This remarkable New York Times story by Gretchen Morgenson focuses on the absurd, seven-year battle by one beleaguered mortgage holder, but here’s the important part:

“The whole episode makes you wonder, yet again, how many of the millions of foreclosures in recent years might have been based on questionable accounting or improper practices by loan servicers.”

The bigger the bank, the bolder the perjury.

The shape is getting a deeper curve all the time. This is not a “bar” anymore, people.  Soon it will be a sliver. Maybe we should start calling them to complain. Here’s the number: 800-258-3425

Hey, not all activism is about taxes, you know.

Henkel North America manufacturers this little moneymaker.

]]> http://www.typelikethewind.com/2011/01/05/how-to-turn-soap-into-cash/feed/ 1 http://www.typelikethewind.com/2010/11/16/keep-it-simple/ http://www.typelikethewind.com/2010/11/16/keep-it-simple/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:54:55 +0000 Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett http://www.typelikethewind.com/?p=2682 Bank of America’s business plan: We take your money.

That’s pretty much it.

The city that prides itself on its green approach to life is hugely wasteful when it comes to that paper stuff called “money.”

392 Business System Software Implementation Audit FULL(2)

If a private business operated this way, its creditors would be holding a fire sale right now.

No matter what you read or hear, you will wish you could avoid this procedure; if for no other reason than it seems just plain wrong to pay a stranger to do this.

Afterward, you will become one of the veterans who assure others it is a walk in the park. Armed with two gallons of lemon Gatorade and a stack of reading material, the prep is tolerable. The procedure is easier to navigate than an appointment for a root canal. If you’ve given birth, this will not slow you down at all. You’ve been on the beaches of Normandy; this is a parking ticket.

One nagging question remains unanswered. If they don’t find anything wrong in there, how do you actually know they did anything?

The oxymoronic “conscious sedation” works so well that you don’t remember anything that proves the procedure took place. They wheeled you in and next thing you knew, a nice nurse is offering you some apple juice and handing you your clothes. Other than a mad scramble for a BLT and a large chocolate milkshake, the aftermath is uneventful.

What if–as my mother (of blessed memory) used to insist about NASA’s  space program in the 1960s—they faked the whole thing on a sound stage?

We may all be part of a conspiracy much larger than we can imagine. And what with the slashed budgets at daily newspapers, it might be awhile before anyone gets the goods on this one.

We’ve got a thriving “income defense industry,” which New York Times writer Paul Sullivan defines as “accountants, lawyers and financial advisers employed by the wealthy — and the merely affluent — to manage their financial affairs.”  (See the entire article, here.)

Now, there’s nothing wrong with holding on to your hard-earned gains, but much of what these defenders do amounts to standing on the necks of those living way down the food chain. The money-guarders’ machinations mean more tax dollars are growing interest off in distant accounts, not here at home paying for schools and roads.

Yet some of the tax dollars that are collected end up funding programs that do help the little gal. Case in point (and written about in the same issue of the NYT) is the feds’ 203(k) mortgage program. This little-touted method of borrowing allows us to buy ailing properties with small down payments and then renovate them under what seem like some wisely strict regulations. (Lynnley Browning’s article, here.)

Even when we have a good idea that benefits the worker bee in our society, we seem to make sure it doesn’t fully succeed. (For a start, can’t someone give better names to these tax-status things? Let’s branch out to punctuation marks at least: the 203(!) program would look a lot more upbeat, wouldn’t it?)

What we need is a better income defense industry for the regular folks. That used to be the job of elected officials, but, well, they’re busy elsewhere.

2. An African American man playing James Bond.

3. Toaster that works in 60 seconds.

4.  GPS for socks in the laundry.

5.  An iPhone ap for personal body scans in event of mysterious middle-of-the-night pains.

Now is the time for Sir James to truly shine. As the epidemic of bed bugs makes news across America, the nervous itchy population awaits some new way to fight these hardy critters. A recent convention in Chicago brought hundreds of entomologists and pest-control experts together and the consensus was: The bugs are winning.

Who better to invent a device to zap these mattress invaders? Anyone who has experienced the 400 mph winds of a Dyson hand dryer in a restroom knows the man can’t be far from figuring out how to roast, suck up or blow away bugs.

A note came back promptly from Member Relations, addressed to him, which said:

“Thank you for the letter submitted by your wife in which she expressed your satisfaction…”

It’s not often that a big health care operation seizes the opportunity to thank a guy for his wife’s actions.

Our machine did indeed turn out to be one of the few with the defect. I’d used the thing almost daily for over a year unknowingly risking my life. I tell you, this housewife thing is like combat.

The machine was fixed by a nice man who stuck around to share half my almond-butter sandwich and chat about the risks of wayward appliances and the politics of recalls. We wondered what people get paid when their washer turns on them. We wondered if recalls could be a way to manipulate stock prices. It was the sort of enjoyable conversation that two strangers have when neither one knows anything about the topics discussed. Sort of like a Tea Party gathering, only we weren’t blaming the government for high taxes, cellulite or anything else that has ruined our lives.

I wish the story in yesterday’s New York Times had appeared earlier. It was  headlined “Johnson & Johnson Recalls Hip Implants” and it would have been fascinating to kick around that development with the washer guy. Maybe some other customer will mention it to him.