8/6/2013 11:22 AM
Yesterday got away from me, and I haven’t gotten to the
papers this morning. Been playing with my Raspberry Pi and a replacement USB
hub. (Don’t worry if that didn’t make sense. It’s the cute product name for a
computer I own.) But my nose is no longer seeking revenge on me, and the
morning run was good.
Instead of a long rant, let me tip you to two people I’m
reading regularly. First, Paul Krugman. Yes, you’re reading his columns in the
NYTimes, but are you reading his (mostly) daily blog entries?
I have learned more about economics and its real-world effects since I started
reading it than from any of the Econ I took in college. Excellent, readable,
and provides a door to other opinion sources in economics. Which is only,
maybe, the most important policy area in America right now.
The other one to read is local boy made good, Dave Dayen. His is a focused voice of outrage pointed at the
financial disaster that is Wall Street. That includes mortgage fraud, bank
bail-outs, too-big-to-convict, and the efforts to prevent Elizabeth Warren from
being Elizabeth Warren. Great stuff. After a long stint covering the news beat
for FireDogLake. com, he’s now writing longer articles for a variety of
national magazines and web sites, like The Nation, The New Republic, and Salon.
Dayen’s pieces go into deep, precise, outrageous detail on
things like the banking industry’s legislative effort to cover its ass by moving every deed, every mortgage in America (includingyours) into a database the industry would own and control, called MERS.
Go read his stuff.
OK, now my quick rant, running off from Dayen’s pieces on
the extension of the MERS, which seems to be the next step towards Amexica.
A few years back, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New London that a local government could take private property from one entity and give it
to another, claiming that the second one would generate more money from it.
Now, banks have intentionally shredded the legally-required
paperwork (called ‘deeds’) that can support their foreclosure efforts,
resulting in huge questions of ownership over thousands, perhaps millions of
homes in the US.
Soon, the banks and the government will choose who owns
what, and that little piece of paper you’re waving, your deed, won’t be worth
squat.
I see a trend line towards a major problem that plagues
third-world countries, whether in Central and South America or in places like
China and India, the problem of establishing property ownership.
I read articles from time to time about how moneyed,
connected interests take land away from people who’ve been on it for
generations. Other ones about how local wars are caused by the impossibilities of
determining which family member is responsible for which inherited part of the
family property that great-great-great-great-grandfather was given by the
maharajah for service in wars hundreds of years ago. I see news about Brazilian
businesses that can’t expand because they can’t prove that the building they
built and operated out of for four generations belongs to them, to use as
collateral to expand or improve their business.
Why the hell are our Congress and our lending industry working
toward this level of ownership confusion? It’s been identified as a major drag
on the economies of so many countries in the world. The short-term expediency
of retroactively making the crimes of the Banks no longer crimes will result in
less, not more, economic growth in this nation…but of course, it means fewer
fines for the banks, and less chance that Jamie Dimon will go to jail.
8/6/2013 12:11 PM
8/6/2013 12:17 PM
duh
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