It seems to me that their value add is negligible compared to how they're rewarded.
You're not the only one guilty of this, everybody tend to overestimate their contribution to the world. How many times did you hear/read about a business guy / manager saying that programmers are a disposable commodity? Saying that "the entire financial industry is ready to be replaced with a lot of very short shell scripts", you are acting exactly the same way.
Did you forgot about the dot-com bubble when the tech industry was the one guilty of being over-rewarded for what was often was no value (pet.com)?
But what is the financial industry accomplishing today that they didn't accomplish 25 years ago? As far as I can see, the most useful innovation has been the ATM machine (which is indeed quite useful). The rest of it? Is the economy running better? Does the financial system allocate capital more effectively? If not, then why are they taking home so much more money?
I'm not going to argue that they're not smart -- they're plenty smart, I'm sure there are a lot of people in finance who are smarter than me. It just seems that those smarts have been applied towards rent-seeking and value extraction rather than "building things people want".
Call me once they accept that they made millions of loans they shouldn't have made and accept that the losses are as much theirs as the homeowners.
And when they follow their own damn procedures, which they're still showing no sign of doing.
Then we'll see about some respect.
In a larger sense, it's true that essentially all programming jobs could be outsourced. The fact that programming jobs are vulnerable to this and executive jobs aren't is because those executives have much more control over money, and a larger supply of it. This will not be true forever, and you are slowly going to see the financial industry leak out of New York into other parts of the world, where people will do things like replace mortgage agents with small shell scripts.
Just because something is true today doesn't mean it will be true forever.
Only if they do something useful, in a reasonably efficient manner. Can you truly say that most of the financial sector operates this way?
True, some of IT is also run by selling deliberately crappy software. But only some, and that's not an excuse for other industries.
You forget that while tech entrepreneurs made some money in dot-com IPOs, the financial industry made an absolute killing.
You also seem to imply that everyone is rewarded according to the value they add, leaving out the possibility that a group of people get together and form a de facto monopoly, which is somewhat reminiscent of the big players in the IPO industry.
I'm actually shocked this extremely ignorant, flame-bait comment has got so many upvotes on a site like hacker news which, in theory, is supposed to be a community of pretty smart and educated people.
"The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing two new disclosure requirements for offerings of asset backed securities. See the RevisedRegAB site for details on the proposal."
Would you pay 6% over and above the price of a new car, to the car salesman as his fee?
[Edit: Or maybe they're "features", not bugs.]
The 6 bedrooms are probably all tiny <300 square feet, with closets that can't hold more than 3-5 items of clothing.
I'd be surprised if the entire house was more than 2500 square feet.
This isn't a 6000 square foot McMansion like you're thinking it might be.
My house was built in 1905 in a mining community. It was 2 bedrooms originally. A queen bed wouldn't fit in either one. We ended up combining them into one decent sized bedroom.
Before electricity, there was nothing else to do in a bedroom besides sleep. No sense in making it bigger than it had to be.
I think a demonstration that you can do today what was unthinkable a little more than a decade ago is a point well worth reading whatever you don't like about the home description.
* rental property
* work space (perhaps he has a recording studio?)
* renovation for future sale
* housing for family
The article doesn't say he lives alone with his butler.
Is this not possible in the USA?
What's more likely is that due to changed circumstances this guy wouldn't qualify for his loan again. So while a bank can't force you to leave because your credit situation has deterioated, you are effectively locked in because another bank wouldn't want you. The same can happen in Australia (and will probably be happening in increasing amounts in the coming years).
I have built software for American mortgage lenders and Australian mortgage lenders (and UK ones, for that matter). The three countries have very similar systems, although the USA has a much wider variety of product options, the laws around originating and terminating loans are pretty similar. This is not surprising, all three countries have laws evolved from the same system, and mortgages are a very old legal construct.
A deteriation in his credit might be : loss of job, reduction in income, another loan default (say, car loan or credit card) or the value of his house being less than the mortgage (most likely I would guess).
In effect he just wants the mysterious charges removed so he can manage his budget. As long as you're paying your mortgage the bank can't touch you. In reality Wells Fargo are probably trying to get him to leave of his own accord.
1) He made a "Qualified Written Request" to Wells Fargo (W.F.). I don't know exactly what the request was for though. Presumably an explanation of mysterious charges from W.F.
2) W.F. failed to acknowledge within 20 days and/or act within 60.
3) He filed a suit in small claims court regarding this failure to respond and won by default, since W.F. failed to show up in court.
4) W.F. failed to pay the judgment (?), so he went to the Sheriff to have them place a levy (fine) on Wells Fargo via (presumably) their property.
5) W.F. fails to pay the levy (??), so the property is put up for sale by the Sheriff's department.
(I put question marks in all the areas where the article isn't clear)
Here's the first Google result for Sheriff's sale: http://www.hudclips.org/articles/what-is-a-sheriff-sale-how-...
It's basically a foreclosure, so the headline is only sort-of misleading.
From what I read, it sounds like the guy just won a court claim in local court against WF, and got the Sheriff's office to concur that the company was somehow in the wrong. I thought foreclosure was repossession of a house when the borrower is in default?
I do know that my (other) uncle owns a car repair business and has the towing contract for the town police department. Whenever they tow abandoned cars, he charges a daily rate. If no one steps forward to pay the bill, at some point he can get the title for the car and own it. You would think people would claim their cars, but in a lot of situations there is evidence in the car (drugs, guns, etc) that the police take and then he ends up with a car on his lot nobody wants to claim. Six months later, he forecloses on it and ends up owning a car. Sometimes it can be a really nice car too.
So foreclosures/seizures/liens are not always banks evicting families that are late on their mortgage, I just don't understand all the details.
--snip-- He learned about RESPA which allows a Qualified Written Request (QWR), a letter that a loan holder can send to their mortgage servicer who is legally obligated to acknowledge within 20 days and take action within 60 --snip--
Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RESPA
This sounds like a mortgage rate increase is in turn requiring a larger insurance policy. Honestly it's hard to parse that sentence in a way that makes sense to me.
"As a music event promoter, he says he's put up a lot of posters, but these were the most satisfying he's ever hung."
Maybe the other 99% doesn't even read the statements and just go and pay.
For them, it's all profits. Even paying this man and their attorneys to get to a settlement doesn't make a dent to the revenue they're receiving of the other 99%.
