The world of 1952 where the economy was booming and wives didn’t work, have a look.
We live in a very different world and much of the change in the status of the middle class is evident from what you see in the film.
James Pilant
March 10, 2011
Net Neutrality: Who Should We Be Most Afraid Of? (via Rebecca Reynolds)
Excellent article on net neutrality. Thoughtful and intelligent. We need more like it.
She asks the important questions. What values are at stake here? What are our choices? But she ties all this in with some history of the developing media of the last fifty years.
Good writing. Please go and have a look.
James Pilant
via Rebecca Reynolds
March 10, 2011
Fed Report Finds No Wrongful Foreclosures By Banks, Consumer Advocates Slam Methodology (via Huffington Post)
WARNING – I will be venting my contempt angrily and pointedly.
First here’s the story – from the Huffington Post’s Business Reporter, Shahien Nasiripour.
A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage practices by the Federal Reserve found no wrongful foreclosures, members of the Fed’s Consumer Advisory Council said Thursday.
During a public meeting attended by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and other regulators, consumer advocates on the panel criticized federal bank regulators for narrowly defining what constitutes a “wrongful foreclosure.” At least one member of the panel voiced concerns that the public would not take the Fed’s findings of improper practices seriously, since the wide-ranging review did not find a single homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon.
Potemkin Village
Let’s see, how about some good descriptors. Which one is best? Fanciful, comedic, ridiculous, fantastic, bizarre, Potemkin like, Red Queen thinking, the king has no clothes, the same firm grasp of reality of Norman Bates, pitifully deluded, an administration without heart, courage or brains, a triumph of corporate PR over every shred of reality, a view from the predators’ terrace, …
I have three ideas for appropriate comparisons, the Potemkin Village, Baal worship and the music of the spheres.
First, the Potemkin Village: … there were fake settlements purportedly erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to this story, Potyomkin, who led the Crimean military campaign, had hollow facades of villages constructed along the desolate banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the monarch and her travel party with the value of her new conquests, thus enhancing his standing in the empress’ eyes.
It would appear that Obama’s soulless minions (retreads from the banking industry) think that Americans are gullible beyond belief or perhaps this is for the consumption of the great man himself. Maybe he is so removed from the tiniest vestige of reality that he is simply immune to the suffering of his countryman?
How about Baal worship? Small children were placed inside a metallic idol and cooked alive while the followers of the great god chanted and sang drowning out the screams of the victims. The listeners believed that the children were carted painlessly into the next world, a comforting delusion.
Too Strong? The newspapers, blogs, even the financial pages have been full of stories, one after another, discussing illegal foreclosures. But not just there, on television, cable, the radio,.. Can’t they hear or see?
Or the Music of the Spheres, in the time of the Greeks it was believed that we were all encased in multiple clear crystal spheres, one for the moon, another for the sun, and so on. The great majority of mankind, the lumpen mass, the pathetic herd were condemned by their lack of perception to a perpetual half life while those who were special could hear the music these spheres gave off, making them insiders to the secrets of the universe.
Are they so far above us that our voices are just a quiet drone against the elegant music of a higher order?
What’s your preference?
Let’s try some reality. From The Washington Post, a column by Dana Milbank -
The problem in the nation’s housing market now isn’t subprime lending. It’s subpar lenders.
Last fall, my wife and I refinanced our mortgage with Citibank. Sixty days later, we received a “cancellation notice” from our homeowners insurance company “for non-payment of premium.”
Turns out Citibank, which had been collecting hundreds of dollars a month from us to pay the insurer, hadn’t made the payments. It was, I later learned, one of the usual tricks mortgage servicers use to squeeze more cash out of their customers. About a month later, I learned of another trick: Citibank informed us that it was increasing our monthly payment by nearly $300.
Along the way, a simple refi became a months-long odyssey: rates misquoted, interest charged on a phantom account, legal documents issued in wrong names, a mortgage officer who disappeared for days at a time (first it was his birthday, then his laptop was in the shop), a bounced check from Citibank’s own title company, and the freezing of our bank accounts.
For me, this amounts to no more than the hassle of arguing with Citibank to fix its “mistakes.” But consumer advocates tell me these are typical of the screw-ups by the big banks that service home mortgages. And these errors – accidental or otherwise – are driving large numbers of people into default and foreclosure when it otherwise would not have happened.
How about that? Let’s hear a little more.
My wife and I are reasonably savvy consumers – she has a brand-name MBA, and I began my career as a business reporter for the Wall Street Journal – but we were no match for a bungling bank. After five months of trying, we still haven’t been able to resolve all of Citibank’s mistakes – nearly all of them, curiously, in the bank’s favor.
Of all the miscues, the highlight was when we were handed, at closing, a large check that we didn’t want for a new home-equity line of credit. I tried to redeposit it into the home-equity account but was told that the account did not yet exist. I tried to deposit it into my checking account, and the check was returned unpaid – while interest accrued.
That so much can go wrong with such a simple refinance doesn’t bode well for the 5.5 million homeowners in default (on top of the 3 million already foreclosed). It’s impossible to know for sure, but by some estimates, half of them are victims of some form of servicers’ errors.
“What happened to you,” Ira Rheingold of the National Association of Consumer Advocates told me, “happens to people every single day.” And it will continue, with its resulting drag on the economy, unless and until the big banks can be brought to heel.
Is this all I’ve got? No, I can shower you with examples of vicious cruelty, lies, and every kind of chicanery resulting in wrongful foreclosures.
James Pilant
March 10, 2011
Should Photographing Chickens Be a Felony? (via A Philosopher’s Blog)
You have got to read this!
Apparently chicken farming will soon cease to exist if people photograph the conditions on the farms. That sound more to me like a reason to think something must be very, very wrong. If the big guns are out to stop the photographic truth of chicken farming, what are we not seeing that they are afraid of?
I don’t like this.
I want to express great appreciation to “A Philosopher’s Blog” for calling my attention to this!
James Pilant
March 10, 2011
A Scary Thought (via kevinwutd)
This guy has it exactly right.
This is what is at stake in the struggle for net neutrality – Corporate profit or General access.
James Pilant
via kevinwutd
March 10, 2011
Jim Tressel, Ohio State and Ethical Standards (via PR on the run)
Jim Tressel
I saw this and laughed at his opening. I said to myself, “I’ll go up there and click on the ‘like’ button and let him know he amused me. Then I read the whole thing. The author got serious and talked about ethics with a passion that I find compelling.
Please give a read to this post.
James Pilant
via PR on the run
