astounding and miraculous terms

A neighbor has taken issue with my statement that Billys term has been unremarkable. He finds those terms to be astounding and miraculous. Astounding in its lack of vision, common sense, and oversight by the Council. Miraculous in the fact that nobody has been indicted yet for any felonies and that we are STILL solvent, in spite of Billy and Gym. He HAS a point, or three. Dr. Mel P. Johnson

WASHINGTON (AP)- Each day from July through September, more than 2,700 Americans lost their homes in foreclosure. That number, up from 1,200 a day a year ago, is a sign that the mortgage industry and government programs have done little to help troubled homeowners. The mortgage market's troubles have proved to be far more serious and intractable than most in government or the private sector had predicted a year ago. Foreclosures have more than doubled over the past year, home prices fall 25% in Miami in ONE MONTH, unemployment is at 5 year highs- how much more will it take for the Mayor and Council to realize that WE, and the country, are is serious financial straits? Yet the go on their merry way, spending 500k or more on two bathrooms, losing 300k at the pool, spending 120k on a jitney that nobody rides- how long can they remain comatose? Oblivious? Incredibly wasteful? Dump them all, except for Dotson, before they drive us to the poorhouse. NOBODY can be THAT stupid ALL the time, can they? Is it more the ridiculously unresponsive and poor management by the City Manager OR is it the Mayors and Councils NO OVERSIGHT, blank check, rubber-stamp policies that are responsible? One financial fiasco after another, the result of constant mismanagement and cost overruns in EACH and EVERY project the City Manager is associated with, and NO oversight. When was the last time a project of his came in on budget and on time? EVER? The evidence speaks for itself.

corporate numbers made no sense

What's inexcusable is that the SEC missed the problems or failed to act. Let's look at two examples. More than a year before the demise of Washington Mutual, Gradient pegged it as a bank that was overstating earnings because it was not setting aside enough money to protect against loan losses. Gradient noticed that problem loans were piling up at a much faster rate than write-offs for losses. But the SEC didn't act. Perhaps even more egregious, AIG auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers stated in February that it thought the company had significant shortcomings in how it was valuing insurance derivatives known as credit default swaps, a kind of insurance on debt payments. At the same time, Gradient described AIG as "downright frightening," in part because it had increased the estimated worth of credit default swaps virtually overnight by switching to a new valuation model. "It was as if Santa Claus himself had visited AIG the night before, leaving gift certificates with value derived by higher mathematics," Gradient wrote in a report.
The SEC didn't launch an investigation until many months later. More and better oversight is needed now so this doesnt happen again.

Joe is lazy?

I agree that people should work for their money. Do something. Anything. Does the rich include Joe Lunchbucket in as one of those lazy do-nothings? He lost his house maybe, and his job due to the greed and corruption on Wall Street and Every Street- he is ready, willing, and able to work but there is no work available, due to no fault of his own. The deregulators allowed Wall Street and the banking industry to run wild without any oversight or responsibility until they ran it into the ground. Now they want Joe and his fellow taxpayers to bail their sorry butts out ! Hypocrites who want NO government interference UNTIL they have robbed and plundered everything they can, getting wealthy in the process, with NO concern for the possible effects on anybody else. THEN they want us to bail them out. Those crooks and greedy SOBs need jail time, at least.