This is a cut from the earliest film I can remember seeing Leslie Nielsen in. It was called Tammy and the Bachelor. At this time, he was doing leading man roles. Comedy was decades in the future.
I saw all those Naked Gun films and some of the other comedies he did. I’ll miss him.
James Pilant
Reading the article I find it is devoide of the human element. A computer goes by some numbers and ticks off an Action letter that is taken as sacrosanct even to the extent of putting up a lock in a house that ought not to be attached. I’ve got a feeling these mortgage service agencies are paid on the basis of number of notices issued and they act indiscriminately. It is bank’s responsibility to assure action taken is legitimate to start with. My suggestion is Article 13 UNCAC: Participation of Society. Let consumer group be formed in every precinct, represented by a Trustee in the Board of the banks who would oversee the effective functioning of the foreclosure procedures from setting-up to execution.
It’s an interesting idea. I’ll need some more data on Article 13 UNCAC.
James Pilant
Matt Taibbi is as usual dead on target. He does a veritible Indian War Dance on the horrors of the foreclosure crisis. Read the paragraph below and then go spend a delightful (quality of writing) and painful (financial corruption) story.
The moral angle to the foreclosure crisis — and, of course, in capitalism we’re not supposed to be concerned with the moral stuff, but let’s mention it anyway — shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence. The monster in the foreclosure crisis has no face and no brain. The mortgages that are being foreclosed upon have no real owners. The lawyers bringing the cases to evict the humans have no real clients. It is complete and absolute legal and economic chaos. No single limb of this vast man-eating thing knows what the other is doing, which makes it nearly impossible to combat — and scary as hell to watch.
Excellent, exactly. This is not a moral crisis where six million Americans suddenly decided to buy too much house. This is a moral crisis where the biggest financial institutions in the world decided to take the home owners of America on a little trip into world finance. The banks had a hell of a vacation. The home owners never made it back.
James Pilant
Amen!!
I’ve blogged on this exact subject.
You can be a mortgage company or a bank and your moral status is unchanged by the destroying the world economy and by using mortgages as play money in the global securities market. But if you are a consumer who falls behind in payments on your house, you’re evading your personal responsibility and should be booted out, children, furniture, pets and all.
James Pilant
Giving money is a critical part of business activity in the United States. Without it, there are no non-profit corporations and many other economic activities are either wholly or partially funded by giving.
This posting is a discussion of the importance of giving for those who practice the religion of Islam. More interestingly, it discusses the rules of this giving and these rules I highly recommend.
We would do well in the United States to practice our giving with these kinds of things in mind, whatever our religious beliefs may be.
James Pilant
This is a very fine comment on industry self regulation. The author’s primary interest is in the food industry but much of what is said applies to any industry which claims the superiority of self regulation. I recommend this.
James Pilant
via Know Thank You
I teach business ethics. So, I see a lot of good ethics stories almost always featuring ethical dilemmas. This one takes a different angle. I like it and I recommend you read it.
James Pilant
“The Sexual Assailants.”
I love it!
James Pilant
Pharmaregulations goes more satirical today. Satirical arrows are fired in several directions and hits are scored. I recommend the post.
(I have a bitter criticism of these bloggers. They do not blog enough. I know they are students and have limited time, but this is good stuff, the more the better.)
James Pilant
This is a paragraph from the blog I’m recommending. It’s just a sample and the rest of the article is just as good. Reading Geopolicraticus is taking a tour in a dozen different fields of endeavor. I recommend it.
In the US, fear of loss of one’s job, fear of poverty, fear of homelessness, is real and palpable. Talk to people and you will hear it in their voices and see it in their faces. It is one of the things that makes life in the US a little bit weird at times, as when you see people spiraling out of control over little things (like the current tempest in a teapot over TSA screeners) and it becomes all-too-apparent from a studied distance that this is misplaced anxiety that, according to a classic psychodynamic model, is being expressed in a safe way, because one cannot express one’s fear directly because that would call into question the foundations upon which one has constructed one’s life.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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