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The Subprime Times Tom Peters/22 January 2008

Despite dramatic Fed rate cut, Dow opens down 446 (10AM, 22 January 2008)

Headline, page 1, Boston Globe, 20 January 2008: “Broker's Clients Detail Web of Dashed Dreams” “When Marcia Neilson couldn't qualify for a home loan in early 2006 because of poor credit, her mortgage broker, Nicole Lyder, had an unusual solution: Add Neilson's daughter to the loan application. “Neilson's 21-year-old daughter had just lost her job, but Lyder remained undeterred. ‘That wasn't a problem,’ Neilson recalled her broker saying. “Neilson's real estate agent said Lyder enlisted him to drive Neilson and her daughter to Brockton City Hall. The pair filled out a business certificate that claimed they owned a hair salon in Brockton. “The Neilsons qualified for a mortgage and bought a Dorchester house in June 2006 for $565,000. Last fall, Marcia Neilson learned from state investigators looking into Lyder's business practices that her loan application was padded in other ways: a statement for a $25,000 bank account in Neilson's name that she had no knowledge of. “Fake documents, a phantom borrower, and other irregularities were common features of five subprime mortgages brokered by Lyder between November 2005 and June 2006 that were examined by the Boston Globe. Lyder's clients ranged from the barely employed to struggling working-class couples; one had just left a homeless shelter and two others gave up government-subsidized housing to buy homes. They said Lyder arranged loans that they later realized had monthly payments that far exceeded their means. All five loans are now in foreclosure.”

Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2008: "Our fourth-quarter results were severely impacted by ongoing dislocations in capital markets and the slowing economy," said Kenneth D. Lewis, [Bank of America] chairman and chief executive officer. "However, we are cautiously optimistic about 2008 …" TP translation: “We made total asses of ourselves, allowing ourselves to be conned by a bunch of out-of-touch Nobel-winning ‘economists’ with their ‘portfolio-risk smoothing models.’ Then, as inevitably happens amidst the madness of crowds of executives bent upon ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ we were flattened by that silly old saw, ‘That which goes up eventually comes down.’ Wow, talk about ‘What they didn’t teach us at the Harvard Business School’! Truth is, we all ought to be put in stocks where people can throw rotten tomatoes at us—they’ll have lots of time to do that given expected unemployment #s that we have wittingly facilitated. Meanwhile, I wish the very best to Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide CEO & Subprime Principal Perp, as he ponders how to spend the $112,000,000 I’m helping him pocket, obtained by shafting hundreds of thousands of innocents using sales ‘incentive’ schemes which make the numbers racketeers on the streets look squeaky clean by comparison. As to my ‘cautiously optimistic for 2008,’ what the hell else do you expect me to say? If I told the truth, you’d string me up even higher.”

The next one’s almost the same, but a little longer, a little nastier.

Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2008: "Our fourth-quarter results were severely impacted by ongoing dislocations in capital markets and the slowing economy," said Kenneth D. Lewis, [Bank of America] chairman and chief executive officer. "However, we are cautiously optimistic about " TP translation: “We made total asses of ourselves, allowing ourselves to be conned by a bunch of out-of-touch Nobel-winning ‘economists’ with their ‘portfolio-risk smoothing models.’ Then, as inevitably happens amidst the madness of crowds of overpaid executives bent upon ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ we were flattened by that silly old saw, ‘That which goes up eventually comes down.’ Wow, talk about ‘What they didn’t teach us at the Harvard Business School’! Truth is, we all ought to be put in stocks where people can throw rotten tomatoes at us—they’ll have lots of time to do that given expected unemployment #s that we have wittingly facilitated. Meanwhile, I wish the very best to Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide CEO & Subprime Principal Perp, as he ponders how to spend the $112,000,000 I’m helping him pocket, obtained by shafting hundreds of thousands of innocents using sales ‘incentive’ schemes which make the numbers racketeers on the streets look squeaky clean by comparison. As to my ‘cautiously optimistic for 2008,’ what the hell else do you expect me to say? If I told the truth, you’d string me up even higher. Okay, okay, you win, I’m an idiot, an overpaid clown, conned like some mark for Three-card Monte on 17th street in lower Manhattan. But I’m a rich idiot; you know what they say, ‘Only in America.’ Glad I wasn’t born in Russia—Putin would already have shipped me, and probably my family, to Siberia; I hear it’s colder there than in Charlotte, though given the cocoon in which I live, soothed by the dulcet tones of my executives singing my praises to me, I actually haven’t been out in real weather for years.”