News, Research & Insights for American Homeowners, Patriots & Constitutional Conservatives
America 101.
In an opinion piece on Thursday, David Brooks, “conservative” columnist for the New York Times, opened with sentences of such remarkable wrongness that it is imperative to call them out. Brooks’s thesis is that the selfish nature of man, in spite of “checks” placed on democratic government, has created the monstrous public debt in the [...]
Welcome to America.
The saga of Chinese democracy and pro-life activist Chen Guangcheng will conclude today with a much happier ending than first feared. The New York Times reports than Chen has boarded a flight to the US and is already in transit — along with his family: Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal defender who made a dramatic [...]
The next shiny-object distraction?
Here’s a fun exercise for Hot Air readers. Go to the New York Times website and do a 12-month search for “Romney Mormon,” and see how many hits come back. I’ll end the suspense — “about 12,000 results,” according to the search I conducted earlier today. Now, do a search on “Obama Jeremiah” in the [...]
No halos from the churches.
Barney Frank told the panel on ABC’s This Week that “I don’t think anyone’s vote was changed” when Barack Obama endorsed the legalization of same-sex marriage — but that might be too optimistic an analysis. The New York Times reports that the White House went on a charm offensive with leaders of faith organizations, including [...]
More smoke signals.
Throughout the controversy over Elizabeth Warren’s claimed Native American ancestry, Warren has maintained she was unaware that Harvard Law School touted her heritage in defense of it’s diversity hiring practices in the 90′s. As reported by the Boston Herald, the Harvard student newspaper The Crimson published at least two contemporaneous articles on this topic which made [...]
JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, says he doesn’t want to make excuses, but his bank’s $2 billion losses in the last 45 days were due to errors, sloppiness, terrible execution, bad judgment and strategy, and the mark-to-market environment.
Want to know something? Those are exactly the same things that I would have guessed caused the loss of $2 billion in 45 days. I have no trouble imagining that those things could contribute to some fairly significant losses.
Dimon also told analysts that in hindsight he should have paid more attention to “trading losses and… newspapers”?
Okay, that shocked me. I mean, $2 billion is a lot of money to lose in 45 days when it could have been prevented just by noticing the losses and paying attention to newspapers.
I think I’m going to go ahead and send Mr. Dimon a one-year subscription to the New York Times. I know he has the money to buy his own subscription… or the entire newspaper for that matter, but he must be terribly busy because he lost $2 billion in 45 days for want to newspapers so it seems the least I can do.
And I sure am glad he didn’t want to make any excuses. I hate CEOs that lose billions and then come out making all sorts of excuses, don’t you?
According to CNN/Money…
“The group that suffered the losses is part of the bank’s so-called corporate unit, and had been making trades designed to hedge against risk.”
Wait a minute… they were trying to hedge AGAINST RISK? And they LOST $2 BILLION? Now, that must be frustrating… I hate it when that happens. Like, when I’m eating really carefully and I stick a fork right through my cheek. Don’t you hate that?
CNN/Money also had the following to say…
“Last month, rumors swirled around a JPMorgan employee based in London who had, according to the Wall Street Journal, been taking large positions in credit default swaps. The employee was said to work in the bank’s Chief Investment Office.”
So, according to the WSJ on April 6, 2012, the guy had been “dubbed the London whale,” and was a “French-born J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. employee named Bruno Michel Iksil.”
“Mr. Iksil has taken large positions for the bank in insurance-like products called credit-default swaps. Lately, partly in reaction to market movements possibly resulting from Mr. Iksil’s trades, some hedge funds and others have made heavy opposing bets…”
Oh, good Lord. We’re still doing this sort of thing, huh? Some guy at JPMorgan Chase in London was gambling with credit default swaps, no one was watching, and next thing you know the bank was down $2 billion?
And this came as a surprise to Jamie? I guess there’s no system in place at JPMorgan Chase that might of caught the losses at $1 billion, is that right? Well, now there’s an idea for a new product that I would think would sell like hot cakes. Someone should make a $1 Billion Lost Alarm. You know, after you’ve lost a billion… the bell rings.
And since this seems to happen in London most of the time, here’s what the UK version could look like…
And we don’t need the Volker Rule? The rule that would prevent banks from placing outrageous bets with their own money, and place limits on the amount of capital they can invest in risky things like hedge funds and swaps, to name but two. The rule that’s part of Dodd-Frank’s financial reforms… the ones that are being fought tooth and nail by the financial services industry lobbyists and bank CEO, including Dimon.
According to the Washington Post on May 2nd…
“The warning from Daniel Tarullo, a Federal Reserve governor, comes as banks are putting up stiff resistance to new oversight and financial regulations — including at a private meeting Wednesday between Tarullo and the heads of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street firms, according to the Fed.”
“Among the major new regulations that has been delayed is the Volcker Rule, which would seek to prevent banks from taking excessive risks by curtailing their ability to speculate with their own money — rather than on behalf of clients.”
Well, I can certainly understand why no one would want to rush into the Volker Rule, especially with JPMorgan Chase losing $2 billion in 45 days… actually fewer than 45 days.
I guess it’s really none of our business though, right? I mean, it’s not OUR bank. If JPMorgan Chase wants to take on the kind if risk involved in buying credit default swaps and the like, it’s on them. It’s not like we’re on the hook if they bankrupt themselves… right?
Please say I’m right…
Mandelman out.
Spending.
Last week, a New York Times piece by Floyd Norris, Chief Financial Correspondent for the NY Times and The International Herald Tribune, claimed government spending has gone down under President Obama. The claim, which relies on half-truths and incorporates only certain areas of spending in the federal government, has been debunked by others – Morgen [...]
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The government is getting smaller under President Obama, proclaimed an astonishing headline in the New York Times last Friday. Really? For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of the American economy has shrunk during the first three years of a presidential administration. Spending by the federal government, adjusted for inflation, has risen [...]
The end of last week got a little busy for many of the Credit Slips bloggers and none of us talked about the story last Wednesday by Jessica Silver-Greenberg at the New York Times regarding aggressive debt collection practices by Accretive at hospitals. The allegations came to light in a report by Minnesota attorney general, Lori Swanson. Among the most appalling claims was that Accretive posted employees in emergency rooms, demanding payment before treatment was administered. Forget the legal side of this. How does a person or an organization get to a place where these sorts of tactics seem like the right thing to do? (In fairness, it should be noted that Accretive has denied the claims made by Attorney General Swanson.)
My colleague, John Colombo, has a post up at the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog discussing the tax-exempt status issues for nonprofit hospitals that deploy aggressive debt collection practices such as those alleged to have been done by Accretive. John's work raises a bigger question: should we still give nonprofit hospitals a tax exemption if they are not doing charitable work in a different sense of the word?
Still basking.
Last Sunday the New York Times Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, publicly chastised his paper for not providing adequate scrutiny of President Obama’s record, admitting that they had perhaps “basked a bit in the warm glow” of Obama’s election. An understatement to be sure, but any acknowledgement of bias from the Times is a rare event, [...]
Sins of omission.
With a tough presidential election on the horizon, media outlets relish the demand that the battle will bring for news and feature coverage. In order to get those readers, though, the media outlets have to be perceived as reliable and trustworthy. That brings us to a rather humorous column from the New York Times’ public [...]
Employment slows nationwide.
On Sunday, Secretary Treasury Tim Geithner hemmed and hawed a bit when asked by NBC’s David Gregory whether the US would have a third straight spring of disappointing economic growth. Today, the New York Times tries to reset expectations — and make a few excuses, too: Some of the same spoilers that interrupted the recovery [...]
Reuters-Ipsos puts Obama up 4 ... in D+9 sample.
So much for that eight-point lead in the secretly-weighted CNN poll, eh? CBS gives us a sneak peek at their first general-election poll of the season, in partnership with the New York Times, and finds a dead heat in the mid-40s: Mitt Romney has closed the gap with President Obama among registered voters, a CBS [...]
Plus, the Lobbyist Buddy Program!
The New York Times runs an exposé of sorts on the Obama White House and its empty promises of changing “business as usual” in Washington DC that is remarkable in a number of respects. As Daniel Halper of The Weekly Standard writes, though, the most remarkable might be the remarkable honesty of former Rep. Patrick [...]
Two weeks in a row, the Haggler column in the New York Times focused on cramming, one of the most damning and profitable scams in the consumer world. Cramming is tacking unrequested services onto land line bills and now cell phone bills, such as celebrity gossip news, daily horoscopes, even dating services. Our AGs office claims that cramming is one of the practices about which they get the most complaints. After reading last week’s Haggler column, I vowed to look over my consolidated bill with Century Link and Verizon (cell phones, landline, internet service) but never quite got around to it. It seemed to me the bill had stayed pretty much the same over the months and years. Sure enough, today I found a cram and am trying to straighten it out. This can be a full-time job, which is why it is so easy to scam us in this way. Haggler also notes that while cramming is done by third parties, not phone companies, phone companies supposedly get one –third to one –half of the billions in revenues generated by this fraudulent practice, which is why some may be slow to correct the problem. If Haggler is right about the profits, shouldn't I be able to reverse this with my phone company?
This week’s Haggler column has an idea for the rest of you, that I’ll fadd to. Our phone providers have the capacity to block these short message services (SMSs) until we specifically sign up for them. Yes, Haggler, you are right. This should be automatic, and hopefully it will be very shortly, but in the meantime consumers can call right now and ask their carriers to block ALL third party changes on their phone bills. We can also take an additional step, that could protect us if they ignore us, and may even do something for the good of the overall cause. I suggest sending taking two minutes to send out something like this:
Dear Phone Company:
Recent news suggests that third parties are now automatically signing consumers up for various short message services (SMSs). I (my family) have/has been a good customer of yours for __ years and request that you never allow any changes to our bill from third parties of any kind. If we find these charges on our bill in the future, we will change phone carriers.
We also request that you immediately begin disallowing these charges for all customers who have not specifically requested them, as we prefer to use a carrier that is protective of the rights of all its customers.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
_________________
Who knows if it’ll work but at least you’ll have said your piece.
It takes years to recoup the upfront costs.
Gas prices would need to reach about $12.50 a gallon for Chevy Volt purchasers to actually recoup the cost of the car in fuel savings in the time they’re likely to own the car, according to The New York Times. The fuel-efficient technologies that enable a car to be battery-operated in the first place are [...]
It takes years to recoup the upfront costs.
Gas prices would need to reach about $12.50 a gallon for Chevy Volt purchasers to actually recoup the cost of the car in fuel savings in the time they’re likely to own the car, according to The New York Times. The fuel-efficient technologies that enable a car to be battery-operated in the first place are [...]
My last post mentioned a column by Joe Nocera on debt collection practices. Nocera's column is entitled "Why People Hate the Banks," and it appears on the penultimate page of the national print edition of today's New York Times. In a moment of sweet, sweet irony, Citi provides another reason to hate the banks just by turning the page.
The last page of the New York Times national print edition has a full-page color ad touting the achievements in the bank's 200-year history. The print ad evokes the same idea as currently appearing on the Citi home page, but the print ad has a more detailed time line:Exactly. For the first 150 years, the bank helped build infrastructure that made the U.S. the largest economy in the world. For the past 50 years, it has been figuring out how to get fees out of consumers' wallets and pocketbooks.
The bleak month.
As we move through the halftime break in the Republican nomination process, all of the campaigns have an opportunity to retool their strategies, or even rethink their possibilities. The New York Times reports that Rick Santorum has tweaked his approach on the stump, moving away from hard attacks on Mitt Romney and focusing more on [...]
In the early part of this year, a new start-up called ZestCash launched. Founded by former Google CIO, Douglas Merrill, it appears to be an attempt at short-term consumer lending with a Google-like "don't be evil" approach and markets itself as an alternative to payday loans.The venture caught my eye when mentioned in the New York Times this weekend as part of a story about Gil Ebaz's work of adding value to different services by providing better, more reliable data.
ZestCash intends to use different information and algorithms to assess the likelihood of repayment. The New York Times story suggests that this information will include cell phone bills. As someone who works a lot with data, I have little doubt that there is a lot of information that will do a better job of predicting repayment than the information currently in credit reports. Better accuracy should translate into lower interest rates for consumers. If there is transmission of consumer information from an unrelated company to another, as a lawyer I wonder whether this can all be done without becoming a credit reporting agency and triggering regulation under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But, I presume (or at least hope) ZestCash has lawyers advising it on those FCRA isssues.Here is the catch, ZestCash's own web site discloses that its maximum rates may have up to a 350% APR. There has been laudatory and not-so-laudatory coverage of ZestCash. As a friend of mine was fond of saying, personally I feel strongly both ways. Demand for short-term consumer loans is not going to go way. High-priced and abusive consumer lending needs solutions, and we should not discourage market-based experiments to provide better short-term loans. ZestCash does eliminate the abusive rollover feature of payday loans. Also, its bounced-check fee of $10 also strikes me as reasonable. ZestCash's web site even directs potential customers to legitimate web sites that help people deal with debt such as the Consumer Federation of America or the Center for Financial Services Innovation.
But, 350% APR . . . wow. Credit unions are offering products similar to payday loans at interest rates under 36%. To be fair to ZestCash, the 350% APR is the maximum rate. It would be useful to know at what actual rates ZestCash's lending is occurring, but the disclosures on its web site suggest rates much higher than what many credit unions offers for a similar product. ZestCash claims to have better predictive models on repayment, but such a high APR would still be suggestive of high default rates. Maybe it is fixed costs that just translate into a high APR, but even considering the fixed costs of a short-term loan, amortizing them over a two- to six-month should not yield such APRs approaching 350%.We need solutions to high-priced consumer lending, but those solutions are not more high-priced consumer lending.
"An essential ugliness."
After he saw the movie October Baby, Mark Hall of the band Casting Crowns commented, “I am now an October Baby activist.” The film seems to have that effect on people: A friend of mine saw it this Sunday and called excitedly just to say, “You have to see October Baby. I’m telling everyone I know to [...]
"Welcome to my world, Rick."
While many conservatives cheered at Rick Santorum’s angry confrontation with New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny, others wondered whether the “BS” comment showed a lack of presidential mien. Don’t count Sarah Palin in the latter group. Last night with Greta van Susteren, Palin cheered Santorum’s outburst, claiming that the reporter who once asked Barack Obama [...]
"What speech did you listen to?"
Previously, Jeff Zeleny’s biggest claim to fame was asking Barack Obama the hard-hitting question, “What has … enchanted you the most from serving in this office?” The question was so sycophantic that even Zeleny’s colleagues in the White House press corps laughed out loud when they heard it. The New York Times has Zeleny covering [...]
Wait... what?
I’m getting ready to start any number of conspiracy theories here. Was the New York Times website hacked by Anonymous? Did someone accidentally click on a redirect to The Onion? Did some editor at the Gray Lady suddenly suffer from a stroke and go rogue on us? In any event, as Walter Russell Mead discovers, [...]
It’s almost been 15 years since Max Gardner and Nye Lavalle met at a conference sponsored by National Consumer Law Center that was held in Colorado, and quickly found themselves viewed as, well… heretics might be the right word. The two became fast friends based on their shared views related to the mortgage servicing industry… and I think both knew that one plus one was about to equal eleven.
Nye was a successful sports marketer and entrepreneur, credited with correctly predicting that Nascar and figure skating would draw huge crowds back in the 1990s, but after being forced to contend with his own mortgage mess, he focused on learning everything about the mortgage industry. As Gretchen Morgenson said in her article about Nye that appeared recently in the New York Times… “In hindsight, the problems he found look like a blueprint of today’s foreclosure crisis.”
It’s hard to imagine two people more tenacious that Nye and Max. Nye became a shareholder in Fannie and stayed on Fannie’s case for two years until finally the GSE hired a DC law firm to investigate his claims. The 147-page report that resulted from that investigation verified that Nye’s suspicions were correct.
Having Nye Lavalle and Max Gardner together is a rare event. Together, they would have to be considered the founding fathers of today’s foreclosure defense movement, so this is an opportunity to learn how it all began and where two of the country’s leading experts see things going from here. Turn up your speakers because it’s time for a very special 2-part Mandelman Matters Podcast… Nye Lavalle & Max Gardner Together in Concert.
Mandelman out.
Now I get it.
About a week ago, The New York Times ran a blatantly anti-Catholic ad from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The ad urged readers to “consider quitting the Catholic Church,” featured a mocking cartoon and blamed the Church’s teaching on contraception for poverty, misery, unwanted pregnancy and even deaths. Never mind for a minute all that [...]
41.
Second look at the “war on women”? Just 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, according to the poll, conducted from March 7 to 11. Another 47 percent disapprove of his performance, up from 41 percent last month. Mr. Obama’s approval rating was 50 percent last month. The [...]
Godwinning.
At least, that’s the allusion Brooks makes to conclude his latest screed against “grass-roots protesters in the Tea Party and elsewhere”: First they went after the Rockefeller Republicans, but I was not a Rockefeller Republican. Then they went after the compassionate conservatives, but I was not a compassionate conservative. Then they went after the mainstream [...]
Irony.
New York Times columnist Charles Blow may be their leading purveyor of irony — of the unintentional variety. Jim Geraghty and Hugh Hewitt both caught this missive from Blow’s Twitter feed, in which he slams Mitt Romney for his concerns over the eruption of children born out of wedlock in the past 50 years and [...]
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