Rule of Law Rules!
The United States Senate, of all august legislative bodies, recognized the importance of the rule of law to the business community. Today, in a shocking display of level-headedness, the Senate voted down President Obama’s pet project to permit bankruptcy courts to cram down existing residential mortgages.
Permitting courts to cram down residential mortgage debt would have further exacerbated the current crisis. If we believe the Obama Administration, tight credit is prolonging this downturn. However, if President Obama’s proposal had passed, banks would be even less likely to lend. Banks already risked (and got burned by) declining housing values turning loan to value ratios upside down. Banks did not, however, risk courts arbitrarily resetting terms and conditions in residential mortgages. Increasing uncertainty as to the value of a bank’s mortgage portfolio is no way to build investor confidence in the financial sector.
If President Obama’s scheme had become law, banks would have rationally lent only to high credit score borrowers in areas with stable property values. Millions of people would be shut out of the housing market, unable to borrow money, particularly folks in locales where property values rise (or fall) precipitously. ‘Puter’s looking at you California, Florida, Las Vegas and Michigan.
So, ‘Puter must say thanks to the United States Senate for doing its job, preserving the rule of law.
*Above, even a former Klan member and current Democrat Senator like Robert Byrd knows a bad law when he sees it.
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.