Outside a few moments ago, I saw a trio of baby bunnies frolicking over a large snowdrift in my front yard. And though I know bunnies can’t speak, I nevertheless could have sworn I heard one of the baby bunnies yell “wheeeeeee!” as he slid down the drift and was greeted by the other two.
Who were themselves smiling and laughing and drinking hot cocoa from tiny little mugs that read, “Happiness is a warm puppy.”
As if one Cute Overload weren’t enough…
Just keep thinking about those bunnies when the banks claw back those fines from you the customer.
I think I’m going to join the local City/County credit union. There’s no way they’ll be punished by Timmy Taxcheat, Eric the Gat, and Teh Won.
“I’ve got a theory.”*
Please, we all know just how evil bunnies really are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke3DUitoz8w
Damn, Geoff, you’re quick…
I’ll bet those big old banks were sure happy to be forcibly bailed out, and it’s definitely their fault that Uncle Sugar wouldn’t take his money back when they wanted to give it to him, ASAP.
They totally owe us.
I for one welcome our new cuteness overloads.
And for another take on bunnies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQCeBnZewpM&feature=related
The right kind of puppies would eat those bunnies.
LMC,
Not this bunny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg&feature=related
While I have a high disdain for banks quick to line up at the federal trough, I just cannot manage the same outrage toward them as I do toward my fellow citizens who claim to be victims of ‘predatory loans’ that NO ONE forced them to take out.
“Damn, Geoff, you’re quick…”
:-) Happens to be one of my all time favorite TV episodes so it came to mind right away.
Quite some time back, when Bubba was president, I had a discussion about homeownership with one of my colleagues. Our major point of disagreement was that I was on the side of the evil banksters and their insistance that one prove one’s creditworthiness and have a substantial down payment in order to purchase a home. He insisted that homeownership was a right and not a privelidge. I told him that kind of thinking would lead to where we are now.
I am not taking any statisfaction in the fact that I have been proved right.
And, I would shot those bunnies. They eat up all my garden shoots. I have a rabbit fence, but it must have a sign on it that says “Welcome!”
Into the meds again, huh?
You must have excellent eyesight, else you couldn’t have read the writing on the mugs.
Didn’t the Unicorn Fairy Prince sue banks during his community organizing days?
He did, JD, in order to put them in the shape they are today that needs re-suing. Cloward-Piven works ok.
Me too, and that trough is their lifeblood (that and the inherent scam they’ve been running since at least 1919). It does need to be pointed out, however, that the right makes the frequent error of seeing banking as a private sector interest in a rose-colored view of Adam Smith’s free market capitalism.
They are not that thing and in fact they spell its doom.
The entire US fiat/reserve monetary system, as a component of the global monetary system, is our worst nightmare. It will end this Republic and what you see happening right now is the result of the extreme aggregation of power in the corridor than extends from Wall Street to DC and back again.
This is the client state Jeff’s been on about and it’s this trainwreck that most threatens structural liberties, rights, and properties. See Jefferson, Thomas on the subject. A third of the world’s wealth is on bank balance sheets. Given that banks and their shareholders number 000000001% of the globe’s population and not a dime of its productive output, ask yourself how it got there.
When the occupying, communist American left try to stick up that system they are simple thugs and robbers. When the right defend it, however, they are absolutely dead wrong for so doing.
More:
The bunny imagery evokes the shrieking “whee!” Geico pig, whom I detest. You have ruined my afternoon and likely my weekend, too.
You realize, of course, that this settlement is imposed on mortgage servicers and leaves out oooonnne little detail. Anyone see Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac anywhere?
It also doesn’t address all of the law-abiding, mortage-paying howmowners who continue to pay on their loans, even when the property is underwater, because it is a legal obligation. The paying homeowners who end up financing this settlement. Oh, you thought it was coming out of the banks’ pockets? Costs get passed along to the consumer in every industry. So, watch for bank fees to go up, credit card fees to go up, atm fees, origination, appraisal, interest rates, blah, blah, blah.
True, robo-signing and all was wrong- you must abide by the letter of the law if you are going to dispossess someone of their property. But in virtually all cases, the borrowers were in significant payment default. So to punish the banks for cutting corners on the foreclosure process, the non-paying foreclosed borrowers are going to get, what, $2,000, and the poor non-paying unforeclosed borrowers are going to get a principal write-down of what, $20,000? Can I now hear a chorus of “Strategic Defaults?” “Amen!”
I’m not even going near moral hazard here.
And before anyone heads for the exits to claim their free cash, check your mortgage. Fannie and Freddie are well over half of the market. So, if they have your loan, so sorry, too bad.
Responsibility is for suckers.
I want my Cash!
Also my Gas! Ass! and Grass!
In Barak Obama’s America, EVERYBODY rides for free!
J, to the extent I understand your arguments regarding the our fiat monetary system and the unfolding problems thereof, I am outraged. Not necessarily at the ‘banks’ per se, but at those in the corridors of power who have foisted the system on us and then have manipulated it for their own ends against the rest of us.
My earlier comment was was focused directly on the issue of who is at fault for the mortgage foreclosure mess. Regardless of the the bigger issues involved, I just cannot bring myself to exonerate someone who signs a contract they can’t live up to. To me, to say that it is not my fault that I can’t pay, because the bank offered me too much, is to say I have no free will, no human agency, I’m too fucking stupid to make my own decisions and big brother needs to save me.
Granted that all occurs in your much bigger framework. So maybe the question does become one of: Does one have an obligation to honor ones commitments to an immoral system? I’ll give that a qualified no. But then the question arises, if one sees little hope of successfully ending the immoral system and needs to survive in it in hopes of it being overthrown at some future date, does it then make sense to comply. I think there the answer is a qualified yes. There are some evils so great that personal survival is not the primary consideration and thus the qualified no, above.
So there are a lot of threads to be pulled in this whole monetary/banking/foreclosure mess. But I keep coming back to the idea that a prudent moral agent entangles him(her)self in the immoral system as little as possible. I mean, Proverbs goes back what, 4000+ years? And they knew back then that the borrower is servant unto the lender. That aspect of the mess is not a new problem.
So, should I buy a house now?
Interest Rates are at a 40(?) year low, which is as long as they’ve been keeping the records, or so I’ve heard.
So if you’re in the market, and can put 20-25% down and your not worried about losing your job, paying for a wedding, fighting cancer or something else that’s going to wipe out your savings, why not?
Of course the banks are going to get your share of their fine out of your loan fees….
“Of course the banks are going to get your share of their fine out of your loan fees….”
Yeah, also mortgage insurance is more than property taxes now days. Something like 1.25%.
As I understand it, if you can put 20% down, you don’t have to carry mortgage insurance
escrow on the other hand.
Very astute, iron308. Your scope and poise are what’s needed — I’d put it in the same category as Robby Boyd’s, another PW commenter.
My plea to sound-minded patriots is that we must adopt similar sensibilities and not relent until we’ve convinced a nation. As that nation our survival depends on it.
If we are structuralists it’s incumbent on us to oppose the profoundly, inexorably, and intentionally anti-structural force that is American monetary policy of today. It’s not all RON PAUL! to identify it as the threat it is, and it’s not an attack on capitalism per se. It’s simply the realization that when an inherently and exponentially unstable system siphons off a nation’s wealth and with it its resolve, we need to know these facts.
By popular demand, stump-grinding action.
The grinding continues as we speak, but it’s too dark to film.
I paid off my home yesterday. The same home my wife and I have been paying on for years; an event we had planned to celebrate together; as we approached the end of it’s hateful term it was with such satisfaction and anticipation and plans as to what we could do without that pesky monthly mortgage payment. Instead of buying a bigger and more expensive home, we’d chosen to refinance a 30-year loan down to 10 years, and take on higher payments just to cut away at that seemingly endless term. A correct decision. Kudos to us.
A terrible day it was, really.
Were the bunnies wearing helmets? Serious people would be asking that question as they plummeted recklessly down those precipices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/sports/after-burkes-death-a-time-for-contemplationand-questions.html
No one can say dicentra doesn’t deliver.
My ex-boyfriends can. :-P
Wasn’t it Liberty Savings and Loan in Chicago that these community organizers cut their teeth on? Back in the early eighties. As I recall some Jesse Jackson/ACORN organization forced them to close over, “red lining”. The banks managers complained to the newspapers that they couldn’t lend to anyone without collateral. The city sided with the community organizers.
I hate Chicago proggs.
Dude! I saw a roof-surfin’ bird:
http://rt.com/news/russian-roof-surfing-crow-649/