And Still I Persist

…the more it’s deja vu all over again. Or something:

Watch it quick before YouTube gets a take-down notice.

I don’t know who Steve Adams is (though you can see his website here), but the sentiment of the video is strikingly apt. Hat tip to (wait for it) Mormon Mommy Wars. .

UPDATE: You can watch the full Simpsons episode (”Citizen Kang”) here. Hat tip to The Corner at National Review Online (no, really). ..bruce..

For those of you who did not see the story on mortgages in last weekend’s 60 Minutes, they revealed America’s first glimpse at a trend that is a serious threat to our economy; people intentionally defaulting on their mortgages.

This except is from Minyanville’s professor Kevin Depew’s Five Things You Need To Know: (my comments inserted)

Last night, CBS’ “60 Minutes” took a look at the “subprime loan crisis.” The following exchange between “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft and homeowner Stephanie Valdez is a highlight worth examining a bit closer; it’s significant both from an economic and, more importantly, a socionomic point of view.

STEPHANIE VALDEZ: Why pay a $3,200 payment on a 1200-square-foot home? It makes no sense.

[Bruce says: You signed up for it you greedy yuppie! So your flip did not work out, you are going to ramp up the damage by not living up to your obligations?]

STEVE KROFT: That’s what you agreed to do when you bought the house.

STEPHANIE VALDEZ: Fine. If the value is going up. But we’re not going anywhere. The price or the value is going down. It makes no sense because we will never be able to refinance and get a lower payment. There’s no way.

[Bruce says: So you only want to pay for your house if it’s value is going up, where was that in the mortgage papers?]

STEVE KROFT: You’re saying, essentially, that you’re going to stop making payments on it? You’re just gonna let it go into foreclosure?

STEPHANIE VALDEZ: You know, that’s the only advice we’ve gotten so far is walk away from the home. We don’t want to do that to our credit. Why can’t our mortgage company work with us?

[Bruce says: I hope your parents are not around to see you acting this way, I would trust that you were raised to a higher standard than this!]

I was amazed when I saw this, this is the full fruition of the “me” generation once again saying “screw everyone else, I am going to take care of me“.

What these selfish child-people fail to understand that the only reason most of what we enjoy exists is because there is an element of trust inherent in business transactions. There have always been deadbeats and scumbags around, but there is a real threat that many thousands of people who took out stupid loans are going to walk away en-masse. The implications of this would be an aggravated break down in the credit markets for everyone, including honest people.

If seeing these adult-brats proclaim their selfish irresponsibility on national TV was not bad enough, it seems that some clever folks have set up a business specifically targeted to helping people walk away from their obligations.

They call themselves “You Walk Away“:

If you are facing or considering foreclosure, you’re not alone.

Are you stressed out about your mortgage payments?
Do you have little or no equity in your home?
Have you had trouble trying to sell your house?
Is your home sinking under the waves of the real estate crash?
What if you could live payment free for up to 8 months or more and walk away without owing a penny?
Unshackle yourself today from a losing investment and use our proven method to Walk Away.

If you QUALIFY for our plan:

Your lender WILL NOT be able to call you in attempt to collect!
Your lender WILL NOT be able to collect any deficiency or loss they may receive by you walking away!
You WILL be able to stay in your home for up to 8 months or more without having to pay anything to your lender!
You CAN have the foreclosure REMOVED from your credit!

It’s important to act now before it’s too late!

Let us help you.

Mish Shedlock comments on the details of this service:

I spoke with John Maddux a “senior advocate” with You Walk Away (YWA) about the business. As one might expect it is booming. For $995 one receives a half hour of legal counsel where individual strategies are mapped out and all the laws pertaining to recourse vs. non-recourse loans as well as judicial procedures are explained to the customer. YWA also files the necessary legal papers to stop mortgage companies from calling and informs you immediately of how many days you will be able to stay in the house for free. Should the lender take longer to process the documents, YWA will keep you informed of any extra time.

With the amount of money at stake, the fee seems reasonable for the services provided.

Maddux informed me that YWA is currently operating in the state of California only, but Nevada and Florida will soon be coming online. Eventually they expect to be nationwide.

The financial trouble that is the normal outcome from the imprudent housing, credit and asset bubbles is going to be compounded if everyone who owes more today than what their “investment” is worth intentionally default on their mortgages. It could wreck for a generation access to credit to purchase houses, and prolong the necessary downturn.

All the way back in August, I raised concerns about another tech bubble building in light of the valuation of VMWare shooting up to nearly $20 billion on the day of its IPO. Of course, VMWare’s market cap continued to climb, sitting at a high of $30 billion as recently as a few days ago.

Well, with all the turmoil in the financial markets, VMWare’s shares have slumped a bit — like losing nearly $10 billion of that market cap in the past day or so, with a 30% drop in share prices. And that’s for predicting merely 50% annual growth, instead of 70-80%.

Actually, I see this as a good sign. I’d much rather see individual stock bubbles deflate a bit than go through again the relentless downware tech collapse of 2000-2002.

But go back and watch this again. ..bruce..

From the New York Post’s page 6 section, this gem of a cartoon that sums up the effect of this week’s endorsement of Illinois Senator Obama by Senator Kennedy, while at the same time lampooning Kennedy and Clinton.

With the Republican race now looking more and more like the Mac & Cheese express, I once again reinforce my opinion that this is going to be the worst choice since I came of voting age. Can’t we please find someone more useful to run?

For ideas on how we could make the whole process better, take a look at my alternate primary strategies!

Thanks to co-worker and friend Rob Wade for sending me this great video of someone getting a back seat ride in an F/A-18. During my days in the “short haircut club for men” we would sometimes take people up in the back seat of our RF-4B’s, though most frequently it happened when we were outside the US.

The pilots have a special love of such ride-alongs, and it was important to make the VIP feel they got their money’s worth by having them pass out multiple times. Bonus points were often awarded if you could also get them to throw up. Of particular use in inducing the old “heave ho” was a series of maneuvers that was referred to as the “squirrel cage”.

[NOTE - Some folks are having problems with the video embedded in the HTML this way, so it is now available at this URL: http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/ajc/swf/blueangels/blueangels.swf]

The fellow in the back seat for this ride seems to be getting a good lesson in gforce and the human body.

For those of you wanting embedded video, this gem from YouTube