d Blog

Welcome to d blog, also known as Dan's rant. The content herein is essentially comprised of miscellaneous ramblings and random thoughts on the nature of contemporary existence.

"Celluloid Lessons For A Violent Financial Correction"

Celluloid Lessons For A Violent Financial Correction
from - www.DanBeyer.com

The Sleepers Awaken
They should have been watching TV and subscribing to Netflix or what I knew in 2005 but didn't believe!

Rick: what time is it in New York?
Sam: What? My watch stopped.
Rick: I'd bet they're asleep in New York. I'd bet they're asleep all over America.
- Casablanca (1942)

It was not the hard squeezed super conscious analysis that I might apply to say, the purchase of a car or accepting an offer of employment. My pulse was relaxed and I was using a minor portion of my brain, just going with the flow while my stream of consciousness was carrying the thought that there was something about all this that I didn’t understand but neither could I conceive of what that missing element might be!. Hey banking involves math and that’s hard, I’m smart but I don’t want to work hard enough to figure the financial industry out.

English Sports Announcer: And the other rules, well, the other rules are Russian and complicated.
Rollerball 1975

But surely there was somebody somewhere that knew what was going on and how it all fit together to make the world work. All was as it should be and this was the way that everyone got their fair share of prosperity. At least it seemed that way to me as I walked around in the stupor that passed for my daily existence. So I left it alone, avoiding, for a time the offers that made no sense to me and I went on my merry way, as I exited my first meeting with a local mortgage broker at his Fort Lauderdale factory. I agreed to let them call to introduce me to some realtors that they knew.

NYC Coach: I don't want another man on that track. Houston, what are you trying to do? Nobody's gonna win this game?
Rusty, Team Executive: Game? This wasn't meant to be a game. NEVER.
Rollerball 1975

You see the brokers were out to get you one way or another. If you weren’t that interested on the face of it, they would quietly redouble their efforts and they would throw properties at you until you were hooked. Mortgage brokers and realtors were in collusion. Sometimes they all worked for the same outfit. In the case of certain development and construction companies they most certainly did.

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!
Casablanca (1942)

There were lines out the door of the mortgage broker's commercial office located in a semi-industrial office/factory park located just off the main intersection of Commercial Boulevard and The Sawgrass Expressway in Florida’s West Broward County. Sub prime applicants from every walk of life with particular emphasis on immigrants, formed a near continuous stream of new arrivals, queuing up to speak with the twenty something intake officers dressed like upscale bank tellers. The rosy cheeked youthful fronters would usher the successful applicants into the offices of the ex-felon’s come senior mortgage brokers responsible for closing the agreements and expediting the first steps in packaging these loans and populating the pipeline that would eventually spell doom for the global financial system as we knew it.

Woman: What makes saloonkeepers so snobbish?
Banker: Perhaps if you told him I ran the second largest banking house in Amsterdam.
Carl: Second largest? That wouldn't impress Rick. The leading banker in Amsterdam is now the pastry chef in our kitchen.
Banker: We have something to look forward to.
- Casablanca (1942)

Cab drivers were given $50 - $100 spiffs for every live body with documentation they dropped off. It seemed as if every decrepit tenement in the land underwent rapid renovation for conversion into a “$500 Down” Moves you in special. As time went on this evolved into “$0 Down Moves you in” Signs were planted in the medians of major thoroughfares and Billboards touting the “Turtles Cove” No Closing Cost type Communities appeared at every intersection. For some, those asleep at the wheel of their own lives, these offers were just too tempting to resist.

Rick: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.
Captain Renault: That is my *least* vulnerable spot.
- Casablanca (1942)

Let the buyer beware! The fronters took your information down on a standard form created by the particular factory whose offices you were in. The senior brokers, ah er felon/brokers would take that information and update or modify it while transposing it onto yet another form. The truth be damned. The no money down deals typically consisted of 2 financial instruments, a first and a second mortgage. I had not heard of anyone getting a second mortgage upfront at the initial purchase of a home. Here again I thought surely this method had passed muster with the regulatory agencies. The felons/brokers would quickly tell you how much of a loan you qualified for. They then explained that you qualified for $315,000 of which $294,000 would actually be provided at closing. You see the first mortgage was for 89% of the total and the second mortgage was for 16% which jacked up the final offering to 105% of the appraised value of whatever property you had in mind or were expected to find with or without the aid of their realtor associates. Although not out of YOUR pocket the commissions and first payment were deducted up front. The commissions could reach almost $30,000 on a $300,000 loan, certainly enough for the house to split with the dealer, especially if each dealer were closing 20 or more weekly.

Jonathan E.: Four or five little things make one big thing.
Rollerball 1975

I thank my lucky stars that I could never figure out how I could afford to carry such a mortgage. It seemed obvious to me that I couldn’t. But I still wondered how those less affluent than myself could afford to live in a residence I only dreamed about? What were they thinking?

Jack: What is your contingency plan for a crap storm of this magnitude?
- "30 Rock" (2006) {Jack Meets Dennis (#1.6)}

There were quotas to fill. You must have noticed that an army of mortgage brokers were over saturating every community just to feed the insatiable appetites of the investment banks that needed product to fill the portfolios of their customers, most of whom accepted mortgage backed securities and other derivatives that Wall Street Execs found themselves more and more in need of. They struggled to hustle up product to meet the demands of their investors, who themselves had been whipped up by drunken frenzy of, well, what else to call it but greed?

Ella: But comfort is freedom. The entire history of civilization is a struggle against poverty and need.
Jonathan E.: No, that's not it. That's never been it. I mean, them privileges just buy us off. – Rollerball (1975)

The competition was on and success was being measured in the gold plated excess of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious braggadocio. For instance, supposedly sophisticated investors viewed stock in the private companies Fannie May and Freddie Mac as tantamount to U.S. Treasury Bonds but with a higher rate of return. Many believed these companies to be agencies of the Federal Government.

[after observing the gambling tables at Rick's]
Customer: Are you sure this place is honest?
Carl: Honest? As honest as the day is long!
- Casablanca (1942)

Little did anyone realize that these organizations were themselves investing in mortgage backed securities in blatant violation of their special status regarding federal guaranties which required them to fund affordable mortgages for the least wealthy portion of the population, a charter which they had ignored for at least one if not two decades.

Harry Stamper: And this is the best that you can - that the-the government, the *U.S. government* can come up with? I mean, you-…you’re……. for cryin' out loud, you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses! You-you're the guys that think this shit up! I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up and somebody backing them up! You're telling me you don't have a backup plan, that these……….. boy scouts right here, that is the world's hope, that's what you're telling me?
- Armageddon (1998)

It is obvious now that we are on the horns of a dilemma largely resulting from the Republican Party’s decade’s old trickle down laissez-faire policies promoting less governmental oversight through deregulation. The real effect of which seems to have been to deploy a method to socialize debt and privatize profit to the benefit of the few. Amounting to a looting of the public coffers and exasperated by the Trillions that we actually misspent or simply lost track of in the initial phases of the Iraqi debacle.

Bartholomew: Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions. - Rollerball (1975)

Some say that this is all by design, having been planned to surreptitiously usher us in to a new world order featuring the new AMERO currency that links the U.S. Canada and Mexico together. Bush the senior is a proponent of this particular form of economic globalization.

Alexis Petrovich: You see Yevgeny over there, so full of himself now. He used to work in the post office. I introduced him to the proper financing, and now he owns the mines. Yeah, making a fortune. Keeps the miners in line. Good business. You might wonder why I'm not in it myself. I don't need to own the mines, Jonathan. Do you know why? Because I own the man who owns the mines. All he has, I have. Same with the supermarkets, the TV station, locomotive plant. I don't need a political position, because I own the men who do. – Rollerball (1975)

The thirty families that control the global economy and for which the Bush Family are the accountants, all seem to believe that in a global economy it is too expensive to do business through economically autonomous sovereign nations. So countries with their physical and fiscal import/export obstacles to exit and entry via taxes, tariffs and duties are experiencing their last hurrah. It is a world controlled by corporations, the only difference is now we will call it what it really is.

Captain Renault: Realizing the importance of the case, my men are rounding up twice the usual number of suspects.
Casablanca (1942)

Whether the rest of the world liked us or not we had a century of basking in the glow of their tacit acknowledgment, which positioned The United States Of America as the Global Cultural Leader of the Cultural, Financial and Military Universes. Now, Brand America is shot to hell. The third world is calling for the creation of more egalitarian and diverse financial standards controlled by other than the U.S. Who can blame them? The only other country that has gone through what we are and come up with a similar suite of solutions is Ethiopia!. Yes, it's true we are in a field of 2, US and Ethiopia.

Jonathan E.: What do you know about the corporate wars?
Cletus: Oh, they were naaaasty... Woooh.
Rollerball 1975

How many resources are left for us to halt the current death spirall? How many more arrows are in the quivers of our military and financial leaders? As we descend into a third world economy ourselves, how much longer can we live in a society propped up by borrowing from China and the Arab world?

Moonpie: What do you want books for? Look Johnny, if you wanna learn somethin', just get a Corporate Teacher to come and teach it to ya'. Use yer Privilege Card.
Rollerball 1975

Our leaders have stealthily engineered an unsustainable standard of living funded by debt. There is of course a correction in the offing but you won’t like it. It calls for the swapping of position between China, India and the U.S. It is written. It cannot be stopped. It is not an accident that our infrastructure is crumbling at a time when the Chinese are investing $200 billion in railways and building 97 new airports. We got the leadership we deserved. They led us here and we followed.

Ilsa: [laughs ironically] With the whole world crumbling, we pick this time to fall in love.
Rick: Yeah, it's pretty bad timing. Where were you, say, ten years ago?
- Casablanca (1942)

It is unfortunate that a new age visionary such as Barack Obama should appear at this time. The parameters of what he will be able to accomplish are limited by what has already been decided.

Bartholomew: [in a video conference with other corporate executives] In my opinion, we are confronted here with something of a situation. Otherwise, I would not have presumed to take up your time. Once again, it concerns the case of Jonathan E. We know we don't want anything extraordinary to happen to Jonathan. We've already agreeed on that. No accidents, nothing unnatural. The game was created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort. And the game must do its work. The Energy Corporation has done all it can, and if a champion defeats the meaning for which the game was designed, then he must lose. I hope you agree with my reasoning. – Rollerball (1975)

The deception is still going on. right now. I am witness to the same gamesmanship and subterfuge on the same small local level that led to the macro meltdown that dominates today’s headlines.

[at the start of the Tokyo game]
P.A. Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, will you stand please for the playing of our Corporate Hymn.
Rollerball 1975

Norman Braman, a local South Florida businessman, is standing up against the machine by suing the city of Miami to try to stop Miami's corrupt “megaplan” his argument is that the money the city is planning to use for the commercial plan is legally intended to fight “slum and blight,” Not to enrich Hoteliers and other Tourist business developers.

Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart.
- Casablanca (1942)

I always held that certain industries and most leaders whether they be political or business are suspect but I accepted the common consensus and gave deference. No Longer. I have had my eyes opened. I believe that most individuals think that somebody else is doing the job taking care of the fundamentals with honesty and aplomb. Apparently where government and big business is concerned those in charge are egoists, frequently asleep at the wheel and otherwise far from deserving of the esteem in which we hold them let alone the enormous paychecks we allow them to receive. Maybe Executive compensation levels will come finally back to earth now.

We are only a few weeks away from a Presidential Election where once again we will get the leadership that we deserve. Hopefully we will do the right thing, do what we can.

Perhaps we can apply at least in part some of today's lessons and engineer a more equitable and egalitarian society where every person can expect to be fed and provided with a healthy existence?

Victor Laszlo: Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.
- Casablanca (1942)


Credits & Addendum;
---------------------------------------------------------------------
All Film Quotes courtesy http://www.imdb.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan E.: Four or five little things make one big thing.

Rollerball 1975

Musical Interlude;
Brother Can You Spare A Dime (1932)

They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead --
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, ah, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

+add a comment