Class, summer's over, it's time to do your homework. I hate to designate one of those mammoth Sunday New York Times articles as required reading, let alone one from the snore-inducing business section, but progressives should all take the time to read the Gretchen Morgenson's exposé of mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corporation.
The piece has all the hallmarks of a company caught with its proverbial pants down. Like this gem: "[Countrywide's] spokesman declined to answer a list of questions, saying that he and his staff were too busy." (As a former newspaper reporter from a paper lacking the hold-my-other-calls prestige of the Gray Lady, I just love the idea of a corporate public relations office that's "too busy" to answer questions from the Times. "Gretchen, I'm running late for my kid's soccer game. Can I get back to you after the weekend?")
Countrywide's sales pitch promised "the best loan possible" -- but apparently they meant the best loan possible for the company and for its mortgage securities buyers on Wall Street, not its clients.
According to the article, Countrywide went to great lengths to give its customers -- particularly so-called "subprime" low-income, often minority borrowers -- the worst deal possible. Many Countrywide contracts included stiff penalties not merely for falling behind on payments, but for getting ahead on them. That's right, when the virtuous Horatio-Alger-type debtor working two jobs squirrels away a little extra to pay off the mortgage, she gets slapped with extra fees. And Countrywide did its best to give customers the heftiest mortgage they could to begin with. The company's computer program conveniently failed to take into account clients' cash reserves, so people ended up borrowing more than they had to. (In the you-can't-make-this-*!@&-up category, last year Countrywide ended this long-standing practice as part of its internal "Do the Right Thing" campaign.)
As I read the Times' exposé, I just kept thinking to myself, "Who's looking out for you?" Yeah, I said it. And yes, I know it's Bill O'Reilly's signature catchphrase.
How did we on the left ever let this rhetorical question become the property of the right? After all, it's the right that scrapped the usury laws and banking regulations that used to protect people from corporate swindlers like Countrywide. The whole reason there's no one's looking out for you is because people like Bill O'Reilly have been running our country for a generation. That's how we went from an economic system where firms succeeded by offering the best products at the best price to one where firms succeed by robbing people blind for as long as they can get away with it, or, to put it more simply, by not doing the right thing.
So c'mon class, all together now, let's say it: "Who's looking out for you?"
And if we say it enough, maybe we can get Barack and Hillary and John and Nancy and Harry to start saying it too.