...Financial freedom is just saying..."We didn't put the Marijuana in the brownies and bake them, we just ate them.

Yummmm!

We didn't sell you that paraquat laced weed you demanded. We just collected your debt to the other guy.

The mob boss denies all culpability for the murders committed in his name.

the people at Salon who get paid to write these article don't know the difference between loan origination and loan servicing.

That's basically the difference between the Herb Tarleck0looking salesman who sells you the used Buick, and the guy who buys the lemon. Yeah, really similar.

But, I'd think good journalism would look up the ownership of these companies and see if they are the same (they sound like different entities of the same group.)

but, yeah, i'd look a little deeper for shared back office space, officers, website registration.... i suspect those entities are more familiar with one another than the letter implies.

In December 1863, Hugh McCulloch, then Comptroller of the Currency of the United States and later Secretary of the Treasury, addressed a letter to all national banks. Here are some of the paragraphs.

“Let no loans be made that are not secured beyond a reasonable contingency. Do nothing to foster and encourage speculation. Give facilities only to legitimate and prudent transactions. Never renew a note or bill merely because you may not know where to place the money with equal advantage if the paper is paid.

“Distribute your loans rather than concentrate them in a few hands. Large loans to a single individual or firm, although sometimes proper and necessary, are generally injudicious, and frequently unsafe. Large borrowers are apt to control the bank; and when this is the relation between a bank and its customers, it is not difficult to decide which in the end will suffer.

“If you doubt the propriety of discounting an offering, give the bank the benefit of the doubt and decline it; never make a discount if you doubt the propriety of doing so. If you have reasons to distrust the integrity of a customer, close his account. Never deal with a rascal under the impression that you can prevent him from cheating you. The risk in such cases is greater than the profit.

“Pay your officers such salaries as will enable them to live comfortably and respectably without stealing; and require of them their entire services. If an officer lives beyond his income, dismiss him; even if his excess of expenditures can be explained consistently with his integrity, still dismiss him. Extravagance, if not a crime, very naturally leads to crime.

“The capital of a bank should be reality, not a fiction; and it should be owned by those who have money to lend, and not by borrowers.

“Pursue a straightforward, upright, legitimate banking business. ‘Splendid financing’ is not legitimate banking, and ‘splendid financiers’ in banking are generally either humbugs or rascals.”

I seem to remember they were. Maybe it's a just a full faith problem with the lenders. But, as with most things in Florida, as soon as you do something a little bit complicated, the millionaire snow birds claim they were bamboozled, hornswoggled and cheated. What they expected was to live for free for the rest of their life and then when it doesn't turn out that way they cry 'old people stupid!!!'.

I often wonder how people can get to retirement age with several million dollars in their hand and then almost overnight claim they were too stupid NOT to give that nice man their life savings for no clear reason.

Smart Canadians are buying cheap US houses. And note that US houses are going down in value even as the US Dollar loses value. Not just to hell on a sled: to hell on a rocket sled.

Look at "Canadians Snapping Up American Homes"

By CHRIS KAHN, AP Business Writer

According to the info in this yellowbook link found with the aid of google:

http://www.yellowbot.com/reverse-mortgage-by-financial-freedom-senior-funding-corporation-brooklyn-ny.html

There is no independent listing for freedom-senior-funding-...

The reference goes right back to www.freedomfinancial.com

'senior-funding' is just a lacy nighty over mean and nasty freedom-financial

In the letter quoted, Financial Freedom's spokesperson said

"Moreover, it is the policy of Financial Freedom to require each purchased loan file to contain certification that the borrower received counseling from a HUD-approved counseling agency before the original loan was closed."

I distrust every statement these vampires make; this one appears as misleading as any. Question: Was the requirement for certification of counseling in force BEFORE the fit hit the shan? Or, as I suspect, is CYA the order of the day?

And thanks to you, Elie Elhadj, for your post on "quaint" banking ethical guidelines.

Nulla Sallus chimes in with

I often wonder how people can get to retirement age with several million dollars in their hand and then almost overnight claim they were too stupid NOT to give that nice man their life savings for no clear reason.

Perhaps, Nullus, these people aren't lawyers or accountants, just normal middle-class folks trying to get through life without being cheated blind by confidence men who rely upon their ignorance of legalese and mathematics.

"Caveat Emptor" is the neocon battlecry, doubly fitting because the poor sods who are in the neocon sights don't understand a word of Latin.

is so simple that Andrew did not give it the obvious red star the first time I posted it.

Every sale of a financial instrument should be with recourse, and the new law should let the sellers litigate the post-hoc defensive implications.

Why is this so hard?

We are living in an era that proves that there is no one so foolish about money as a rich (old, white) man.

I am not rich, and therefore am not foolish, for all that I am old and white.