obama Negotiates with Himself on Oil. Again.

    President Obama’s position on oil has been one of the most disappointing and incoherent facets of his administration to date.   On Saturday, this trend continued as the President announced a series of shifts to increase domestic oil production.

    we are stardust's picture

    States, Municipalities in Dire Straits: Some Proposals

     

    The above video from Dylan Ratigan’s Friday show was really interesting.  I couldn’t find any direct links to Geithner’s ‘austerity move’ to stop low-interest loans to cities and states, but it sounds enormously counter-productive since most of those governments (if not all) are required to balance their budgets.

    I’d run into this piece by Marshall Auerback a few days earlier touting some of James Galbraith’s ideas that would be of help to Obama and the nation; he thinks Republicans could buy into them, given that Nixon used some of the same ideas through community block grants.  He/they are promoting ‘revenue sharing’ with the states, and focus on Medicaid as one helpful vehicle.

    Fie on the FT

     

    jollyroger's picture

    Paks to prez: get yourself a new bitch, you terrorist scumbag.

    Fed up with drone attacks that (per our government statements) kill only "suspected militants" regardless of the age or sex of those incinerated, the hitherto complaisant guardians of our supply routes across the Durand Line finally declare that they have had enough.

    Personally, I applaud them for doing only what we would if random missile strikes were periodically raining down hellfire (not just a metaphor) on guilty and innocent alike with no discrimination.

    Barth's picture

    Hope

    You know what hope is
    Hope is a bastard
    Hope is a liar
    A cheat and a tease
    Hope comes near you?
    Kick it's backside
    Got no place in days like these

    Nick Hornby, as sung by Ben Folds, "Picture Window" from Lonely Avenue

    One of the advantages

     of reading TPM was  being exposed to people who actually knew what they were talking about..

    The collapse of the housing market in 2008 was much less of a surprise to any of us who had for years been reading Dean Baker’s  repeated  explanations that housing had become a bubble which would go the way of all bubbles For example , in 2006.

    quinn esq's picture

    When Your Losses Start To Mount.

    Been a hard week.

     One of the hardest.

    Times like these, more often now I turn to music that... sounds the way music used to. I know, I'm basically cashing in my chips as an independent, thinking person by hitting the nostalgia button... but there it is. Facts on the ground.

    jollyroger's picture

    Prez to Repugnant Reps & Senators: As Commander in Chief, I gotta lay off some personnel...how ya like me now?

    Returning to the alternative universe in which Obama has balls, we find the following:

    Since a US default would be catastropic, and Prez has independent control only of the military, he announces the closure of all bases in Repugnant represented states and congressional districts, so that the necessary cash may be re-directed to default prevention pending raise of debt ceiling.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE FETUS AND THE FETTERS

    File:Daressalaamconvicts.jpg

     

    UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, PROFANITY PROVIDES A RELIEF DENIED EVEN TO PRAYER.
    Mark Twain

     

    Trump Shucks the Faithful & Desperate

    Does anyone feel sorry for these folks, perhaps of the Republican tribe, and likely believers in the magic and morality of unfettered capitalism, for being sucked into expensive real estate deals where they lost lots of money, buying into the image inspired by the name 'Trump'?

    stillidealistic's picture

    Matt Taibbi Strikes Again

    Matt Taibbi is quickly becoming the journalist I most enjoy. His writing style is fun and easy to read, and he has an amazing ability to use analogies that make complex issues easy to understand.

    we are stardust's picture

    Saving Civilization Through a New Energy Economy

    The longest running PBS series Journey to Planet Earth has been airing Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the name of a book by long-time environmental visionary Lester Brown. 

    Narrated by Matt Damon, its mission is to show the various crises and tipping points the planet is reaching, far too many of which are related to, and will be worsened by, climate change due to carbon-based energy dependence.

    For some reason the PBS link says the video to the whole program isn’t currently available, and advises we check back.  Please do.  This is another of the issues that really can’t wait, as experts say that only massively changing the way we live our lives right now can head off many of the disastrous effects coming our way: rising sea levels, floods and droughts, food scarcity, failed states, more energy wars, and health crises.  Decreasing availability of potable water will provoke another crisis, but that’s for another day.

    Brown and Damon show the various sustainable energy technologies that are being utilized on a grand scale in other nations; Algeria, China and Saudi Arabia, to name a few; and increasingly in a few states in the US.  It’s encouraging, but not nearly enough, say all the experts, and it will require a massive effort similar to FDR’s orders to the various departments of the government and manufacturing sector to retool factories in order to build planes and tanks for WWII, and cut back energy consumption, including transportation and encouraging new models for towns and cities toward that end.

    coatesd's picture

    Laying-Off Teachers To Demonstrate How Much They Are Appreciated

    When the President came to Winston-Salem in North Carolina last December, and first laid out his “sputnik moment” analysis of our contemporary situation, the whole emphasis of his address that day was on the need to strengthen our educational base in order to compete effectively in the global economy of the twenty-first century.

    tmccarthy0's picture

    Boeing VS National Labor Relations Board

    The  National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has taken action against Boeing's production move to South Carolina. Republicans are in meltdown mode...

    Rajaratnam's down ,yawn.

    Raj's conviction , will change nothing, is a waste of money and effort and is completely divorced from the  sub prime / CDO financial crisis. With respect to that  I agree with Des and others who complain about the fact no legal action has been taken against anyone- despite acknowledging Gillian Tett's (FT) theory that lhe brilliant people on Wall Street particularly use their billiance to find a way to just avoid acting illegally.

    tmccarthy0's picture

    El Fraile Island: Fort Drum the Concrete Battleship of Manila Bay

     

    This quest for this story began with this picture. It was among he hundreds of slides I've been going through that  connect my third culture kid beginnings with my adult life. I couldn't stop looking at this particular picture, it was fascinating. It was obviously a remnant of WWII, seemingly floating out in the middle of the Ocean.

    Meanwhile in the rest of the world

    here's part of what bitterlemons was debating this week.

    http://www.bitterlemons.net/     

     Members of the Hamas leadership also publicly mourned and eulogized assassinated al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, in sharp contrast to statements made by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and others in the West Bank. 

    America's Awesome Government.

    Sometimes we end up living in a little universe. It isn't surprising. In reality, there is no size the universe has to be ... so we set our own arbitrary boundaries. This from that; these from those; stuff from here most certainly goes in there. Sometimes in the course of compressing and compacting the big is reduced to amazingly small.

    So it is with our American Government; often narrowly defined by the sorry crop of insecurity driven and egoists - this spawn of the monied and elite - that the current system belches forth to stand as modern servants of the American public trust. And if the sum-total of the political class were really the whole of it we would be a sorry people indeed.

    Bring him back alive.

                                       Capture Team Stood

                                          By for Bin Laden


    ...............senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on stand by:One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers,interrogators and translaters in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship........

    cmaukonen's picture

    Hitting Our Head Against the Debt Ceiling

    Well we have the current installment of Raising The Dept Ceiling - The Obama years.

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