Livinglies's Weblog

Why would anyone in their right mind want to loan money when AT BEST the future is uncertain and at worst we are just waiting for the effects of an economic crash? There is only one possible answer in a capitalist economy — loans are not the end result. Whoever is “loaning” money is making money regardless of how much they are going to get paid from the borrower.

How is that possible, you say? By selling securities to stupid investment fund managers — only they are not buying shares of the loans, so the “seller” of the securities doesn’t owe the investors anything from the “borrower.” Sound crazy? Yes, but there is no other explanation — rational or otherwise.

Right now consumer purchases are being fueled by the sale of securities. That is the simple, plain truth. Like 2008, when those security sales dry up, the “credit markets” will also freeze because there is no money to lend. And because people have been sold on the idea that their FICO score is more important than their savings account, there will be no money to spend on consumer products and services.

So stocks, cars, and homes are all going up in price because the truth of the matter is that Wall Street banks are buying the signatures of consumers in order to justify the sales of worthless securities to the stupid fund managers as though the investment funds they are managing will actually see some benefit from the transaction. They won’t and they don’t.

Only the investment bank who invented the worthless security will see any benefit in the long run. In the short run, the investors will receive continued assurances of payments without ever inquiring whether those payments will actually be made when the so-called loans default or when sales of new worthless securities falter. In the long run the fund managers will learn that they have no recourse to payments from borrowers, to sales of collateral, to insurance or even hedge contracts. That is all paid to the investment bank.

So we are living at the edge of a lie the size and scope of Mount Vesuvius which attracted people to its fertile soil and then consumed them in fire and ash — see Pompeii.

In a free market economy prices don’t go up when demand is down. So if you think this is just capitalism or free market forces at work, think again. Everything was safe in Pompeii until one morning when it wasn’t. Like the people back then, we are too invested in maintaining the status quo.

But like the geologic forces that caused the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii, instantly killing people while they were pursuing their daily routines, the economic forces are building for a blow out, the prospect of which grows every day.

Stocks selling at 33 times current earnings will require around 30 years of continuous profit at current levels to pay back the price of a share of common stock. Prices of all assets are artificially high because we are being sold debt in record amounts.

The losers are the investors and the consumers who accept the obligation. the collateral in which they think they are building equity will probably never see any upside. They will always be upside down — a fact that will remain hidden from then until they try to sell or refinance the asset.

And meanwhile the investment banks are borrowing money to pay consumers to take on apparent debt. And the investment bank gets all the proceeds of sales of securities, all the proceeds of insurance and all the proceeds of any kind of payment or sale, without ever turning a penny over to the investors — except enough to keep them quiet and “assured” that their investment is “safe” in REMIC Mortgage bonds (“certificates”) or other collateralized debt obligations.

In the end that belief depends solely on the word of investment banks who have been lying, fabricating documents and directing people to commit perjury.

The investment banks, who created the illusion of loan accounts in order to maintain the illusion that there were legal obligations to pay, have retired all such loan accounts not just by a stroke of a pen, but by the receipt of payment that completely offsets any loan they took to pay consumers to sign loan documents. That money paid off the debts of investment banks. The only reason it is not revealed as having paid of the consumer debts is that Wall Street is too close to the microphones and too close to those who have their hands on the levers of power.

This is neither free market nor capitalism. Theft, because you want the money, is not capitalism.

Filed under: foreclosure |