Whose House Is It, Again?
Many of the foreclosees recently have bemoaned the fact that the evil bank “is taking my house.”
Let’s examine that statement for a moment. Legally, if your name’s on the deed the house is yours. But if there’s a sizable lien on the property, despite the indicia of ownership, you’re at someone else’s mercy. In this case, the mortgage lender. In other cases, the greedy municipal property tax bastards, but that’s another post entirely.
In ‘Puter’s world, if you don’t own the entirety of something, it’s not yours. ‘Puter doesn’t really own all of his house; the bank owns a large chunk by virtue of its mortgage lien. ‘Puter’s really a glorified rent-to-own customer, with all the burdens of ownership. Being generous, let’s say the threshold for claiming “I own my house” is fifty percent plus one dollar equity. How many of the current foreclosees can make that claim? ‘Puter guesses none.
‘Puter does have some sympathy for folk who did have equity in their houses, but got hammered by the collapse of real estate markets in hard hit areas. Still, there are relatively few people who have no equity in their houses today who had over fifty percent equity in their houses before the bubble burst.
So, whiners who are blaming the banks for foreclosing according to the terms of their loan documents, shut up and pay or get out. You knew or should have known the deal when you signed your note and mortgage. You made a bet, and you lost.
*Hello Kitty owns her house. And she’s coming for yours.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.