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As soon as I heard that LeAnn and Eddie Cibrian had “officially” gotten engaged, my first thought was that Brandi Glanville was probably sitting somewhere with a stiff drink, and that I hoped one of her friends took away her car keys. Well, one of Brandi’s friends has “told all” about Brandi’s reaction to Us Weekly, and while Brandi sounds a little toasty, she thankfully doesn’t sound full-on hammered.

Guess Brandi Glanville won’t be sending a bottle of champagne to her ex-husband Eddie Cibrian and his brand-new fiancee LeAnn Rimes.

An insider close to Glanville — whose marriage to the actor went down in flames last year following his affair with Rimes — tells UsMagazine.com what she thinks of Cibrian’s engagement to the 28-year-old singer, announced Monday.

“Brandi knew this was coming for a while, but after everything she’s been through since finding out, she couldn’t care less. LeAnn has gotten exactly what she wanted from the get go,” the source says. Us Weekly was first to break the story of Rimes and Cibrian’s affair, which began on the set of their 2009 Lifetime flick Northern Lights.

Former model Glanville was married to Cibrian, 38, for 8 years, and they have two sons together: Mason, 7, and Jake, 3. Their divorce was finalized in August; Rimes’ 7-year marriage to Dean Sheremet official ended this time last year. (Sheremet himself is engaged to girlfriend Sarah Silver.)

The insider continues: “[Brandi] never wanted Eddie back, so it didn’t matter if they got engaged, broke up or whatever. But now he’s LeAnn’s problem.”

The source warns: “She can wonder what he’s doing on those boys-only trips, who he’s always texting, who’s at his poker nights. As long as she continues to be good to her two boys, it doesn’t matter to Brandi.”

Mason and Jake moved in with their dad into Rimes’ Malibu home over the summer. “LeAnn should keep her eyes open,” the insider says. “A tiger never loses his stripes.”

[From Us Weekly]

Fortunately, Brandi seems to have given an actual statement to E! News, which E! folded into their coverage of LeAnn’s engagement. Quite honestly, I absolutely adore this E! story - it manages to achieve the gold standard of bitchiness. You many remember, E! News claimed (correctly) that LeAnn and Eddie have been engaged for a couple of months now, but that they were waiting to announce it for a big payday from People Magazine. Here’s the story:

In case you somehow missed our exclusive scoop last month, LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian are finally making it official.

After cheating on their respective spouses last year, then splitting with them on their way to shacking up together, the controversial couple has finally copped to being betrothed.

“For those who haven’t read, Eddie and I got engaged over the holidays. That’s the news. It’s for real this tine and the first time EVER!” she tweeted.

Like tell us something we don’t already know.

E! News was the first to report last month that Cibrian, 37, actually popped the question around Halloween and that Rimes, 28, gleefully accepted, according to extremely close family sources.

But with the news leaking out before they were ready to go public (and costing them a big-money deal with a glossy), the twosome got “pissed” and tried to deny their engagement.

We’re happy to hear the country crooner is singing a different tune now.

“It was nice to have our little secret for us our families and friend’s a few days! So excited to now share the wonderful news with our fans,” she added.

A few days, huh? Not according to the ex-CSI: Miami star’s former missus, Brandi Glanville, the mother of his two children whom he divorced in September.

“They’ve been engaged forever, but I continue to wish them congratulations and luck!” Glanville told E! News.

Cibrian’s publicist also confirmed today’s good news. And just for good measure so people know that it’s for real this time, LeAnn made sure she was spotted Monday strolling a Malibu beach with Eddie wearing a diamond ring. The platinum sparker is a 5-carat oval diamond set in rose gold fleur-de-lis connected to the band.

“We are extremely excited and look forward to a beautiful future. It’s been an incredible last few days,” Rimes tweeted. “I was shocked!!! We are blessed, our families are so happy and our lives are filled with love.”

Best of luck (again) to the happy couple.

[From E! News]

A great read. It’s funny and bitchy and there’s a healthy dose of nastiness. Perfect for this story. I love that LeAnn pissed off E! News, and that E! is holding a grudge. LeAnn isn’t important enough to suck up to.

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/> [style="text-decoration: underline;">Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past four years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

Evan Jowers here, with a quick post before the New Year holiday. As you know from our recent posts, Robert Kinney and I have continued our pattern this year of traveling to Hong Kong / China to meet personally with clients and learn of openings (six trips each this year – ouch). Alexis Lamb of course is permanently based in our Hong Kong office and Yuliya Vinokurova travels to Asia periodically from her base in Russia. As a result of our availability to firms and more importantly our success in placing more US attorneys in Asia than any other recruiting firm, we are on top of many US associate openings at present in Hong Kong/China.

As you know from recent posts, we have many current openings for Mandarin fluent cap markets and M&A US associates (too numerous to list here). As the year winds to a close, we wanted to list in one place a description of some of our more unusual openings for US associates at top US and UK firms in Hong Kong / China:

Hong Kong – native Korean fluent private equity fund formation US associate; 2 to 5 years experience

Shanghai – native Mandarin fluent IP transactional US associate; mid to senior level

Hong Kong or Singapore – US securities / high yield / M&A mix US associate (English only ok); 4 to 7 years experience (the successful candidate will have his/her choice of Hong Kong or Singapore location)

Hong Kong – native Korean fluent private equity M&A US associate; 2 to 6 years experience

Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai – native Mandarin fluent US senior capital markets associate for counsel or partner role (several openings); very senior associate with top firm experience in China and NYC preferred

Hong Kong – native Korean fluent project finance US associate; 3 to 6 years experience

Beijing – native Mandarin fluent finance associate; junior to mid-level (multiple openings)id="more-50781">

Hong Kong – leveraged / acquisition finance; Hong Kong, UK or US qualification; Mandarin preferred; 2 to 5 years experienced

Hong Kong – acquisition finance US associate / counsel (English only fine, but Mandarin a nice bonus); senior associate / counsel level

Hong Kong – US project finance associate; Mandarin preferred; 3 to 6 years experience

Beijing – native Mandarin fluent project finance senior US attorney; counsel to partner level

Beijing – native Mandarin fluent fund formation / corporate mix US associate; 2 to 5 years experience

Hong Kong – fund formation US associate (Mandarin preferred, but English only ok); 2 to 8 years experience (several openings)

Hong Kong – cap markets US associate (English only ok); mid-level

Hong Kong – native Mandarin fluent banking / finance US associate; 2 to 5 years experience (several openings)

Hong Kong – FCPA / white collar / litigation US associate (Mandarin preferred but not required); mid-level experience

Hong Kong – US or UK qualified regulatory/anti-corruption associate (English-only OK); mid to senior level experience

Hong Kong – native Korean fluent US cap markets / M&A associates; junior to senior levels (several openings)

Hong Kong – native Korean fluent M&A US associate; 2 to 4 years experience

Hong Kong – senior cap markets US associate (English only ok) for Pan Asia practice with strong Philippines and India focus; 5 to 9 years experience

Hong Kong (and eventually Seoul) – native Korean fluent US senior cap markets / M&A associate for counsel or partner role (multiple openings)

Hong Kong – Mandarin fluent senior banking US associate; 6 to 10 years of experience

Hong Kong – Mandarin fluent derivatives and structured finance US associate; mid to senior level

Hong Kong – Mandarin fluent energy / LNG US associate; 3 to 5 years experience

The US and UK biglaw associate lateral hiring market in Hong Kong / China continues to pick up. We are expecting a mini-boom of US associate hiring in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore during the first quarter of ’11. The reason is twofold: a) Hong Kong / China has been a very busy market for more than a year now and most firms are understaffed; and b) numerous US and UK firms in Hong Kong / China have, for the first time since mid ’08, a full “green light” from their global firm management to make US associate lateral hires.

Some of our clients, for example, were able to make one hire here and there during ’10 in Hong Kong / China, but were not able to obtain a full green light to hire as needed by any means (getting clearance from firm management to make each hire was understandably a long process, due to the still shaky US and Europe markets). Recently, some of these firms have been given clearance to hire multiple US associates in Hong Kong / China, in some cases as many as 7 to 10, with most top US and UK firms planning to hire at least 2 in early ’11. While the hiring markets in US and Europe are still shaky, firms’ global management can no longer ignore the long run of heavy deal flow in Hong Kong / China and their offices and partners in the region being understaffed. Naturally, in an end of calendar year period, where budgets for the following year are figured out, the full green lights for Hong Kong / China lateral hiring are coming in bunches recently.

The interview process in ’10 in Asia has been mostly long-winded due to the abundance of great candidates on the market, most firms having to go through a long process internally to get clearance to give an offer, and firms knowing their competitors are also not moving quickly with offers. In the first quarter of ’11, we are expecting firms in Hong Kong / China to move a lot quicker with US associate hiring process and also be a little less selective because of the larger number of openings putting pressure on the market. Some partners have had serious staffing pressures throughout ’10 and they are going to want to hire quickly now that they have the clearance to do so.

If you would like to learn more about these or other openings and / or the Asia markets in general, as always please feel free to contact us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.

We would like to wish all of our readers a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!

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<b>News</b> - Chris Brown Apologizes for Using Gay Slurs on Twitter <b>...</b>

"I love all my gay fans and this immature act is not targeted at you," he says.

<b>News</b> - Queen Elizabeth Welcomes First Great-Grandchild! - Moms <b>...</b>

Peter Phillips' wife Autumn gave birth to a baby girl Wednesday.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Tech Primer

Technology is vastly changing the scope and reach of small business not only in the world of marketing but in all aspects of operating your venture. From tech.

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foreclosure statistics

Washington (CNN) – It is not enough to say the economy is "struggling," "hurting," "sluggish" or "slow."

In this week's American Sauce, we nail down the specifics on our economic health: income, spending, GDP and jobs (now and future). And we look at a core problem, still: housing. We'll introduce you to a woman who's part of the next large group to face foreclosure (conventional loans on moderate homes). She personally demonstrates that all that talk of loan modifications has led to a tangled system of obstacles.

Click here to listen, or keep reading for a quick, bulleted list.



American Sauce's economic check-up:

* Personal bankruptcies: 1.5 million individuals applied for bankruptcy in the year between Sept. 2009 and Sept. 2010. That was a nearly 14 percent increase from the year before.

* Business bankruptcies: 58,322 businesses applied for bankruptcy in that time. Notably, that was a slight decrease of less than 1 percent from the year before.

* Bankruptcy stats: Look through them for yourself at http://www.uscourts.gov/Statistics/BankruptcyStatistics.aspx

* Unemployment rate: 9.8 percent in November, up from 9.6 percent in October.

* Those on unemployment rolls: 15.1 million people.

* Those not counted in unemployment rate: Up to 5 million. That includes as many as 3.5 million who have maxed out unemployment benefits and 1.3 million workers who have stopped filing paperwork for unemployment benefits, saying they do not believe they can find a job and have given up.

NOTE: there are no reliable figures on how many "99'ers" exist. From the Labor Department, we know 3.5 million people have fallen off the unemployment rolls but we do not know how many of them have found a job and how many are still unemployed.

* Unemployment Stats: Here are the latest – http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

* Personal income: Went up slightly in November, rising 0.5 percent in November.

* Personal spending: Also increased last month, going up 0.4 percent.

* Income/spending stats can be found here from the Bureau of Economic Advisors: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm

* New home sales: Dropped another 8.1 percent in October. It was a drop of 28.5 percent from a year before and a plummet of 80 percent from the height of the housing boom.

* New home prices: Average sales price was $194,900 in October, 13.9 percent lower than in September.

* Existing home sales: Slid 2.2 percent in October.

* Existing home prices: Averaged $170,000 in October.

* More on new home numbers from CNNMoney: http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/24/real_estate/new_home_sales/index.htm

* More on existing homes from CNNMoney: http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/23/real_estate/home_sales_slow/index.htm

For more stats, including the latest figure on Gross Domestic Product, click here for this week's American Sauce podcast:

...statistics show that despite Countrywide's representations, a much higher percentage of borrowers did not occupy the mortgaged properties:

...Overall, 18.3% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 10% higher than was claimed in the offering materials, and 6% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 25% higher than what was claimed in the offering circular. This overvaluation affected numerous statistics in the Offering Materials...For instance, the Offerings each made representations about the percent
of loans that had LTVs higher than 90% provide the lender little value
cushion to protect against borrower default and loss upon foreclosure.
However, the AVM indicates that a much higher percentage of the loans
had LTVs higher than 90%.

The Offerings uniformly represented that none of the Mortgage Loans that collateralized the Certificates had LTV ratios greater than 100 percent, meaning that the size of the loan is greater than the value of the property. (aka: being "underwater") Loans with over 100% LTV afford the lender no equity cushion and leave the lender with inadequate collateral from the outset of a loan. Allstate's analysis has found that, despite Countrywide's representations, a substantial number of Mortgage Loans had LTVs greater than 100%, as follows:

Allstate has also analyzed the weighted average LTV of the Mortgage Loans in each pool and has found that the weighted average LTV was also overstated, because of the overstatement of individual Mortgage Loans within the pools.

All these lies, and much, much more, can be found detailed in the filing below. At the risk of cheeiness, this is just a sampling of the sampling. And it demonstrates as all those who purchased loans from CFC/BofA that were repped to be in order, will find, following sampling or loan by loan analysis, that Brian Moynihan's bank committed acts of fraud after fraud, putting not only itself, but its underwriter counsel at risk time again. In fact, if there was anything remotely close to a working legal system in the US, what happened to Lehman's Repo 105 auditor, E&Y, should promptly befall every single underwriter's counsel which is jointly liable in representing that the data set forth by the underwriter is correct. But just as importantly, it means that of the hundreds of hundreds billions in loans sold by BofA to hapless dimwits, arguably the bulk of it is now subject to putbacks, and is of far worse quality than previously expected. It also means that the GSEs: those infinite receptacles of mortgage biohazard, are lying consistently when representing the state of their own books, which are likely orders of magnitude worse than the monthly status reports will indicate. 

This is just starting to get interesting.

The full Allstate filing which is a must read for everyone is presented below.

 

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Women Making Money

The last time she hooked up, she said, it was because “his personality put me at ease. He was straight to the point. He asked me the same questions I was asking him.” Plus, she liked that his real name matched his email address. From there, she was able to find his Facebook page, with numerous photographs. When Ashley (not her real name) finally had her rendezvous, she took down his license plate number and texted it to herself on a second cellphone, which she’d left on her kitchen table along with a note for friends and family, just in case she didn’t return. And then she collected her $500 an hour.

Welcome to prostitution in the Internet era.

Fifteen years ago, it was hard to find hookers on the Web. Now they are all over the place. The Internet has given rise to a new generation of sex workers who have more autonomy than ever before, and by and large enjoy a level of safety not shared by their street-walking sisters. Nonetheless, Internet prostitution is a risky business, and those hazards were underscored this month when the bodies of four women were found decomposing on the side of the road near Jones Beach on Long Island. Attention quickly turned to two missing call girls who’d been using Craigslist as their primary means of making connections. It turned out that neither woman was among the victims, but the grisly discovery put an unwanted spotlight back on Craigslist, which in September took down its U.S. erotic-services directory under pressure from law enforcement and human-rights groups. Last week, it pulled its worldwide adult-services ads. (Though Craigslist has managed to get most sex solicitation off its site, it hasn’t completely succeeded, as Ashley can tell you.)

David Henry Sterry has numerous stories about how the lives of prostitutes have changed in the past decade. Last year, he edited Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitutes Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money, an anthology that received a stamp of approval from The New York Times. He’s also a former sex worker himself, a rare example of a man who earned his living pleasing older women. (The only common thread connecting his clients, he said, was that they all had money and “most felt powerless because they were housewives, bored, and rich.”)

One of the women who appeared in his book called herself Kat, worked on Craigslist, and had an elaborate screening process in which she would force potential johns to drive up to the location of the assignations, get out of their cars, and stand there while she examined them from a nearby window with a pair of binoculars. Kat refused to talk to anyone with a blocked number. She also chose not to text. If you sent her a photo of your genitalia, a common mistake among potential johns, you were out of contention. “She had developed what she called a ‘hooker’s radar,’” Sterry said. “The tone of the guy’s voice, his walk, she had learned how to instantly size someone up. And if the guy looked sketchy or too much like a toad, she would stop returning his phone calls.”

“People who think they’re going to eliminate prostitution or violence in prostitution by shutting down Craigslist are wildly deluded,” said David Henry Sterry.

Another Internet-era phenomenon that’s friendly to business and helps boost security for prostitutes and johns alike is “the mixer.” This is a cocktail party-like event at which “hobbyists”—the current euphemism of choice for high-spending porn aficionados obsessed with bonking their favorite screen stars—get to meet potential dates. No sex typically takes place on site, explained Daily Beast contributor Richard Abowitz, a chronicler of life in Las Vegas, where the parties frequently occur. “It’s more like a job fair,” he said.

This is the final in a three-part series. Read Part 1 here and Part II here.

In the previous two parts of this series I have recounted the multiple frauds perpetrated by MERS: it defrauded counties out of billions of dollars of reporting fees, it defrauded homeowners by destroying documents that provide a clear chain of title -- facilitating its foreclosure frauds, and it defrauded securities investors by failing to adhere to PSAs (pooling and servicing agreements) -- making their securities invalid. Now, in order to cover the trail of deceit MERS and the banks are stealing homes as fast as they can in the hope that no one will notice the fraud. Meanwhile, they are destroying real estate values and adding to the headwinds that are pushing our economy into the first great depression of the 21st century.

In this piece, let us step back and examine the big picture to answer the question: Why did Wall Street create this crisis? For the answer, we have got to go back several decades. I do not want to give a long-winded history lesson, but it is necessary to understand the transformation that has taken place since the 1960s. Back then, the financial system was small, simple, regulated and relatively unimportant. Banks made commercial loans; thrifts made home loans; and Wall Street handled investment finance. Households had jobs and rising wages so they didn't need to go into debt to finance rising consumption. With robust economic growth, each generation could expect to have roughly twice the living standard of the previous generation.

Things began to change in the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s as growth slowed, as median real wages stopped rising, and as financial institutions were unleashed to expand activities into new areas. At first households coped with stagnant incomes by putting more family members to work (especially women), but gradually they began to rely on debt. Banks created new kinds of credit and gradually expanded their views as to who is creditworthy. I can still remember one conference I attended at which someone from the financial sector proudly announced that the banks had discovered an untapped market for credit cards -- the "mentally retarded". The argument was that this group would be just as safe as college students, since parents would bail them out in order to avoid having their kids' credit ratings suffer. This was not a joke -- it was a business model.

With slower economic growth, it had become harder for American firms to make profits. They shifted their focus from actually producing goods and services to making money on financial products. GM and GE became primarily financial institutions that happened to make cars and light bulbs as a sideline business. Yes, you could buy a car made by GM, but the company made most of its profits on the auto loan. (It then branched out to -- you betcha -- mortgage backed securities and all other manner of risky assets. I hope readers understand that that is what the "auto" bail-out was all about.) As everyone got into the act of indiscriminate lending, banks found their own business dwindling -- so they had to continually innovate with new products and to find new activities to finance.

The economy became "financialized", as financial institutions inserted their activities into virtually every aspect of American life. Health care morphed into financialized health "insurance", given a huge boost by "Obamacare" legislation that for the first time in US history mandates that Americans turn their incomes over to private financial firms. Even death became financialized with "peasant insurance" (employers take out contracts on employees) and "death settlements" (life insurance policies on those with fatal illnesses are securitized and sold to gamblers betting on early death). Retailers increased the financialization of consumer goods -- they couldn't get enough profit on the sales or even on the consumer credit, so they offered "extended protection" on everything from TVs to toasters and then tried to scare customers with an unusual marketing pitch: the products they carry are so shoddily produced that insurance is necessary to protect the purchase.

Every kind of debt or insurance product became a financial commodity, packaged into a security and sliced and diced and bought and sold. At the same time, "insurance" (often in the form of credit default swaps) replaced underwriting (credit assessment) to make these loans more marketable. And then the credit default swap insurance, itself, became a way to bet on the death of securities, companies, and even nations. It is not a stretch to say that Wall Street's capitalists returned to their roots as "undertakers" (the old term for entrepreneurs), with death becoming their main line of business.

Debt grew. In 2007 just before the crisis hit, total US debt reached five times national income -- the previous record was just three times income, a level reached in the propitious year of 1929. In other words, each dollar of income had to service five dollars of debt. In the decade previous to the crisis, American households spent more than their incomes in almost every year. For every debtor created there is a creditor. Not surprisingly, creditors are richer than debtors. Over time, the proportion of Americans who were debtors grew, and the proportion of creditors fell. The rich got richer and every one else either got poorer or at best just managed to break even. In other words, the debt train fueled a massive redistribution of income and wealth to the very top. It is no coincidence that inequality in the US has returned to its previous peak -- reached, not coincidentally also in 1929. That is what President Bush actually meant when he talked about the ownership society -- a society in which a small elite would own everything.

Banks became giant one-stop casinos that facilitated every kind of crazy bet. They would make a loan to you, but then simultaneously securitize it to sell-on to an investor plus place a bet that you would default on your loan so that the security would go bad. For a fee, they'd let a hedge fund manager choose the riskiest loans to bundle into a sure-to-fail financial product that they would then sell to their own customers. And then they'd join the hedge fund in betting against their customers. The more loans they made, the more fees they collected; the more bad loans they made, the more bets they would win. The more debt they piled on households, the greater their profits; riskier debt meant even higher fees and more defaults and thus greater wins from gambling. Prospective death was a booming good business for our undertakers.

America became "Bubbleonia" -- with a "bubblicious" economy that moved from one bubble and crash to another: A commercial real estate bubble and crash in the 1980s that killed the thrifts; a series of developing country debt bubbles and crashes in the 1980s and 1990s fueled in part by American banks; a US stock market bubble and crash in 1987; the dot-com bubble and crash at the end of the 1990s; and then the US real estate and global commodities markets bubbles and crashes this decade.

Increasingly, the bubbles were managed cooperatively by Wall Street and Washington. Chairman Greenspan and President Clinton made a pact with Robert Rubin's Wall Street to pump up "new economy" internet stocks through "irrational exuberance". When that failed, Greenspan extolled the benefits of adjustable rate mortgages, while President Bush hawked the "ownership society". Wall Street turned America's residential real estate sector into the world's biggest casino -- $20 trillion worth of property that could serve as the basis for many tens of trillions of dollars of bets. Bernanke promoted the bubble by assuring markets that America was enjoying the "great moderation" -- a new era in which stability dominates -- and that in any case, the Fed would protect markets in the case of any hiccups.

The home finance food chain was fundamentally changed to facilitate the rapid pace of gambling that would be necessary to feed Wall Street's appetite. Real estate appraisers were paid more to over-value homes; mortgage brokers were rewarded with higher fees to induce borrowers to accept unfavorable terms; mortgage lenders got better fees for riskier loans; securitizers wanted more junky loans to increase the projected returns spit out by their own internal models that presume more risk is always rewarded with higher profits; credit raters got paid to rate trash as AAA -- as safe as treasuries; and investors shunned "plain vanilla" securities in favor of risky structured products that were so complex no one could understand them -- so that they could have any value desired. No worries, AIG sold "insurance" on all this garbage!

That homeowners would default on the unaffordable mortgages was a foregone conclusion. Indeed, it was the desired result of the business model. The preferred marketed loans tell it all: Subprimes! NINJAs! Liar's loans! Washington helpfully changed bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for a homeowner to get out of mortgage debt in preparation for the wave of defaults that everyone knew would result. Wall Street would get the homes, and homeowners would still have to pay on the debts. Then the foreclosed property would be resold, with more fees for everyone in the finance food chain, and the whole process through to default would begin again -- a nice virtuous cycle.

It might seem strange that banks would actually want default. But that is the beauty of a casino -- the house always wins, and homebuyers were gambling against the casino. On the way up, fees are collected, and on the way down fees are still collected on the foreclosures and as houses are resold. And if anything should go wrong, Washington backstops the casinos.

But it was necessary to streamline foreclosure to make it as fast and cheap as possible. Enter MERS -- another link in the food chain -- created by the banks in 1997 in preparation for the boom and bust. MERS was set up to be a foreclosure mill. It would break the centuries-old custom that protected property rights by requiring every sale of property to be publicly recorded, and requiring that any creditor claiming a right to foreclose to demonstrate clear title, with an endorsed note in the creditor's name and a record at the county office showing transfer of the property.

The banksters did not want to go through all that paperwork, and needed to subvert the transparency that would shine light on their crimes. Hence, they set up a fraudulent shell corporation that claimed to be the mortgagee; while the original sale would be recorded at the county office, subsequent sales and purchases of the mortgage would be recorded only by an "electronic handshake" between two "members" of MERS. Even that record was considered by the banksters to be purely voluntary -- MERS did not require members to actually record transactions. If they found it more convenient to conceal the transfers, that was permitted.

MERS even farmed out its name -- for 25 bucks anyone could buy the MERS trademark and use it. And in a touching display of fraternity, everyone got to be a certified vice president of MERS. (Sort of like those 1950s marketing campaigns advertised on cereal boxes -- for 25 cents, you too can be a Super Fraudster with a nifty membership ring and all the benefits of membership in an international criminal conspiracy!)

MERS deliberately undermined the legality of the loans and the records. Homeowners could no longer search the public records to find out who actually held their mortgage -- the record would show MERS as owner, but MERS was a shell corporation with no real employees. It was not a servicer, so the homeowner could not make mortgage payments to the purported owner. As a result, checks were sent to the wrong servicers; servicers credited the wrong accounts; servicers claimed delinquencies on homeowners who never missed a payment, and piled late fees and delinquencies on the wrong borrowers; sheriffs were sent to break down the doors of the wrong houses, and threw belongings out on the street in front of homes on which there was no mortgage at all. MERS purposely created the mess, at the behest of banksters who do not want mere legal technicalities to get in the way of stealing homes. The undermining of the public records was not a mistake -- it was MERS's business model, created by the member banks.

And MERS helped banksters to defraud securities holders. Banks not only separated the mortgages from the notes, but they even destroyed the notes as they entered the mortgages into MERS's electronic data base. MERS told servicers that it is "customary" practice to retain notes, not to endorse them over to REMIC trustees as required both by federal tax law and by the PSAs that govern the trusts. This made the securities a "nullity" -- as the Supreme Court ruled over a hundred years ago -- because a mortgage without a note is unenforceable in foreclosure. At best, the securities are unsecured debt, with no real property behind them.

In any case, the mortgages put into the trusts did not meet the representations made to investors -- so even if the notes had been properly endorsed over to the trusts, the securities could be turned back to the banks. By creating a completely fraudulent electronic registry system -- in which data would be entered only if banks found it convenient to do so, and in which data could be modified at any time by any member of MERS -- MERS made it easy to conceal the securities frauds. Destruction or forgery of the paperwork was absolutely necessary to cover the trail of fraud from origination of the mortgage to securitization and finally to the inevitable foreclosure. Again, destruction of documents was not a mistake. It was the business model.

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personal finance budgets

Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

Mint has partnered with educational publisher Scholastic to develop materials that parents and teachers can use to teach children the ins and outs of personal finance management. The materials includes lesson plans as well as an interactive game, to teach children money management, budgeting and goals.

For example, the program teaches children the concept of compound interest with real-life math problems, and encourages children to set goals and budgets with their own current work opportunities (i.e. babysitting).

Mint says the curriculum will be expanded to 30,000 classrooms nationwide early next year. Considering the state of the economy and credit, teaching children financial literacy and sounds personal finance practices at an early edge is an incredibly important initiative. In terms of branding, this is a big win for Mint, which can start building awareness of its tools among students at an early age.

I've mentioned this piece a number of times now, from Roger Altman and Richard Haass, "The Consequences of Fiscal Irresponsibility." The introduction provides the background to America's massive fiscal overhang, and then this:

It is important to understand the impact of all this debt. As it grows, interest rates inevitably rise. As they do, the U.S. government's annual interest expense -- the cost of borrowing money -- will rise from one percent of GDP to four percent or more. At that point, interest expense would rival defense expenditures. And it would exceed all domestic discretionary spending, a category that includes spending on infrastructure, education, energy, and agriculture -- in effect, anything other than entitlements and national security. The U.S. Treasury would need to borrow a staggering $5 trillion every single year, both to finance deficits and to refinance maturing debt.

Yet the real outlook for deficits and debt is much worse than these forecasts. For one thing, the debt that the United States effectively guarantees but that is not included in official totals is almost equal to the Treasury Department's stated $9 trillion total. In particular, the debt of government-sponsored enterprises is another $8 trillion. The biggest of these are the essentially bankrupt housing finance agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have been placed into federal conservatorship, and for all practical purposes, their debt is equivalent to U.S. Treasury debt. The American taxpayer stands fully behind it.

State and local governments also owe huge amounts, on the order of $3 trillion. And again, Washington indirectly stands behind much or all of it. This sector is deeply distressed, with the largest state, California, recently issuing IOUs. Moreover, many state and municipal pension systems use an antiquated pay-as-you-go funding approach, which has left them underfunded by another $1 trillion.

The post-2020 fiscal outlook is downright apocalyptic, for two reasons. First, the aging of the U.S. population will drive sharp increases in health care costs (and at the same time, more Americans will be retired). Second, federal interest expense will rise exponentially, as the Treasury's borrowing costs grow with the debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that official federal debt (excluding government-sponsored enterprises) could hit 110 percent of GDP by 2025 and 180 percent by 2035. Adjusting these forecasts for the inevitably slower growth that would accompany such quickly rising debt levels means hitting those stratospheric ratios sooner.

Why is this scenario so dangerous? One reason is that a large amount of federal borrowing would eat up the stock of private capital that is available to finance investment. A higher and higher percentage of personal savings would be diverted to purchasing government debt and away from productivity-enhancing investments in equipment and technology. This would shrink the base of productive capital and flatten GDP and family incomes. As more and more debt piled up, growth would slow and Americans' standard of living would fall.

In addition, interest expense would become so large as to crowd out whole categories of federal spending. Budgets for research, education, and infrastructure, to name but three examples, would inevitably decline in inflation-adjusted terms. Washington's capacity to respond to domestic crises, such as the recent recession, would also fade. All of this would further undermine families' incomes.

More at the link.

My problem with this piece is that it's way too pessimistic, even for a problem of this magnitude. There's no discussion of how tax receipts rise dramatically during periods of robust economic growth. So should the administration agree to the extention of the Bush tax cuts from 2003, it's possible that a surge in GDP --- with a boom in individual and corporate profits --- could send a significant windfall of revenue to the treasury. This was indeed happening by the last couple of years of the Bush administration, and it's likely to happen over the next few years, now that the GOP has retaken the House. See the commentary at Wall Street Journal, "Liberal Tax Revolt."

And refer to my bullish comments from Saturday on the international aspects of coming growth domestically: "The World in China's Orbit?"

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Making Internet Money

State of the indy music industry looks rosy, so why all the doom-and-gloom about music?

Cory Doctorow at 11:30 PM Wednesday, Dec 1, 2010 

TuneCore's Jeff Price has a six-part series analyzing the financial state of the music industry from the point of view of an independent artist. Price offers compelling reasons to believe that although the labels are experiencing a severe downturn, artists as a group are earning more than ever, thanks to the Internet.

I have a feeling that the record industry's rejoinder to this would be, yes, more artists are earning some money from their music, and all told, there's more money going to artists than ever before, but there are fewer opportunities for an artist to sign up to a label like ours that controls so much of the distribution channel that we can guarantee large sums of money for these lottery winners.

In other words, the music industry today is much less winner-take-all, with the benefits diffused to a larger pool of artists at the expense of the few who did so well under the old system. This is what I mean when I say a good copyright system is one that encourages the broadest-possible engagement in culture: more music, from more musicians, reaching more people, at more price-points, in more formats. It's a win for free expression and for art, but it's a loss for some artists and the institutions that supported them.

I don't celebrate those losses: it's terrible to think of people who loved and lived for music losing their jobs (most of the people at labels aren't greedy tools deciding to sue 40,000 music fans; greedy tool-dom is confined to a few powerful decisionmakers). It's sad to think of the tiny pool of musicians who did so well taking a loss (though before we weep for them too much, remember that yesterday's winners are well situated to get even richer from merch, performance and licensing, even without the archaic recorded music industry and its shiny bits of plastic).

But copyright's purpose should be to get as much art made and available as possible -- it's not a full-employment scheme for administrators and marketing people and record-store clerks; it's not a lottery that makes millionaires out of a couple of lucky artists. There's nothing wrong with it doing those things, but they aren't why it's there: it's there to fuel expression and art.

The reality is:

* More musicians are making money off their music now then at any point in history.

* The cost of buying music has gotten lower but the amount of money going into the artist's pocket has increased.

* There are more people listening, sharing, buying, monetizing, stealing and engaging with music than at any other point in history.

* There are more ways for an artist to get heard, become famous and make a living off their music now than at any point in the history of this planet.

* Technology has made it possible for any artist to get distribution, to get discovered, to pursue his/her dreams with no company or person out there making the editorial decision that they are not allowed "in".

* The majority of music now being created and distributed is happening outside of the "traditional" system.

And to reiterate, sales are up...

Seeing that the Nielsen stats are readily accessible and accepted as legitimate, why then are we left with the impression that music sales and revenue are down? The simple answer is album sales and overall gross revenue from music sales (CD and downloads) are down. The increase in music purchases comes from the people buying individual songs. The decrease in revenue comes from a $0.99 song costing less than a $16.98 physical album as well as fewer purchases of physical CDs.

The State of The Music Industry & the Delegitimization of Artists

(via EFF Deep Links)

(Image: Diesel Sweeties tee)

Twitter launched a number of new features for its website today that allow more companies to embed their content in the site’s right-hand media pane, making the site feel even more “app-like.” Coincidentally enough, while Twitter was making this announcement Google was launching Chrome OS, and talking about all the great apps that users can download from the Chrome store — many of which cost money to download and have features that don’t work fully unless you are using a Chrome browser or the Chrome OS. One is about the web and the other is about apps.

Obviously, Twitter has apps too — it has an iPhone ( aapl) app, an iPad app and an Android app, and may even be working on a Chrome OS app. But the company has also been spending a lot of time and resources on its website and adding new features to it, including the ability to embed Slideshare presentatations, Instagram photos, iTunes links shared via Ping, YouTube videos, Rdio tunes and other multimedia content. The new version of the site (which is still being rolled out to users) even feels app-like in the way content slides out into the media pane. But you don’t have to download it and you don’t have to pay for it.

The features that Google’s Chrome OS apps have to offer are nice as well, and the user interface in many cases is very slick, but they still represent new apps that users have to find and download from a new app store, just as they have to download apps for their iPads or iPhones, or their Android devices. Everyone seems to want to have an app or an app store — even Mozilla is apparently developing one — in part because of the monetization potential that many see, not just from users paying to download the application, but also from in-app purchases or subscriptions or upgrades.

So what happened to just using the Internet and the regular web? The father of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, wrote recently in Scientific American about the rise of the walled-garden approach to applications, and his concern about how users are being restricted by proprietary platforms, with limited abilities to link or share content, both of which are at the heart of the web’s power — and he is right to be concerned. In some ways, the web seems to be getting subsumed by a flurry of different platforms and app stores.

One of the powerful things about HTML5, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted in his talk following the Chrome OS launch, is that it allows developers to produce rich, interactive websites that look and feel like applications. So why don’t more companies take the approach that Twitter is taking, and develop better websites instead of focusing on building apps for a dozen different stores? Obviously apps have a number of benefits — monetization through downloads being one of them — but there are a ton of benefits to just having a better website as well, and one is that anyone can use it without having to pay for it.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):

• Why Google Should Fear the Social Web


• Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners


• What We Can Learn From the Guardian’s Open Platform

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