Political Mommentary

This ditty, brought to you by the Mommentator, is laced with personal experience.  Really, if you believe you can argue with me, I predict you will be unsuccessful.  The evidence here is admittedly anecdotal.  However, all is presented as real life drama which affirms a serious issue we have in society.  And it’s not going away. 

Recently, in one of those obligatory moments which Moms are faced with every day, I am making conversation in the school hallway with an infamous member of what I like to call, “The Five-Carat Diamond Club.”  Please do not confuse this with a member of elite society.  The five-carat diamond club, may, in fact, include someone with cash who also possesses bad manners or taste.  However, more often than not, they are posers who dress like royalty to merely drop off a permission slip.  Instead of unobtrusively dashing in and out of school, the members choose to strut down the hall, flashing cz-esque or poor quality diamonds,  dressed in halter-top encrusted with fake crystals under heavy sedation recommended by their gyno.  They are the mothers to know, they attend functions in packs and they pontificate about how they Luuuv their children, whilst muttering under their breath about their laundry list of activities they have scheduled…themselves.  This is a post in itself, probably more likely to appear here.  However, for the sake of your mental picture, I hope this short descriptor serves a purpose. 

So, as a kind and compassionate Mommentator, I make friends with whoever will have me.  I tend to like this particular Five-Carat Member because she fully admits to being shallow.  I do so enjoy the quality in others known as: aware of own weaknesses. She is apprising me of the last 7 weeks filled with karate lessons, dance and singing, keeping up with the latest fashion unveiling at Gymboree and the fantastic deal she got on some sequin flats.    We don’t talk often and it’s important to know these details, after all.  I do like to glean information from her as I feel like investing  my ten minutes is akin to reading People, Vogue and In Style.  Where can you get such a return on your investment these days?  She isn’t completely out-to-lunch, because she notices that my eyes are beginning to glaze over. She quickly changes the topic.

“Did you know that my good-for-nothing sister-in-law let her house go back on foreclosure?,” she questions.  I snap back.  Now, she has some savvy about her.  She knows me to be interested in current events.  She has somehow climbed the wall of intellectual conversation and conquered by making an association.  She also knows me to be a retired real estate agent who is obsessed with this giant economic casualty who deserves what it is reaping.  She has me at foreclosure.

Her motivation, being polar opposite mine is to illustrate her sister-in-law as an idiot because they don’t speak.  It doesn’t matter why, but let’s just say their daughters are the same age and there is a familial struggle which brews regarding “who’s got what.”  Here is the condensed version of what she said:

It was announced in the family that sisternlaw and hubby had bought a new house.  Immediately, ears were pinned down in nervous cat-like suspicion.  The story went that the builder of their 10-year-old house had approached the sisternlaw, et all and asked to buy the house back because he had done such a pooooooor job building the house.  Wow… that happens.  So, the family went out and bought a brand-new house and life was a bowl of jello.  Now, something is fishy in stink town so after Internet campaign was launched to get to the bottom of the story and some careful pushing within the family circle, it because clear that the roof of the family’s house needed replacement.  Well, and you know, “this carpet looks terrible.”  And,  ”I am not so happy with that choice of paint effect we put in the entry.”  We don’t have any savings.  Wouldn’t it be so grand to just start over  bail?  In clear defiance, family announces, “we work our arses off and we are good people… we deserve a fresh perspective.”   MOMMENTATOR SARCASM: “Doesn’t everyone?” 

So, into our saga enters Mortgage Geek who got started in lending on the coattails of… envy or unemployment (both).  He  has devised a BRIDGE LOAN program where the family can go ahead and qualify for that new mortgage and will kindly suspend the interest on the mortgage of the cast-away home.  Geek’s mortgage broker is  proud-papa of Mortgage Geek.  It is clear that little Geek was paying close attention to the in service broker presented Monday morning.  We know that we have saturated the market.  We have to innovate and define new options for the people.  They are, after all, looking to us to make their dreams come true, no matter the definition. 

Peer with me closely into the window of the mortgage closing agent’s office just six weeks later:  Clapping all around and smiles as the key to the new 4,000 square foot piece of the American dream is presented. 

Come with me again, as we travel ahead two months: GUESS WHAT?  The family decided that they would just let the cast-away house go… go back to that bank that made all that interest off them anyway — dang Wall Street tycoons they are.  When the happy family signed their truth-in-lending statement, it looked like they could make both mortgages.   Seriously, would they approve us, if we couldn’t?  But, after it became a sacrifice and they might have to tell Kelsey-baby-girl that she would have to fore go her jazz/hip-hop class, it just didn’t seem fair that their dear children should be affected so.  We just couldn’t do it any more.  sniff sniff.

PREDATORY LENDER was on the prowl and the average American Family — they were just victims.

I am here to tell you that, as a real estate agent and as a rural mom who is holding the pulse of have-nots in this country:  everyone is to blame.  The short-sighted, lack-of-discipline families that took these loans and signed hoping the MORTGAGE COMPANY was looking out for their family is to blame.  The huge conglomerate companies that saw a good thing in the banking industry… you know, their modest profits and ability to stay in business, created a humongous MONEY-suck on the entire economy by price fixing through poor appraisers and manipulation of the interest rates.  IT IS A TWO PRONG PROBLEM and every single politician that panders to the mortgage companies by giving them the cash to bail themselves out while appearing on nightly news and telling the American people that they were preyed upon, deserves to be deported.  And I’m not even kidding about that.  This politician is the straw man on the Wizard of Oz — pointing both ways at the same time.

Truth:  Capitalism is creating markets for a responsible amount of people to make money in an honest fashion.  If you are going out of business, it’s because there is no room for you.  Try again.  Your get-out-of-jail free card is to bankrupt your LLC, if you were smart enough to set one up, and try again.  We are all pulling for you.  It actually can work out.  Ask Donald Trump.  In fact, your next idea may even be better and more fulfilling. 

Truth:  If you think anyone other than yourself is looking out for you, you are lost.  You look out for you.  You create a budget.  You decide if you can afford it.  And, after you are done taking care of you, thank the forefathers of this country which sacrificed EVERYTHING for you.  The downfall to subsequent generations is because you are so wrapped up in you, thinking everyone else should do for you, you never give back.

Truth:  The lenders grew the industry through fraud and misrepresentation.  There are only so many families with so much economic influence in this country, at this time.  Boiled down and simplified, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand basic economics.  NOT EVERYONE can be engaged in the same business.  So, when you are forcing something into place, it cannot stay there.  Like Cinderella’s step-sister’s shoe:  That prince got that one-of-a-kind slipper on there for a minute, but it went flying off because her big ugly foot didn’t belong.  THAT is what is happening here. 

Look at it like this…  NO catfish, looking for a meal, stealthy and persistent as they may be, got a meal from a real smart minnow.  Did you see that?  That punctuation mark there?  That’s a period.  And that statement is delivered to you with definitive punctuation.

I am absolute witness to mortgage lenders, who in my small town, went from unable to pay on their own$120,000 mortgage to living in $500,000 quarters within TWO YEARS.  If it seems too good to be true, folks, it probably is.  But, this ?-turned-mortgage lender was in the right place at the right time. I often wonder, as she pimps around in her two Cadillac SUVs, if she sees the 20 or so foreclosure signs in this town of 4,000.  If she is, she’s thinking of lending to the next family who can roll their closing costs into the loan, along with a sizeable downpayment assistance program, which will catch them up in the web of up-side-down on your house.

But, having principles and morals aside, how can a family justify paying on that mortgage that is NO LONGER SOLVENT after the price value fluctuation? They could let it go back to the bank and go NEXT door and buy a bigger house for $30,000 less?  Suddenly, in an unexplicable turn-around this family applies some economical sense to their situation, without moral compass. I guess some would say they learned something since they weren’t able to exercise any reason when they bought the home they want to shrug from.  THEY justify letting the house go back because it doesn’t make sense for them.  Why would you pay too much?

And around and around we go, my friends. 

I know you have invested your time into reading this post.  I appreciate it.  And you are probably feeling bad right now… I sure as heck do. So, I want to reward you, friends, with a little nonsense.  Well, actually, it is real sense.  But, in a fun fashion. 

Just a bit of background, first.  This skit is sort of PIRATED… I know, I’m a rebel.  But, it isn’t the politically correct version which is now distributed by NBC on their site.  Last October, this skit was released and after consideration… or a call from George Soros, this was taken from the air and edited.  The edited version is now on the NBC site.  But, this is true, even if it offends.  You know what they say about that little thing called truth… 

http://msunderestimated.com/SNLBailoutSkit.wmv