WAY LATE AND BILLIONS SHORT
(….and handing out crumbs of consolation to those who weren’t bailed out)

The announcement of a $25 Billion civil settlement between the state attorneys of all but two of the states and the major banks, shows how combining their collective power allowed them to gang up on the Federales and their bailed out banking friends to force them to cough up some of their ill-gotten gains back to those in danger of still being screwed out of their homes. Granted, this is way late and billions short of what could and should have been done long before today for all those taxpaying home owners caught up by the – Housing Bubble- crunch, and now out of homes and out of luck because of it.

But, what the hell,  it also hands out crumbs of consolation to those who weren’t bailed out, so,  in an election year cycle like this one it’s just good campaign PR. Besides, at least with that $2000 pittance those folks can now afford to fuel up the cars they’ve been living in since being foreclosed out of their homes. A Mad Hatter’s tea party couldn’t have come up with a more cockeyed result, so let’s recap a bit.

First, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, high level public policy do-gooders managed to pressure and stampede our glorious Congress to legislate new financial non-regulations so that more ordinary Americans could more easily take on mortgage debt loads they couldn’t afford….to achieve the American dream of owning their own homes.

Second, as a result of these do-good public policy “reforms”, the financial services industry was suddenly free to engage in all sorts of wide-open, free-wheeling lending for such debt loads, and also free to bundle and label these as “asset based derivatives” and other creative three card monte investment offerings, to construct a truly marvelous Eiffel Tower of financial cards to suck in investors from all over the world, thereby creating floods of fees, bonuses, and profits in the process, all thanks to that most endearing of human characteristics called – GREED- (shades of Enron and Madoff).

It was a great booming ride for all while it lasted, and our Federal financial watch dogs (not to mention a number of our congressional princes of venality) gazed benevolently upon that scene as living proof that America was, indeed, a land of opportunity! But nothing is forever, so when the winds of recession began to blow, the entire financial fantasy world that they had so happily wrought came crashing down on all their pointy heads.

So about the only positive thing we may have learned from that is….yes, Virginia, if the states do gang up on him, they can make Uncle back off and pay up.  But the other, and perhaps more important lesson here is….if you don’t know who you are, it’s a very expensive way….to find out!

CENTURION