I see Ryszard posted at the same time. The point of even this little side thing is that banking, our economic system and all of this Wall Street crap is incredibly complex and these so called protesters know absolutely nothing about it. They need some basic old school civics lessons in our constitution and our basic legal system. Nobody teaches that any more. All they think is somebody is getting "too rich" and somehow that's at the expense of the rest of is. Maybe a little but that's the way of human beings. Ever hear of Caveat Emptor? We're responsible for our own stuff, not anybody else.

I have several clients who made wads of cash by flipping houses several years ago and then saw the handwriting on the wall and sold everything. I have other clients who are underwater and really hurting. Who's fault is that? If you happened to buy a nice old Martin guitar at a yard sale for $200, found out it's a rare model worth 9 grand and sold it at an aucton for that amount, does that make you a lying, scheming SOB who took advantage of the poor person who ran the yard sale? That's basically all this is and was. There's winners and losers in every market.

There are probably millions of people you don't hear about and the protesters, lame brains that they are, don't know about either who when the market was hot refi'd their house, took out a 100K, bought a new, black Escalade (black means power and money doncha know), new flat screens, went on vacations and then the market tanked and they're underwater and oh, woe is them, poor baby's, now they're going to lose their home or already have and now they're blaming the banks and marching in downtown LA? Please. Millions more were told by mortgage brokers what they needed to put as income in a basic verification statement for a no doc loan and so blatently lied on the mortgage app. Sure, I make 120 grand a year, no problemo. That's a federal felony too, btw. So if somebody wants to open up all those mortgages thinking they're going to catch those dastardly banks in fraudulent activities need to think twice. Oh, yeah, they are arn't they? Want to know why that isn't being done? It's because members of a certain political party who were running Congress at the time know all about that in detail and don't want to throw all their poor inner city constituents in jail for loan fraud.

It all started with a certain President in the 90's followed by certain members of the House holding hearings talking about how all these hardworking poor people just need a little help from us and they too can have their piece of the American dream and if you mr. banker don't do it, we're going to investigate the crap out of you and charge you with discrimination. This is all in the Congressional record but these protesters can't be bothered to read it. Can't let the facts get in the way of a good squat.

That got the ball rolling and the rest was unintended but totally predictable consequences. And yes I freely admit I'm upset at myself for not catching it at the time. The real "one percenters" were the few who did catch it and tried to warn us but it was like pissing in the wind, nobody listened including me, my CPA friend and his friends in New York.

There's a very high powered attorney I know who was appointed to be a federal judge and took the bench at the beginning of this year. He told me at a party four years ago to not buy this house I was telling him about. He's very blunt and told me I was stupid if I went ahead with it. Did I listen? The market was hot, everybody was making money. When everything tanked and we lost those houses I took it like a man and moved on not yelling and screaming about how I'm somehow a victim in all this. And what really hurts is at the time we really were making the kind of money that justified those loans. All of our stuff was full doc with cash downs and completely legal but we still took a big dump.

What are you going to do? It was fun while it lasted.

Bob

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