The Housing Vultures - New York Review of Books

Rbrt

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/homewreckers-housing-vultures/


“ Homewreckers, Aaron Glantz’s recent book about the investors who exploited the 2008 financial crisis, is essential reading as we plunge headlong into a new financial catastrophe.”

“This is what the recovery from the 2008 crash looks like. People scrambling to pay rent for decrepit houses, houses that let everyone cash in except the occupants: the company that bought the home, the investors that financed that company, the bank that securitized the home’s debt, the bondholders who bought those securities, and the speculators who make bets on whether the bonds will pay out or not.

LewisBraham

Good article, although you can sum up all of its complexity with the simple maxim that has applied to both the last financial crisis and this one: socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. Interestingly and predictably, the CEO of Colony Capital which the article references was recently crying that his sector needed yet another bailout after exploiting the last one. Also, important the article points out how complicit both political parties have been in this heads- I-win-tails-you-lose capitalism that we have today. This is why I laugh every time anyone says things like “Obama was a socialist.” Anyone who looks at his record which this article describes realizes how far from the truth that really is. He was a centrist, and at times even conservative, Democrat. The government should have nationalized the failing banks and restructured all the loans to keep people in their houses. If you’re rich and play the capitalism game badly, you should lose the entirety of your investment and the government should take over, not bail you out and leave the average citizen out in the cold without a home.

Shostakovich

@LewisBraham: not for nothing, but when the COVID recession hit, I think banks should have "paid America back", by being forced to endure a mortgage holiday.

To your larger point, with which I largely agree, the broader issue we have is a culture of consumption -- quantity of life over quality of life, per se; and with it a culture of hype over humility which is a by product of our marketing culture -- which makes change difficult. BLM movement has a chance of having a residual impact here -- if companies don't co-opt it (like other forms of branded activism) for brand equity.

Anyway, banks should have been forced to have done the US a solid here. Faaaat chance of that.