Gerry Studds and the Librarian

"Everybody does that," my wife tells me in a warmly dismissive tone, that lets me know that I needn't worry. The warmth is for me. The dismissal is for my needless worry.

I don't use bookmarks, you see. And being a true child of the sixties, in the days before Barnes & Noble, when we got our books from the library, I know deep down inside that good people use bookmarks. We used to get them as gifts. But that might just be a New England thing.

Our house has not a single built-in book shelf. For me, this is even worse than not having a basement, which is the feature of our house that I usually complain about. But in truth, I don't care so much about the absent basement, because I know that it would just be a place to hide all of the junk that presently accumulates in the garage, where I am at least occasionally forced to clear it out. Who knows how long I could go ignoring a messy basement? Years, no doubt.

But bookshelves are a comfort, and I crave them. Filled with an odd variety of old textbooks and well worn paperbacks and unread mysteries of uncertain origin, they provide a feeling of refuge and personal history, with a promise of quiet and cozy companionship on a cold winter day. My Mom's old house even had them in the bathrooms.

The house I grew up in had built in bookshelves, and my parents had hopefully filled them with three sets of encyclopedias, each very different from the other. Britannica, the fanciest and largest, The Book of Knowledge, simpler to read, and People and Places, full of vivid and beautiful color pictures of the wildly different cultures that still existed in much of the world back then. As a boy I would use them to make my school reports, basically just rewording the encyclopedia's article into my own scrawlish handwriting. I always used Britannica. The others seemed too simple and I loved complexity. Later, after being shamed into using multiple sources, I would use them all. Sometimes I would just randomly read articles in Britannica, imagining that this is what Abraham Lincoln would have done.

The thing about encyclopedias is that they tend to be really well written. They're not hard to read at all. They look imposing, but they are really just like a giant newspaper or magazine, except that you can always find an article about something that interests you.

So, I'm in the kitchen of my shelfless house with the mail this past weekend, and there is a book box in the mail. Someone sent us a book. I like getting books in the mail. They were the first things I use to order from e-bay, before I moved onto sailboat paintings, ski equipment, and timeshares. But I digress. As I open the bookbox, ignoring my wife's urgent announcement that it's for her, I realize that we have received volume "A" of an encyclopedia! It's The Book of Knowledge! Well, well. My wife, who sternly advises unauthorized callers to our home that WE ARE ON THE DO-NOT-CALL-LIST AND YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW, is red-faced as she hurries to interrupt my brain's simmering stew of mockery with a rapid-fire explanation of "what happened" on the phone that resulted in us getting one encyclopedic volume a month for the rest of our lives, no doubt at a very reasonable cost, automatically billed to our credit card for our convenience. And we can cancel anytime.

But I'm not really concerned about that. I'm just looking at the book and thinking, "I can't believe they still publish these things." Then I think, stupidly, "Who buys these things?"

"Where would we keep it?" I ask as the conversation has turned onto whether we send volume "A" back or not. She's clearly deep into buyer's remorse by now, but I'm thinking this may be just the catalyst we need to get some bookshelves installed. We have a local guy who does great carpentry for us. His name is Hiro. Like the old Emporer of Japan. Only not a genocidal maniac, as far as we know.

I've been scoping out spots for bookshelves since we moved in, and I have five good ones selected. So now I'm sort of onboard with the encyclopedia idea. But even though I never actually got to ridicule her for being seduced by an encyclopedia salesman over the phone, my wife is so embarrassed by having been caught red-handed that she's insisting she'll send it back. We'll see.

What has this to do with Gerry Studds? Not a lot.

Gerry Studds was my congressman when I was a teenager. He represented the 10th district in Massachusetts, where I grew up. He was an odd man, smart, reserved, dorky and cross-eyed. Everybody I knew in the 10th district loved him. We were proud that he was so smart and that he really cared about us. He dove into fishing and marine issues, which were very important to the district, that included Cape Cod and the Islands. He had a sex scandal with a male Congressional Page that revealed that he was gay. Even though he was a 40 something single man who lived in Provincetown, the Gay Mecca, this surprised some people, but not a lot. But we all rallied around him because he was our dorky gay Congressman, and people who you would not expect it from, like fishermen and carpenters, seemed to be relieved that he was not leading the lonely, ascetic life that he seemed destined for. So this led to a now old, and still bad, joke about the use of bookmarks and Gerry Studds getting in trouble with the Congressional librarian for not using them. He kept bending over the pages. Ho ho ho. Massachusetts people may love you, but that doesn't mean they'll be nice to you.

So we are back to bookmarks, which are really just an example of my need to find something to worry about at all times. My wife knows that my mind will feel guilty for bending over the pages, so she tells me it's ok. Oddly, this works and I stop worrying for a while. I'm thinking that maybe having the encyclopedia would be good for the kids. There's something about reading a book that's qualitatively different than reading the same stuff from a computer. Of course, I could say the same thing about cave drawings. I wonder if I'm just being nostalgic.

I still want to get some bookshelves, though.

Home Sweet Home Mortgage - Opportunity Awaits

Where The Economy and Politics Collide

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!



Last Saturday I forecasted a bifurcated (hah!) fix for the mortgage mess and got an interesting comment on the micro piece. (I love a good comment - Thanks, Anonymous!) The micro piece was designed to alleviate the suffering of individual homeowners / mortgage borrowers. Upon re-reading what I wrote, it appears to make little if any sense, even if I know what I meant. So, let's have more mortgage fun and elaborate here.

"But why?" you may ask. Isn't repeating political gossip more fun? Well, yes. But I don't really know anything right now, and I have figured something out, I think. Everybody has been complaining that the three remaining Presidential Candidates haven't said anything really meaningful to address the current economic problems, especially as they affect homeowners.

Note to self - new reality tv show: The Candid Date. Check availability of Tori Spelling.

So, remembering that stupid old platitude, "There are no problems, only opportunities!" I've spotted an opportunity. The candidate who comes up with a workable solution for underwater homeowners while also benefiting our friends in finance will win lots of political brownie points. So, I'll elaborate on this part of the proposal.

The way a mortgagor/homeowner gets out of a bad mortgage that he cannot afford is to refinance into a better one, meaning one with lower monthly payments. But he can't, because (check all that apply):

1. He's already late with payments, so his credit score is in the toilet.
2. He skipped paying other bills to pay the mortgage, so his credit score is in the toilet.
3. He never really had the income he claimed when he got his "no doc" loan, and can't qualify for a new one because nobody gives "no doc" loans anymore.
4. The market value on his house has gone down, and he owes more than it's worth.
5. Other: _________________________

This means that his mortgage loan, which the originator may have sold for 98 to 102 cents on the dollar when it was first made, may only fetch 65 cents on the dollar in the secondary mortgage market today. And that's if it's current on payments. So, basically whoever is holding the loan is sitting on a big loss. The holder is the person or company who bought the loan and is owed the money.

So this knucklehead who bought a house that he couldn't afford, with a mortgage loan that he lied to get, with a payment that he can't make, is in big trouble. I know what you're thinking, "Boo fucking hoo." Well, yes, there is that element. It's what us laymen call, "That's what you get for being a dumbass" but bankers and such are calling "moral hazard," a term that usually comes up in the context of risk management and insurance.

Eureka! A clue. This is an issue of risk management, which is resolved through insurance. That's not complicated! Right. This was figured out years ago when the mbs business first started, and bond insurors stepped in to insure the mortgage backed securities. The two biggest are MBIA and Ambac. They are called "mono-line insurors" for reasons that escape me now, but you won't see All-State or Liberty Mutual doing this stuff. Surprise, now MBIA and Ambac appear to be having financial soundness issues, which is death for an insurance company. But for now we don't care, because they added no direct benefit to the homeowner / borrower anyway.

The government will have to step in and bail out homeowners. Why? Because it is an election year. The problem is that if you are bailing out a debtor, you are really bailing out his creditor, because the creditor will end up with the money in the end. But, while we may have some sympathy for a dumbass who borrowed too much or took out a bad mortgage, we have none for the supposedly sophisticated bankers who lent him the money.

So the challenge becomes finding a way to help the homeowner without bailing out the lenders and investment houses. Here's how:

1. Set up a temporary program - The 2008 Emergency Mortgage Program (TEMP)


2. Any homeowner automatically qualifies.


3. Only owner occupied homeloans qualify.


4. The government program provides mortgage insurance on 60% of the value of the home.


5. A new appraisal is required.


6. The interest rate will be about 1% higher than market rate. Let's say 7% 30 year fixed. This is so the TEMP program will not compete with market mortgage providers.


7. Participating lenders must accept all qualifying loans. Maybe they are even assigned through a pooled application process.


8. Participating lenders give an 80% LTV mortgage, meaning the 20% of the home value that is uninsured is true lender's risk capital.


9. The prior holder is required to provide a loan for the remainder of the balance owed on it's prior loan, either through a second mortgage loan on identical terms as the first, or through an unsecured personal loan at 2% higher interest rate with the same maturity as the new mortgage loan.


10. The TEMP program can provide a standard set of terms and forms for use in the program.


11. The key is that the homeowner can participate without any approvals from either the new lender or the current holder of the mortgage.

What is great about this plan is not just that it allows troubled homeowners to refinance. But it forces servicers of troubled loans to rewrite delinquent loans that they may otherwise be contractually required to foreclose on by the terms of their servicing agreements. They are off the hook.

And it is chock-full of new lending opportunities. Most of the actual work here can be done through private (as in non-government) companies.

Barack? Are you listening? It's a plan that people will love! Do you hear me Barack?

Secrets & Wives

I had an interesting conversation about "man talk" over the weekend. And it revealed a significant divergence of views. Should a man keep confidences of others from his wife?

My friend thinks so. He's dismayed that others do not. He's not alone. The "you can't tell your wife this" is an introduction to confession and self-gossip that I have heard many times. Many men, indiscreet men, either presume or feel free to impose a condition of confidence keeping on the audiences to their ill advised blabbing.

I've learned to waive them off quickly when I sense this coming. Or, in some circumstances I'll just let it be known that I do, in fact, tell my wife everything. I really don't know if I am in the majority or the minority on this. But I definitely feel that it has alienated more than a few fellows.

Oh well. For me, one of the longer lasting joys of marriage is having someone, one person in the world, who knows everything about me, but still loves me anyway. Of course, she is legally required to. But still. This is what real intimacy with your wife is all about in the long run. Or with your husband, as the case may be.

I personally went the wife route, so that's how I think of these things. So, please indulge any gender specific references.

Many men crave a brotherly type of closeness with their friends, including the sharing of secrets and confidences. This is completely understandable. We all enjoy close friendships. But part of close friendship is respecting the marriage of your friends.

When I tell a friend something personal, I expect him to use discretion in not repeating it as idle gossip. But I always assume that his wife will know. And I know that my friends know the same thing about me. We respect each other's marriages, and each other's wives, enough to do this.

So, I find it annoying and somewhat offensive when someone, not a very close friend, presumes that I will keep some dirty little secret, especially from my wife. They are, in a very real way, asking me to lie for them. Forget it. Their fear is, of course, that once their secret is leaked to the "girl world" it will spread to their detriment. In practice this is almost always true. And, frankly, amusing.

As my dear grandmother used to say, "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on." I didn't ask for your dirty little secrets, I don't want them, and I'm not going to keep them. If I'm going to lie about something, it's not going to be for you.

So, watch your mouth.