I have managed to "temporarily" escape my "captors" and will soon be held hostage again.
However, I was sent this piece that mandated I break free and write about it.
Ahhhh, Minnesota. Ignorance and naivete gets hit upside with reality.
If only, IF ONLY there was some guy, who maybe graduated from the U of MN, a home boy hero that could have (literally) singlehandedly saved the state economy.
But no, no such man existed. Besides, you all wanted to invest you money with the Tom Petters and Denny Heckers of Minnesota. You know those up and coming "businessmen" who frequently made the front pages as hometown heroes.
On a related side note, it just keeps getting better and better. We don't have a professional sports team in South Dakota.
Hey, you Minnesotans and Dayton voters, you crazy kids enjoy that decline!
I see we beat out Florida, Arizona and other states who were star players in the real estate bubble...
ReplyDeleteCall this blinding denial, but if you look at their methodology these are based on prosecutions. So, Minnesota just may be prosecuting more mortgage fraud than the others States. Not necessarily that mortgage fraud was higher in Minnesota..
Duly noted, but if we account for population size I'm afraid it makes Minnesota look even worse.
ReplyDeleteAaron, in your book (which is excellent; I have two copies and have given away a third) you talk about the greed and culpability of relatively small banks. But of course, the borrowers in the case of unsound loans were also swindlers. And that case you make well. Interestingly, David P. Goldman ("Spengler" on Asian Times Online) has recently said much the same thing about large banks buying collateralized debt obligations etc. And he should know - he was chief of debt analysis for the Bank of America. He says that in effect it was a sysematic swindle of the large banks by Middle America. He claims that indeed, the borrowers on the whole came out of it better than the big banks did. Goldman left Bank of America in 2007 precisely because he disagreed with their lax policy and lack of oversight in regard to the mortgage instruments they were buying.
ReplyDeleteObama is their just punishment.