Boardroom In Black

Hello, everyone – welcome back. Again, sorry for the delay, but when time is short, living life is more important then writing about it. Did you take a peek at my last post? You did? Yea, bullshit. Go watch the damn video – there will be a quiz. Next time, review the fucking materials before coming to the discussion.

My fellow Misanthropologists, I am told we have a problem. You see, it seems that the entire world has been going completely batshit around this whole “Credit Crisis” thing – if one is to believe all the hype, our country, our culture, our very way of life is threatened by the recent “implosion” of the credit market. The constant wailing and gnashing of teeth has inspired me to scan the television’s daily programming list for what I know must imminently come – that Very Special Episode of the Geraldo Show, where The Big G uncovers something horrid – psychologists all over the country have uncovered “repressed” memories of homeowners signing horrible home financing agreements. The Banktanic Panic, coming to courtroom near you.

All around us, people are pointing fingers and demanding answers. How could this have happened? Thus far, there have been but two sides to this debate – the conservatives and the liberals. Both are pawns and idiots, and have no clue at all as to the objective reality of things. Very predictable. Each of the two sides are asking many questions, but there is a third question (coming perhaps, from a Third Side) that I’ve yet seen asked.

Why the Hell does anyone think that this whole fiasco is a problem in the first place?

Look… the video I presented in my last post is not a map of a problem, or of exploitation, or anything of the sort. A Satanist comes from the axiom that man is an animal, yet there is one feature of this that skews differently then our beloved four legged friends: our “jungles” tend to be built from social rules, norms, and laws. The video refers to one such jungle, and within the wilds of wealth (or at least, the opportunity for wealth), there were countless opportunities for gain, at all levels of the game. The home owners obtained home ownership, many for the first time. Other people created wealth by “flipping” homes, and an entire industry sprang from home repairs and upgrades. Title companies. Real estate agents. Banks. Investment groups. All who chose to play the game had a shot at significant gain (and for most of the time, the gain was easy to get).

But… what goes up, must come down. This was clearly a housing bubble from the beginning, and was unsustainable over the long term. This was clear to anyone who wasn’t caught up in the hype and had functional thumbs for working a calculator. So why did some people get left holding the bag? Take a peek at “The Nine Satanic Sins” for illumination – pretentiousness, self-deceit, herd conformity, and most especially forgetfulness of past orthodoxies were the downfall of those who dropped the ball (or at least, found themselves holding the ball when the train stopped). Used your home as a credit card? Overextended leverage? Thought that an ARM loan, taken at near zero interest rate, would never result in a rate increase? Dumb asses.

“Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.”. Those people, especially at the bottom of this little stratification event, were begging to be fleeced. One must always have proper perspective in the game. If one is at the bottom of the pile (”homeowners” or “consumers” in this case), then one has far less leeway to screw up, takes a greater personal risk, and must especially take care not to overextend oneself. Those bankers and investment officers that public opinion is currently fleecing? They still made the money, which didn’t disappear when the bottom dropped out. The firms that they work for took a severe beating, but if they played their cards right, they had little to no meaningful repercussions in this. This is important to remember as things continue to shake out – by virtue of stratification and their position in the food chain, they don’t play by the same rules that the herd does.

Finally, a self disclosure: I myself did not purchase in the housing feeding frenzy, as I determined that the risk of home buying at the time wasn’t worth it – when all this started seven years ago, I was much earlier in my career with less cash on hand, and housing prices in Northern California were always insane (furthermore, my lair was already a rental that was in an excellent neighborhood, and is still damn dirt cheap). No, what I did was leverage the ease at which credit was obtained at the time, and channeled this into the founding of a start up company. This company is an online advertising company, founded on an incredibly novel and unique idea (more on this later). The result of our hard work was a cornering of the market, growing well over 200% year over year. This company was sold last year for just a hair under $100 Million US, and I have accepted a senior management position at the purchasing company. This was not my work alone, but working in conjunction with some very smart, shrewd, and well connected people, all of whom are sitting pretty right now. While short sighted friends of mine are moving out of their foreclosed McMansions, I’m experiencing a much different (and more lucrative) reality at the moment.