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TOL Our Town
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Tom D Ford's comments:
on Strategic Default
"The harsh reality is this: remedies legal or otherwise may exist in law or on paper. They simply do not exist in the real world, except perhaps for the already very wealthy who don't need them anyway."
True.
And that is worth a TOL show.
Corporations as a normal business strategy use the technique of wearing a plainant down with legal fees so that she quits long before she even gets to court.
"All the justice you can afford", is a time-dishonored business strategy.
Or maybe "All the justice you can buy" is a better way of saying it.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
They can't.
Legally, their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders and not to their customers, so it would be illegal for a bank to "do the right thing".
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
"There is a critical double standard in play here"
You are exactly right!
Er, the double standard is exactly wrong.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
"How did big banks end up with huge portfolios of bad loans?"
They didn't, they ended up with the "fees" from selling those loans.
And investors who bought the securitized mortgages ended up with the bad loans. And the consequent losses.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
jacob
"Credit and Trust makes the Economy Work."
Actually credit is what hurt the economy and we should not have trusted the bankers.
So your argument is self invalidating.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
Bankers are in business to help themselves, not to help you, and you really need to know that when you do business with them. They are in "competition" with you for your money, they are not "cooperating" with you for you to keep your money.
Now a Credit Union is a different thing and I highly recommend them, they are the opposite of a banker.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
You're thinking like a decent person but businesspeople don't think like you do and I think that you ought to mentally arm yourself to act like a businessperson when you deal with them.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
Bankers do not think morally when they sell the loan, but they try to morally guilt trip the buyer when the borrower gets into trouble.
The housebuyer should "do unto the banker as the banker did unto the buyer".
That's the "Golden Rule"!
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
No businesswoman would stay in a business in which she would lose money for twenty years, she would cut her losses and go try something else.
And housebuyers should do the same.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
Schools should educate kids to treat a house like a business, an investment, and do house-business like an actual businessman, ruthlessly and without any consideration for the banker. If the housebuyer takes a risk and loses, he should default or go bankrupt like any businessman would and unload the loss on others.
So I wonder if the housebuyer should create his own "house-limited-corporation" to limit his potential losses in the first place. A corporation is legally designed to privatize the business profits to the shareholders and socialize the losses onto the public, and if businesses can do that, why can't housebuyers do that too?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Strategic Default
"Some bankers consider the act to be immoral or at least, unscrupulous,"
That's hilariously ironic!
I have had long and heated discussions with Conservative Republicans who insist that "there are no morals in business".
Bankers created this crisis with their "Derivative" financial scheming and they complain about normal peoples "morality"?
Doesn't it look more like bankers are pathologically greedy? That bankers are sociopaths, dangerous to society?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
That was a very informative series of posts.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
Penny
I wonder what changed the trust factor for the grocery guys, what made them trust that they would not be shoplifted out of business.
And idea of that history?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
Penny
I didn't know that but I sure support her and the kids in their efforts.
I'd like to see home economics brought back in a big way. Families eating healthy home cooked meals together used to be a good thing and I'd like to see that idea brought back.
Fast and processed foods ought to be a "sometimes food".
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
I believe that grocery stores long ago had everything behind the counter and the customer had to ask a clerk for everything he wanted to buy. The clerk would take everything to the register and after getting paid would then give the stuff to the customer.
So if shoplifting is a problem in some areas maybe a newer form of that old practice could be brought into use. And the added benefit is that more clerks would be hired, adding jobs to the community.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
I suggest educating the children about what good quality foods are so that they constantly demand them and grow up to always demand them.
The giant processed foods industries have huge "mis-education" (advertising) budgets that ought to be countered in the public schools.
Sort of like with disease vaccines, the kids ought to be innoculated against the processed "foods" industries.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
Penny
We have long know about the "processed foods" problem. I just wonder how many more problems are added in by GMO sweetened foods. What percentage of increase?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
I heard that the Long Beach area actually dropped a few feet because of all the oil that was pumped out from underneath it.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Food Access
I visited NYC back in the 1970s and learned that people there can be born, grow up, work, and retire and all within a very few blocks. Everything they need is close by, groceries, clothes, workplace, entertainment, healthcare, etc.
It seems that NYC is a city that really knows how to be a city.
I prefer a small town and being close to forests, deserts, and other fairly natural wild areas and I'm willing to sacrifice some of the positives of the big city to live here. Seeing the stars at night is a great reminder of things greater than myself.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Tsunami
Penny
"...put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye!"
When the radio emergency alert system first started back in the 1970s one of the Eugene radio stations played the practice alert warning and right after it the announcer snarkily said "and if it had been a real alert you might as well put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye!" He never said that again, he must have gotten quite a chewing out.
That was a great rock and roll station for a long time, though I don't recall which one it was. We listened to it over here in Bend until someone bought it and changed the format. Pretty much all music and very few ads.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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