Please, No More of the Same

by: frank louis | published: 09 22, 2010

This week we learned that Larry Summers is stepping down from his post as director of the National Economic Council with the Obama Administration, leaving us with Tim Geithner. Summers is going back to Harvard where he had been president before joining the Obama “team.” Is this country so blind that we continue to “rehire” the very people who create the biggest problems? After serving as the director of several failed economic policies under President Obama, he will return to Harvard to teach others how to do the same thing. Brilliant. Talk is that The Obama Administration is looking for a minority person to fill the position. Yes, that should be a prime qualifier don’t you think? Maybe with another PhD, someone else who can inform us that the recession has ended.

I often write about the over-intellectualized approach to the economy (and our borders for that matter: Bedbugs anyone?) that has gotten us into the economic crisis we are currently in. Convoluted complex solution after convoluted complex solution is tossed out by experts (IE the Fed) and implemented only to fail in the long term… Community Reinvestment act? The fact is that these programs only redistribute (steal) American wealth and just run our economy further into the ground.

For example, who comes up with programs like toe one for the “unbanked,” in which millions of dollars will be spent to get new checking accounts and credit cards for those who routinely bounce checks and default on their credit card debt. Or the many failed mortgage modification programs like “Making Home Affordable?” Doesn’t a single one of these PhDs understand that their policies are just robbing American Citizens of their hard earned wealth and that we re not interested in further “exotic” financial schemes (IE: Mortgage Backed Securities) that basically only “rob Peter to pay Paul” as my mother would have said.

We have over 120 failed banks so far this year. In 2009, I had predicted the total number this year to be around 150. I now think we may beat this estimate too. The FDIC is in the red to the tune of $20.7 Billion according to data I have read and just whose money is FDIC money anyway? Mine and yours (if you pay taxes). The FDIC will need an estimated additional $60 Billion to make it through 2014. More of our money changing hands.

In the meantime, we have all pretty much lost our retirement security, our real estate equity (we are upside down in our very homes and property “investments”) and have already lost every penny we worked long and hard for should we try to sell our valueless homes for less than we owe on them. As a result, our estates will be subject to judgments when we die. This is as a result of “making the American Dream available to everyone” without the years of hard work the rest of us paid to achieve it. Perhaps nobody explained to these experts that “Free Market” does not mean that things are free.

But let’s focus for a moment on housing, surely under Mr. Summers’ domain. Owning property or a house is not a dream. One dreams when one is asleep. It is something many of us worked long and hard to save for. Making this “dream” available to people who did not have a down payment (or were perhaps non existent, “foreign investors” and “straw buyers”) has turned the “American Dream” into the “American Nightmare.” We hear from the President, we hear from the Fed, we hear from the business news outlets about Mr. Summers’ “wise council,” we hear about mortgage “victims” but we do not ever her about those Americans who made a down payment of $70 or $80 maybe $100 thousand dollars only to have the property become valueless in a matter on months because of various forms of mortgage fraud the industry did not disclose.

Why are these Americans so obviously overlooked? Are they not the actual true victims in this crisis? I read articles about those who put no money down on properties but have “lost it all.” Tell me, what exactly did they loose? They did not pay any money! Is this so hard to understand? I seem to be the only voice out there that is fighting for the millions of American Citizens who are the real victims in this crisis because they actually made down payments of 20% or more only to have it stolen in an environment in which full disclosure was not being made by the financing and real estate industries and the fiduciary responsibilities these professions had to their clients was overlooked. Why are no lawsuits being filed to get our money back?

Perhaps, before he retires, Mr. Summers might implement a program to return these down payments to these Americans, reset their credit scores to the 700 and 800 levels they were at prior to this ponzi scheme, and let them keep their property for the same price the banks will foreclose or short sell it for to some “investor.” I call it the “Short Keep.” If you put money down, you are qualified for a “short keep.”

Think about it. There is not one single program aimed at assisting Americans who actually paid to play by making down payments, or perhaps do not routinely bounce checks. Americans who have lost not only their hard earned money but their “credit-ability’ and have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt each all because our financial PhDs decided to destroy our economy in some academic experiment. Next time, Mr. Summers, design a board game.

Frank Louis
Host: The Frank Louis Show, WNRI, AM 1380

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