If I had a fridge anymore I'd stick this to it.

Great comic, but the last panel leaves the impression that the rich guy is broke too. That's not the way it works.

Oh to lose a fortune and be left with only a smaller fortune.

a rather witty, succinct, colorful presentation of the mechanics of securitization (although, technically, one must differentiate between those who capture the fees, i.e. lucky bastards, and those who end up holding the synthetic securities, i.e. poor bastards)

Mr. Bolling has boiled down a situation that most pretend is too complex to understand into its tragic, slapstick components.

Kudos on yet another strip well done. I only wish it were fiction.

Positive attitude always wins me over.

Lucky Ducky's triumphant return to Tom the Dancing Bug is one for the ages. The penultimate panel is one of the finest Mr. Bolling created. Pure genius.

As a duck keeper, I can vouch that ducks do not understand balloon mortgages. Every day when I scrub out their water tub with a wire brush and scatter feed I try to explain them, but Ritz only says "Quack" while Trixie broods and rustles her feathers.

Oh to lose a fortune and be left with only a smaller fortune.

You don't get it. A lot of these people have more money than most of us could ever figure out how to spend, but the one thing that bothers them most is the idea that they might not be making even more money as quickly as possible.

The bottom line is this; if airline pilots, ships’ captains, surgeons, truck drivers, engineers or almost anyone in the practice of any other industry or profession behaved with the same criminal negligence as the finance industry has behaved they would be jailed and have their qualifications cancelled. Vast numbers of people have been permanently impoverished by the despicable actions of these people yet few, if any, will ever be held accountable for their deeds.

Concise and brilliant cartoon! Makes me feel a little better about never having understood finance very well.

By the way, what does C.S.O.D. stand for? I know the others, but can't find a definition for this one.

the most succinct explanation for the fiasco that I've read yet.

Assuming of course Lucky Duck can read well enough to find a lawyer in the phone book.

You gotta love the populists who claim "How dare you expect me to know WTF I'm signing."

Have you all seen this?

http://malechem.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-foreclosure-crisis-really-happened.html

since he didn't have anything to begin with. It looks like he paid the first month's payment of $1.98, so that's all he "lost". He really didn't even lose that, since he got a great service for his money; a place to stay (besides under the bridge) for a month!

Yes, I must say that RB got it right. Most of the people that the government claims are "losing their homes" just like Lucky Ducky aren't losing anything. They did not have anything to begin with, and they paid less to live in the house than it should have cost them anyway. Sounds like a sweet deal on a certain period of low-rent living.

Add to that selling all of the home's fixtures and furnishings when you get the eviction notice, and you can actually make money on the deal, not to mention the "stress relief" of tearing the place up before you leave.

Lucky Duckies!

P.S. does anyone remember the HUD debacle in the 70's? This is just a rerun. My aunt ended up owning 90 or so of those "HUD Homes" after the slobs that the government installed into them were kicked out. She wasn't poor, she was smart! She got rich off the government's massive failure.

You must be the kind of person who tells someone when their father dies, "Awesome! Check out the size of the life insurance policy you got! That's more than your father ever would have given you. Plus, you get to sell all his possessions and make even more money off the deal! In my f'ed up cost-benefit analysis--you come out a winner. Sounds like a sweet deal."

While it's true those who start out underwater on their mortgages are essentially merely renting their home, when they go into forclosure they do suffer the black mark on their credit rating.

Of course, as a homeless person Mr. Ducky's credit rating wasn't that good to begin with, but still being a party to a massive loss like this will hurt him in the long run.

While many people, at the urging of their loan officers bought more house then they needed or could afford, they likely could have afforded a more modest home had they not been pushed to go all out on their purchase.

Of course, Buyer Beware is a wise rule of thumb any time you are asked to put your name to paper, but when a man in a fancy suit and an MBA tells you not to worry, many a man has been persuaded not to worry (much in the way that Madoff's excessivly wealthy "victims" were reassured).

The real fool in this of course is the bankers who, as people did during the dot com bubble, forgot the basic rules of business when they made their decisions.

With the reform of bankruptcy bankers felt they had rewritten the laws of loans, guaranteeing that they would get their money regardless of what they loaned. However the first rule of business is you can't squeeze blood for a stone.

So Mr. Ducky takes the black mark on his credit and Mr. Dog's business collapses.

A proper horacio alger ending to all those who thought they could get something for nothing.

You've never hired an expert to do anything you didn't you how to do yourself?

Is this one of those documentary cartoons, like "Waltz With Bashir"?

"P.S. does anyone remember the HUD debacle in the 70's? This is just a rerun."

If you believe that, you obviously don't understand a thing about what's actually happening.

Poco, if I understand your view, you think the problem is entirely caused by loans to people who can't afford their payments.

Can you explain how poor people taking mortgages they couldn't afford would sink 4 major investment banks?