the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

This stealth caveat refers to the fact that it will be business as usual through other channels.

The U.S., e.g., blocks dollar payments to Syria banks, but that doesn’t prevent said payments from getting there by other routes.

However, the all-currencies order is a rather strong, sweeping statement of disapproval from China authorities.

Debtors who are collecting interest are only interested in collecting that money. Once the principal is paid off their books no longer show that illusory “asset” represented by the future value of the principal plus interest. That’s why whenever there is a debt restructuring plan involving some third world country other than our own, the banks are perfectly happy to restructure the loan for a longer period of time as long as the debtor nation continues to make interest payments.

And for those who think inflation helps those on a fixed income, you’re wrong. Prices increase with inflation and the value of money is deflated. Using the current CPI multiplier that the govt uses to figure out social security payments, the amount of money SS recipients receive is much less than they would be receiving if the true rate of consumer inflation was posted instead of the one worked out by Greenspan back in the 80s when this whole stagecoach robbery began.

They started with an adjustable mortgage when they had one child.
They had a second child, and refinanced.
Then two years later another child… and when he was several months old, they were unable to refinance when their mortgage jumped $1,500 per month.

So they paid the mortgage for over four years, and refinanced at least once, which meant the bank/mortgage company got all the loan fees a second time.

What a racket.
Amoral and socially destructive.

just incredible; a near-total disconnect from

life.

Precisely what I saw from home builders, mortgage bankers, realtors for a solid two decades.
It really wears you down.

At one point, it hit me that none of them had probably ever looked into a microscope, and they actually believed that ‘money’ can ‘grow’. Bullshit. It compounds according to mathematical formulas, but that’s no different from a mechanical beast.

They are totally disconnected even from their own biology, nor did they pay enough attention to their own children’s development (except as baseball and soccer players!) to think clearly about the ways that communities have to accommodate the full range of human development, the way that ancient cities did — and that modern European cities do a good job of.

They are completely, utterly disconnected with the biological resources required to sustain even a family of five that doesn’t own a car. They’re blindly foolish, and that’s why they are inadvertantly dangerous.

The higher-end, more ‘upscale’ architects and construction firms that are involved in ’sustainable development’ are way ahead of the curve; they’re great people because they do pay attention to biology and human psychology.

Last night, the Deciderer decided the passive voice, devoid of agency or causation, was best when describing Wall Street’s excesses. Its bloated compensation for selling aluminum siding in the form of financial paper; the Boschian staircase it’s built on the sand of aggressively sold mortgages, extended with reckless disregard for the borrower’s ability to pay; mortgages (like credit cards), designed to go into default so as to generate exorbitant fees and the need to refinance them, quickening the vicious circle. The Deciderer was not so passive in blaming the poor choices of individual mortgage holders for becoming addicted to Wall Street’s financial crack. It’s their fault.

Mr. Bush claimed awareness of how dicey mortgages are, and, hence, how the mass of debt obligations dependent on them are now uncreditworthy. But the only assets he deemed worthy of Gubmint’s attention, of unprecedented government largesse, are those debt obligations and the balance sheets of the companies that created them out of some witches brew of greed, frogs’ toes and newts’ eyes. Mr. Bush is really an incurable romantic; he’s laying down the public’s only cloak so that Queen Wall Street can walk across the puddle unscathed, unmuddied.

It’s clear, however, that any true fix must address the hundreds of thousands or millions of rapacious mortgages: for the creditworthy, rewriting them devoid of their most egregious terms, including cross-default clauses, prepayment penalties, etc. For the uncreditworthy, of necessity, an individualized decision, it requires undoing them and moving householders back to the rental market.

Strengthening and accurately repricing the underlying mortgages is the mortar essential to keeping the brick wall of debt obligations from tumbling down under its own weight. Bush’s proposal is to buy the debt and let “the market” do the rest. That’s the surest way possible to saddle the public with the offal Wall Street’s butchers can’t sell to anyone else.

People have not had to examine their beliefs, nor the consequences of their actions, for a long time. If there could be a golden lining to this mess, I’d hope for some really profound personal changes and more meaningful lives.

Some of those Wall Streeters need to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.
It might help them open their eyes a bit and see the world more richly and fully.
But then, my biases are showing…

They haven’t produced a damn thing; all their cleverness has been expended in figuring out slyer ways to push the funds around.

You’re distilled it more succinctly than I managed to do!
Great synopsis.
Thx!

Although, they did produce biz cards, lovely brochures, a lot of bullshit, some Internet ads, and a lot of paper ‘assets’. Mostly bullshit. Mostly ego.