#46 THE GUYS IN TIES

Guys in ties
Are in disguise
Because they know
You will surmise

That they are wise
And civilized
So they can tell
A thousand lies

"Deeply saddened,"
"Mistakes were made,"
"The documents were all mislaid."
"The emails somehow got deleted."
The biggest lies are most repeated.

An army of lawyers
Are all on hand
To lie in a language
We don't understand

And the guys with ties
In suits tailor-fitted
Will always manage to get acquitted
The system will maintain the status-quo
But if you are poor?
Off to jail you go.

De-Evolution

from here: http://frankart.com.au/de-evolved/

Venn Diagrams

no! wait! don't leave us now!

I love the way the mortgage company you are about to leave suddenly wants to talk about lowering the interest rate AFTER you've already asked for a payoff amount. Like it is the absolute LAST resort for keeping a customer. Ha Ha! Should have just lowered it before. Now you don't get ANY of the sweet, sweet interest on our home loan amount.

PSA: don't shoot yourself!

Okay, this is setting a bad precedent. There was a story in the news about a 90 year old lady who was getting evicted. Sad enough. She goes and shoots herself. Even worse.

But here's the worse part of all: Fannie Mae erased her mortgage. What does that tell all the desperate, possibly unstable, end-of-the-rope people getting foreclosed on and evicted? "Shoot yourself, you'll get out of your mortgage."

I predict more of these "You'll never take me alive" stories. You can't get give people ideas like this.

Oh yeah, didn't MY friggin' tax money go to bail out Fannie Mae? I don't recall them asking me if this lady could get off the hook. I mean, no wonder they're going under, being all soft-hearted just because some old bag shoots herself. <--(I'm only kidding! Jeez)

If we were really a Christian nation . . .

If we were REALLY a Christian nation, or if all these "Christians" would read their friggin' bible, we wouldn't be in this credit crisis on the brink of a depression:

“He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you will be the tail. So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you” (Deuteronomy 28:44-45).

Psalm 37:21, “The wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives.”

Proverbs 22: 26-27
Be not you one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?

The only biblical way to borrow:*

Probably the most misunderstood financial principle in God's Word is His prohibition against surety (Proverbs 22:26-27 above). Surety is assuming an obligation to pay indebtedness without a sure way to pay it. Non-collateralized loans and cosigning are examples of surety.

Surety means that we presume on the future. If everything goes as expected, we should be able to pay the money back. But, if something goes wrong and we are not able to repay, then we are left with a debt.

It is only when collateral has been placed as security against the loan that is equal in value to the loan that we can avoid surety. If we are unable to pay the loan back, the creditor can repossess and sell the collateral, which will satisfy the total amount of the loan.

The Bible cautions against any type of loan that is not totally collateralized. If Christians would observe this one caution associated with borrowing, the most they could lose would be the security they had pledged against the loan.

* everything from this point was lifted completely from (http://www.crown.org/LIBRARY/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=683)

apocalypse now

I have listened to the collapse of the Financial World on my radio as if listening to the demise of some alien world via long-distance radio transmissions. Mortgage backed securities, short selling, bundling, FHA, FNMA, collateralized debt obligations and distressed assets. They boosted the "public debt limit" to 11.3 trillion dollars. Is that even a real number? Couldn't we just put all this bad debt into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and make it go away?