“This regulatory tsunami, occurring hastily and at a time when the U.S. economy is struggling to emerge from a deep recession, is hindering investment and job creation” wrote Larry Burton of the Business Roundtable. He added that environmental regulation, financial reform and health care are the group’s primary concerns.
My favorite phrase is this one, Regulatory Tsunami.
Let’s put this in perspective. If the current administration’s regulations can be considered a regulatory tsunami, the little yellow duckie in your bath tube is a yellow, fanged, fiend from Hell.
“when the U.S. economy is struggling to emerge from a deep recession.” Would that by any chance be the recession caused by the collapse of the financial system to corporate incompetence and misconduct? Would that be the recession whose recovery has been severely curtailed by private interests particularly banks refusing to invest their often record profits from investing in America?
This is a different take on reality. I don’t recommend it.
Owners of a popular east Wichita shopping center want to make improvements. In turn, they want shoppers to pay more in sales tax.
Eastgate Shopping Center at Kellogg and Rock Road will ask the Wichita City Council to establish a Community Improvement District for the area. Plans call for facade renovations, and parking and store improvements.
The cost for the project will run more than $53 million. Eastgate developers say a one cent sales tax would be in place over a 22 year period to pay for the renovations.
Kansas
A privately owned shopping center can petition the city to impose a tax and give it to them?
Is the private becoming the public? or the public, the private?
Tax money will directly pay for improvements to this shopping center in the form of a sales tax. Is this wise? At what point does a government cease being government of the people and morphs into a subsidiary of private interests offering its citizens up for their business value?
The one thing that I find most ironic is that Kansas is considering cutting its corporate tax rate, but it is okay for a business to apply for and receive a tax increase on the citizens of that same state.
There are two aspects of this story that I would like to talk about. The first that in the American media, this story is not front page news. It’s buried in the middle of the newspaper. The big coverage is in India.
The large-scale mushrooming of fake Indian agents working on behalf of lesser-known foreign universities are to blame (my emphasis) for students falling prey to fraudulent institutions like Tri-Valley University (TVU) in the US, say experts.
“This is sad but true. In India, we have no regulatory mechanism to monitor agents working for foreign universities. These agents work for lesser-known or fraud universities abroad and dupe Indian students. They mislead students into joining fake universities abroad like TVU in the US,” says Manjula Raman, a career counsellor and principal of Army Public School, Bangalore.
It required a great deal of effort for this scandal to happen. Yes, there were agents in India exploiting these students but the American tolerance for sham universities and colleges is the other half of the equation. One make the other possible.
I personally know of some sham schools. Most people here do. Colleges spring up with signs in store front windows and four room buildings. Usually some religious education designed to train you as a minister or get you a certificate for office work.
My suspicion is that overseas, one American college looks very much like another.
Agents in India are taking advantage of how the American educational works (or doesn’t work). But there were a good number of Americans involved as well.
Fraud
I want the people responsible in India for these students’ plight to go to jail.
I also want the Americans defrauding these students to go to jail.
So I just finished reading Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s provocatively titled Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Before I go on any further, I just have to disclose that, yes, I am biased: I took a class with Paul Pierson when I was an undergrad at Berkeley, and I found him to be a very good professor. So I might be predisposed to find the arguments of this book persuasive. T … Read More
Please read the post and add Rortybomb to your favorites.
James Pilant
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just launched its website. Meanwhile, Shahien Nasiripour has a story that found “… if the White House can’t get a nominee through the Senate by July, the bureau will lack the authority to supervise nonbank lenders, according to a Jan. 10 report by the inspectors general of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve obtained by The Huffington Post.” One of the main reasons for creating a Consumer Financi … Read More
There are few assaults upon our dignity as crushing as the theft of all of our possessions. It is not so much the large items like refrigerators and televisions that are missed. Humans attach value to the strangest things. Instead of the microwave they lament the loss of their wedding pictures. When logic would dictate the loss of the computer should be the first cause of regret, they think of the old worn chair that has sat in the living room for years. Considering the great value placed upon personal privacy and possessions, would it not seem logical and prudent that those entrusted with the safety of the public should investigate and seek to punish the guilty. But the investigators would only need a mirror to discover the perpetrator of this crime, law enforcement itself.
It seems unfair that the bank never has to worry about these mistakes in judgment. It seems unfair that the bank, should use so many public resources to serve its interests.
The victim is asking $500,000 dollars in damages.
That seems fair, first, to recompense her for damages and second, to discourage the sheriff and his deputies from any more random home raids.
James Pilant
Sheriff’s Officers Accused Of Emptying Wrong Home In Botched Foreclosure HILLSIDE – A 76-year-old Hillside woman has filed a claim for damages against Union County, alleging that officers of the county sheriff’s department illegally entered her home and removed the entire contents because they had the wrong address of a foreclosure. In the document, obtained by Tina Renna of The County Watchers, Ozzie Leak claims that Union County Sheriff Ralph F … Read More
For almost two years banks have been foreclosing on homes and many times the only evidence of ownership was a notarized piece of paper with the signature of a “robo-signer,” often a person with no legal training whatever, often people who had no concept of the effects of the documents to which they attached their names.
In Deutche Bank v. Triplett, the banks were told, “No.” This is part of a chain of decisions where the courts have said to the banks, “You cannot foreclose without actual documents showing ownership (my interpretation).”
In other words, signing a notarized statement that your bank owns the property is not enough to foreclose on property.
With the MERS system in use by many of the big mortgage firms (Countrywide for example), there is an absence of proper paperwork in at least hundreds of thousands of cases. MERS only has computer records, no paperwork. This computer program run by a private company saved banks from the hassle of going through the process of changing ownership without bothering with that time-consuming paperwork like filing documents at the county court-house or paying the state mandated fees for transferring ownership.
Some judges believe that evading state law and taxes is illegal.
Building on the landmark Wells Fargo v. Jordan Decision, Ohio’s 8th District Court of Appeals (Cuyahoga County) ruled this week that an affidavit alleging that a foreclosure plaintiff held the note prior to filing of a complaint for foreclosure is not sufficient evidence to support a foreclosure judgment. In Deutche Bank v. Triplett, the court of appeals held: “… Deutsche Bank’s affidavit of ownership, sworn out more than a year after the fore … Read More
There was fraud in many home mortgages. We should see more of these cases but California is one of the few states where there have been prosecutions.
It is difficult to convince me that with Countrywide’s vast portfolio that this practice was uncommon. One of the best ways to defraud a homeowner is to sell him on the idea of cheap credit, lowering his monthly payments, knowing all along the loan will revert to a floating rate. That new interest rate produces a devastating increase in monthly payments forcing foreclosure. This is fraud. Conning people into home loans is what the great lecturers on personal responsibility claim was a rare event.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced Friday that the $6.5 million settlement from two former Countrywide Financial Corp. executives will be used to establish a fund to help foreclosed homeowners. The settlement comes from a litigation that began more than two years ago against Angelo Mozilo and David Sambol. According to the lawsuit, Countrywide lured buyers with low teaser rates, sometimes as low as 1 percent, and failed to inform … Read More
In total, I have 46 posts about the mortgage crisis.
James Pilant
COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary Bank of America to Create Troubled Loans Unit BANK STILL ATTEMPTING TO KEEP FORECLOSURES A POLITICAL ISSUE AS LEGAL OPTIONS RUN OUT EDITOR’S NOTE: As for what this means for homeowners, it is obvious that BOA is trying to come up with some formula that will be politically acceptable the final result of which will still be that they will get hundreds of thousands o … Read More
Is net neutrality important to you personally? How much data speed do you use? If you are like me and my family, you can only suspect that you might be a heavy user. That’s not good predictive power. If this policy is applied to you, it is probably going to be a surprise when your data speed is too slow for Netflix.
The Net Neutrality whistles are blowing and flags are flying this morning over buzz that Verizon Wireless will be throttling data speeds for its heaviest data users. The change, effective immediately, is believed to be part of Verizon’s efforts to ensure that its network is ready for the flood of iPhone users who will start powering up those devices next week.
In a nutshell, if you’re a heavy user – and you really have no way of knowing if that’s you or not – then Verizon Wireless “may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand.”
I don’t think we should let private industry decide these policies. The FCC regulated television and radio for decades bringing order out of chaos. Why shouldn’t we have standard policies across the nation? We are at the mercy of a handful of suppliers due to consolidation allowed by the very same government that people believe shouldn’t be regulating this at all. If we received our Internet services whether wired or wireless from hundreds of sources, all this would have been solved by competition. But a limited number of suppliers have no reason to cut prices to compete when they simply own the lines alone.
More from the web site –
That’s like watching ESPN 24 hours a day and then having the programming cut in half for the last week of the month because other customers don’t watch it as much as I do. How is that right?
I think so too. Why should I be charged for something I can’t measure? And what can I do to fix it if I need that bandwidth? I teach online. This is not an academic exercise. This is my work, and I’m not the only one that uses their home computer for something besides World of Warcraft.
In a monopolistic system of suppliers, I have no say at all. At least with the FCC, I’ve got a chip on the table.
James Pilant
P.S. The web site, Between the Lines, was my source and I would like you to visit if this subject interesting.
“This regulatory tsunami, occurring hastily and at a time when the U.S. economy is struggling to emerge from a deep recession, is hindering investment and job creation” wrote Larry Burton of the Business Roundtable. He added that environmental regulation, financial reform and health care are the group’s primary concerns.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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