Bank Lawyer's Blog

Richmond Throws Down

After all the false starts, hollow threats, and futile chest beating done by a number of municipalities across the country, one of them--Richmond, California--finally appears to be getting off the dime and actually threatening lenders with the use of eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages and reduce principal balances (paid subscription required). Richmond's Commissar Mayor is all fired up and ready to go.

"We're not going to back down," Mayor Gayle McLaughlin told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. "We feel it's the responsibility of the servicers and banks to correct this."

By "this," we assume she means decades of municipal government (as well as state government) neglect, overspending, overtaxing, and living the municipal high-life in the land of fruits and nuts, as opposed to spending less than you raise in "Bidness-Friendly" locales like the one where they wear Justin boots and spit a load of chaw on your freshly polished Florsheims for using phrases like "I'm headed to the spa for a bikini wax" and "You simply MUST try the Brie!" We certainly see why it's the responsibility of investors in mortgage loans to pull the fat of irresponsible municipalities and their dead-beat denizens out of the fire of inevitable consequences. That passes for "fair" in this twisted age.

Of course, Madame Mayor thinks, as have short-straw-holders since time immemorial, that her citizens have "had a bunch of junk done to 'em."

In Tuesday's conference call, Mayor McLaughlin said city residents support her plan because many of them feel they were trapped into loans they could not afford. "Many of these people were directly targeted by subprime mortgages and predatory lending practices," McLaughlin told reporters. "We have neighborhoods that are suffering blight, which creates crime."

Gayle, you had neighborhoods suffering blight, which created crime, prior to the onset of the subprime mortgage meltdown and you'll continue to have them as long as you promote policies that drive jobs and the capital that creates them to places like Texas. From a narrowly selfish standpoint, I encourage the mayor to continue down the road to perdition, but as someone with a larger view, I am considering dialing 911 and seeking an expert EMS unit skilled at removing craniums wedged in posteriors without inflicting unnecessary further brain damage. The war for my immortal soul rages on.

Mortgage Resolution Partners, the cabal of ex-Clinton administration zealots/investment bankers who hatched this Rosemary's Baby of a scheme, and stand to make beaucoup fees from it (a fact mentioned nowhere in the linked story), claim that the underwater loans are ripe for refinancing through Uncle Freddie and Aunt Fannie. Unfortunately, their parent, the FHFA, has threatened to sue to stop this scheme. So has the securitization industry.

Tom Deutsch, executive director of the American Securitization Forum, called the city's actions "unconstitutional and dangerous."

[...]

"Both federal and California law clearly show that this scheme is illegal," Deutsch said. "Potential homebuyers in Richmond will have to pay more for mortgages to cover the risk of eminent domain or simply not be able to obtain a loan at all."

While all of this might provide some passing entertainment, it smells like it's going to turn into a Sharknado-like feeding frenzy in which trial lawyers will be the only ones left swimming. In other words, just another day in this over-lawyered paradise.

Compounding The Problem

I've been critical of "blown" foreclosure seizures in the past, especially of Bank of America's repeated FUBARs and its seizure of pet parrots and similar heinous crimes against nature. Unfortunately for the banking industry, it's not only the giant whipping boys who step in piles of mud pies and make headlines in this regard.

A woman in McArthur, Ohio, about 70 miles south of Columbus, said a bank mistakenly cleared items from her home, confusing it for a foreclosed house across the street, then demanded receipts when she asked to be compensated for her missing possessions.

Katie Barnett, 36, a nurse, said her family had left for about two weeks last month and returned to find the locks on their home had changed and many of their belongings had been taken.

"We called the cops and they said they thought it was a squatter," she said.

Two dressers and clothing for her five children were taken, as well as items from outside their home, including pool cleaning supplies and patio furniture, she said.

Weeks later, she said, police told her that a bank representative had contacted them, saying someone was living in a foreclosed home: the Barnett's one-story, three-bedroom home.

"Obviously I wanted to find out what bank it was. I was mad about the whole situation," said Barnett.

She later learned First National Bank in Wellston, of which she is not a customer, had mistaken her home for a bank-owned property across the street.

A bank employee told 10TV News that the bank is trying to come to an agreement with Barnett.

"A GPS had led them to my house, the president of the bank told me," Barnett said. "They also said my grass hadn't been mowed so they just assumed that was the house."

You have to wonder whether the crack about the unmowed lawn was an Epic Fail of a snark attack or an accurate statement of the extent of the due diligence conducted by the bank's personnel in determining the location of the actual property that was the subject of the foreclosure. Either way, it was apparently pouring salt on Ms. Barnett's open wound. If the bank had stopped there, it would have been bad enough. However, it wasn't through digging its own public relations grave.

When Kate asked for $18,000 to compensate her and her family for the lost items, the bank demanded receipts, because they weren't going to "pay retail." Seriously, they said that. On its web site, the bank, which refused to respond to questions from one of America's most popular morning network television shows, ABC's "Good Morning America," claimed that while it wants to compensate Ms. Barnett "fairly and equitably...the written list of items that she provided to us – and the value she assigned to those items – is inconsistent with the list and descriptions of items removed that was prepared by the employees who did the work, and with the list and values of missing items provided by the homeowner herself as recorded in an earlier telephone conversation with one of our representatives." The bank states that it needs to reconcile those differences before compensating the homeowner whose house it broke into and from which it removed items that did not belong to it and which it had no lawful right to remove. You understand how a bank wouldn't want to pay more than depreciated present value of those household items, don't you? I mean, that wouldn't be FAIR!

When I recently discussed on this blog the concerns that federal banking regulators have with the use of social media by banks, I mentioned that fact that "reputational risk" was a legitimate safety and soundness concern. Getting a black eye in the main stream media (or social media) can hurt the bank's "brand." Therefore, regardless of whether or not the bank has a legitimate concern about the nature and number of items claimed to have been lost or their current value, it seems to me that one of the factors a bank might want to weigh in deciding what to pay or whether or not to pay at all, is the damage to reputation that can occur when "Good Morning America" plasters your name on television and the world wide web in a context that gives the average American consumer one more reason to hate another bank, as if he or she needed another reason.

While we may be getting only one side of the story from the linked article, in large part that's because the bank has chosen not to respond directly to ABC News, but to respond solely through a web site posting. When only the plaintiffs and their attorneys do the talking, the press reports are sure to be slanted in their favor. Barnett claims that she's hired an attorney and that she plans to sue the bank, that her kids' summer has been ruined, and that other emotional stress has ensued to the family members.Therefore, the publicity in this case for the bank is not likely to improve.

Let's say that Kate is "overestimating" the value of the removed items. Let's say, purely for the sake of argument, that she's doubled their "actual value." Would having payed her the extra $9,000 she demanded, having obtained a full release of liability, and having put her under an agreement of confidentiality right from the start have been worth the cost? Each bank must make its own decision, but I can see how many banks in the same position might think that it would be worth it. They would consider the "overpayment" as additional compensation for "emotional pain and suffering" and as an additional cost of doing business when the folks doing your foreclosure property takeovers have a tough time distinguishing the street addresses "509" and "514."

During a time in our history when bankers rate as low as lawyers in the public's view, the extra payment to mitigate the reputational risk might just be justified.

Thrown Off The Gravy Train

"The Kids" have caught on to the law school over-enrollment shell game and the results are not pretty (paid subscription required), particularly for many law school professors.

Law schools across the country are shedding faculty members as enrollment plunges, sending a grim message to an elite group long sheltered from the ups and downs of the broader economy.

Having trimmed staff, some schools are offering buyouts and early-retirement packages to senior, tenured professors and canceling contracts with lower-level instructors, who have less job protection. Most do so quietly. But the trend is growing, most noticeably among middle- and lower-tier schools, which have been hit hardest by the drop-off.

[...]

Law schools faced with a dwindling pool of applicants confront a tough choice. They can fill seats by relaxing admissions criteria, a tactic that risks jeopardizing their standing in the influential annual rankings put out by U.S. News & World Report. Or they can maintain standards and just accept fewer students, making up for lost tuition dollars through deeper cost-cutting.

[...]

That wasn't a problem just a few years ago, when students flocked to law schools as the economy tanked. In 2010 national enrollment swelled to a record of more than 52,000, according to data compiled by the American Bar Association, which accredits U.S. law schools.

But the pendulum is now swinging the other way.

The broader legal market has yet to fully recover from the economic downturn, when a number of big law firms laid off lawyers as demand for legal services cratered. Many legal experts think it will be years, and perhaps decades, before employment rebounds to the levels reached in the middle of the last decade.

Would-be lawyers have taken note. As of July 5, law-school applications for the entering class of 2013 were down 36% compared with the same point in 2010, according to the Law School Admission Council. Last year first-year enrollments fell 8.5% nationwide, according to ABA data, and law schools outside the elite top tier are seeing even steeper declines.

The smaller classes mean revenue drops of "millions of dollars every year," said Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. and the author of the 2012 book "Failing Law Schools."

Yes, that's right, "millions of dollars a year." Law schools have been cash cows for many universities for a few years. That led a number of them to increase enrollments beyond the level that the job market could absorb in order to milk that tuition cow while she was still in her prime. The sad results, in many cases (the elite law schools being, in many respects, less affected than the "lesser lights"), were reams of baby lawyers being thrown out of the nest with nowhere to land, and saddled with six figures in law school debt. They were sold a pig in a poke.

While I don't allege that law school faculty were involved in concocting or perpetuating this shell game, and while I also don't take any joy in law school professors being thrown out of work, the linked article certainly indicates that they benefited from it in the form of nice income levels. Therefore, there is a part of me that thinks: "It's about time."

Welcome to the wonderful world that so many of your former students have found themselves wandering about aimlessly. It kinda' sucks, doesn't it?

Going Rogue

I'm merely guessing, but I doubt that most of you have been to Ulysses, Kansas. I have been there, many years ago, and I can honestly say that the part of Kansas where Ulysses is situated seems to me what the surface of the moon must look like. The 2010 US Census states that the total population of Ulysses is just a wee bit north of 6,000. In other words, it seems an unlikely place where a gang of bank robbers would ply its trade, much less a gang of Bonnie Parkers who worked their illegal mojo from both inside and outside the institution.

According to The Garden City Telegram, four (now former) bank employees, who range in age from 28 to 59 (all of them, therefore, old enough to know better), embezzled over $84,000 from their employer from 2008 to 2010, staged a bank robbery in 2010 in an attempt to cover it up, and over the next three years embezzled another $24,000 and change before being caught. They each face decades in the federal slammer for embezzlement, bank robbery and--the worst sin of all--lying to the FBI.

Thirty-six years ago, shortly after I began my first stint as an in-house lawyer at a large financial institution, I was given the job of baby-sitting some bank branch employees while they testified as witnesses in the federal district court criminal trial in Denver of two bank robbers who had held up the branch with sawed-off shotguns and loud threats of violence. I remember the Assistant US Attorney who was trying the case telling me that while the FBI may not be top-notch at every task it attempts, one thing it has gotten down to a science is catching bank robbers and embezzlers. He claimed that it was the dumbest crime a crook could commit, because the odds were overwhelming that, sooner or later, you'd be nabbed. He also asserted that because of that, professional criminals look down on bank robbers as those of lesser talent.

And yet...in towns large and small, from The Big Apple to the wind-swept plains of wheat country, hope springs eternal in the larcenous heart. As long as that's the case, banks better have in place robust systems of checks and balances to catch those folks that banks fear the most: rogue employees.

Loki Boy Blowback

The curious case of Loki Boy (aka Andre Barbosa aka "a living beficiary of the Divine Estate"), who provided us with much amusement earlier this year, has resulted in the enactment of legislation in The Boy's state of Florida that aims to put a damper on those who, rather than give Big Banks a standing ovation, prefer to provide them a squatting one.

Anyone hoping to claim any one of thousands of foreclosed homes in Florida through adverse possession -- simply squatting on the land for several years to obtain title to the home -- are out of luck. Florida just changed its law to prohibit "acquiring title to real property by possession."

Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law June 28, effective July 1, after a push mainly from a community of 106 homeowners who were appalled that Andre "Loki Boy" Barbosa moved into a multi-million dollar Boca Raton home overseen by their Golden Harbour Homeowners Association and refused to leave citing squatters rights, reported the Sun-Sentinel.

The linked story discusses other states, like New York and Washington, which have also updated their laws to make it harder for "Those Who Squat" to grab themselves a piece of the American Dream by adverse possession. It also relates incidents in a number of other states, including two near and dear to me, Colorado and Texas, where squatters have ben dealt with adult gloves. Yet, the story finishes with a squatter who beat the odds.

But some squatting stories do end up in home ownership. Just ask Steve DeCaprio who never bought his house, but he did invest thousands of dollars into repairing its roof, upper level, and other parts of the dilapidated interior and exterior. DeCaprio spent more than a decade living in the home in a poor neighborhood in West Oakland until adverse possession kicked in.

[...]

Back on that first day, DeCaprio simply rode his bike up to an abandoned house in Ghost Town, in a neighborhood dotted with vacant lots. He cut through the rusty lock on the chain-link fence with bolt cutters, then pried open a plywood sheet that stood where the front door once had. Then he replaced the locks with his own, reported the Utne Reader. The last owner had passed away and no heirs had claimed the property, which had fallen into disrepair of several years.

DeCaprio called it the "holy grail of squatting." The police, citing criminal law, said he was trespassing. The police kicked him out, not once, not twice, but six times. Yet DeCaprio didn't give up. He kept returning, even after the city welded the doors shut and glued the locks. One time, DeCaprio said, the police arrived with guns drawn.

DeCaprio was arrested, had a trial, and was convicted on three counts of "unlawful entry into a residence." The judge, he said, called him "arrogant." But today, after his persistence, he can call himself a homeowner. Perhaps the trick to winning this battle, is to pick an inexpensive home in a poor neighborhood with no known heirs, rather than try to stake out a million-dollar home with a neighborhood watch association and a bank with money and power to kick you out.

If Steverino had devoted as much time and effort to earning a living and saving for a downpayment as he did consistently fighting eviction proceedings and criminal charges, he might have been able to "afford" a nicer home in a nicer neighborhood. Then again, that process wouldn't have been nearly as much fun for a member of a generation that is so imbued with a sense of entitlement that it thinks it ought to be handed the keys to a house for no other reason than he or she desires it.

Republicans Drive A Hard Bargain

With yesterday's cave-in by McCain & The Stampeding RINOs (paid subscription required), "Recess Richie" became "Righteous Richard." While some of us regret the passing of a blog topic, as well as potential leverage to hamstring restructure the CFPB, the always-cogent Alan Kaplinsky looks on the bright side for banks.

Industry officials had been worried about what would happen if Mr. Cordray's actions were thrown out, given that harsher versions of regulations mandated by Dodd-Frank would go into place without the CFPB's rules.

"The provisions in Dodd-Frank that would apply in the absence of regulations would have been horrendous," Mr. Kaplinsky said.

As to what will become of all those actions taken by the Director during his arguably invalid recess appointment tenure, Kaplinsky notes that there's a simple fix: ratification by a now-unarguably-confirmed Director with the same DNA.

As expected, Lizzie Warren was multi-orgasmic.

"Director Cordray has won praise from consumer and industry groups, and from Republicans and Democrats, for his fair and effective approach.  With Director Cordray's confirmation, we will be able to say loudly, clearly, and with confidence: the consumer agency is the law of the land and is here to stay," Warren said.

She added, "We fought hard for the agency, and we proved that big change is still possible in Washington.  Now we have the watchdog that the American people deserve - a watchdog looking out for middle class families, getting rid of tricks, traps, and fine print, and holding financial institutions accountable when they break the law."

Was she using the collective "we" or the imperial "we"? It's an important distinction, because rumour has it that in response to these public exclamations, an unnamed Cherokee chief inquired "What do you mean 'we,' paleface?"

If Liz does say loudly, clearly, and with confidence, that the CFPB is the law of the land, then we will need to counsel the senator on the difference between a piece of legislation or court ruling and a bureau within the Department of the Treasury. As a law professor (and Native American genealogy expert), you'd expect she'd be up on the finer points. Ecstacy can addle the prefrontal cortex.

The Dallas Business Journal's Washington Bureau Chief, Kent Hoover, had the bigger picture in mind when looking at what the deal the Republicans cut, not only regarding Cordray, but also regarding the recess appointments to the NLRB and the holdup of other agency appointments, may mean for businesses.

The EPA and Labor Department will be able to exercise more regulatory clout with confirmed chiefs in place. Expect more environmental regulations, particularly with regard to climate change, and more rules governing the workplace. In other words, more of the same, but maybe with a little more swagger.

The biggest impact of the deal will be on the CFPB and the NLRB.

Republicans had been holding out on confirming Cordray in hopes of forcing the Senate to change how the CFPB operates, They wanted a five-person bipartisan commission to run the agency, instead of vesting all the power in a single director. They also wanted to CFPB funding to be subject to the congressional appropriations process, in order to make the agency more accountable. The agency now is funded by the Federal Reserve, and Congress has no say in it.

The financial industry lobbied for these changes, but now Republicans have lost the only leverage they had -- holding Cordray's confirmation hostage. So the CFPB is stronger than ever.

[...]

The only real concession that Republicans got from Democrats in the nominations deal was the withdrawal of two of Obama's NLRB nominees. The president probably hates the idea, but all it involves is a little embarrassment. He's selected Nancy Schiffer, an associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, and Kent Hirozawa, general counsel to the NLRB's chairman, as his new nominees. They have just as strong pro-union views as the people they will replace, so this agreement won't make any difference from a policy perspective.

The only check on the NLRB will continue to be the courts. That's where business made its stand against Obama's NLRB recess appointments, as well as the now-on-hold rule that would require employers to put up posters informing their workers of their right to form a union.

The courts are where business are going to continue to fight the NLRB -- Senate Republicans essentially gave up that fight, in return for a symbolic victory against Obama.

Another commenter observed that the confirmation of the appointment of the champion of disparate impact, Thomas Perez, as Secretary of Labor, was also part of this deal, his own disparate impact problems notwithstanding.

Well-played, Maverick. Well-played.

The Help Was Not Helpful

I gave a presentation a couple of weeks ago in New York City to credit union officers about the legal risks of engaging in social media activities. One of the entities that I told my audience I thought was doing a decent job in social media was Bank of America's "Help" Twitter feed. From my personal observations, their "youngsters" seem to do a good job of handling customers who may be frustrated dealing with other segments of the giant bank's customer service octopus.

I guess I should monitor BofA Help more frequently. Digiday's Saya Weissman recounts a series of tone deaf tweets by a BofA Help "tweeter" that lead a casual observer to wonder whether someone was on Quaaludes and, if so, who. Responding to an allegation by Occupy LA that the bank should stop stealing people's homes by offering to review Occupy LA's account make you wonder about a number of things, including the following speculation by Ms. Weissman: "The immediate and understandable assumption was that the bank’s Twitter feed is run by a bot – a program that automatically replies to tweets that mention it. Bafflingly, this turns out not to be the case. A bank spokesperson explained to Digiday that real people are, in fact, behind all of the brand’s tweets."

A spokesperson for the bank insisted that real, live, human "bots" are tweeting those gems. Weissman claims that the bank's "utter lack of online competence...merely reinforced these angry tweeters’ view of the company as a faceless, heartless conglomerate." She concludes that if this is the best "help" that BofA can offer, "who needs enemies?"

I guess I wouldn't have been that harsh on the tweeter, who was likely proceeding in compliance with a carefully scripted line that he or she was required to follow. On the other hand, you have to wonder about the bank's guidelines for initiating "conversations" on Twitter. If it's whenever the bank's name is mentioned, then there ought to be some requirement that before the BofA employee "tweet"s, they be required to actually comprehend the content of the tweet to which they are "responding."

The proposed FFIEC Guidelines on social media compliance that we've previously discussed are shot through, from stem to stern, with concern about "reputational risk." Such risk is posed not only by technical violation of laws or regulations. It's also posed by ineptness.

You don't have to be perfect all of the time. However, if you're going to be incompetent any of the time, expect to pay a reputational price. Even (or, perhaps, especially) in cyberspace, it's hard to hide.

Sometimes, The News Seems Too Good To Be True

At first blush, I assumed that this was an article from The Onion. However, it is not only the real deal, it is the Platonic ideal form of the concept of "irony." From the plaintiffs' lawyers' press release:

Today, a diverse group of current and former members of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division met with staff of the United States Senate both Republican and Democrat to outline substantial misconduct allegations against Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez. Mr. Perez is pending confirmation before the Senate as Secretary of Labor, and is rumored to be considered for a vote as early as this weekend.

Earlier this year, the Civil Rights Division, at the direction of Mr. Perez and his senior staff, began a widespread campaign of disparate treatment discrimination against Civil Rights Division employees who were disabled (mobility; hearing; vision; emotional; physical or mental condition); as well as of protected status based on race; gender; age; and/or parental status. Upon opposing this widespread, unlawful discrimination, DOJ employees have been subjected to an exceptionally hostile work environment and unlawful retaliation.

In addition, members of the Civil Rights Division also presented evidence to the Senate today of statistical evidence of disparate impact discrimination under the leadership of Mr. Perez. During Mr. Perez’ time as head of the Civil Rights Division, hiring and employment of Hispanic staff has decreased by a statistically significant percentage. But for discrimination, there is no legal explanation for the decline in minority hiring under Mr. Perez’ leadership.

As the whistleblowers' lawyer so ably notes, "[w]hile Mr. Perez and senior management of the Civil Rights Division sue private employers for discrimination and retaliation, they have no hesitance in discriminating against their own disabled, minority, whistleblowing staff."

The disparate impact chickens coming home to roost, eh? It couldn't happen to a more intellectually honest guy. In the employment arena, unlike the lending arena, disparate impact stands on solid ground. Watching Perez & Co. twist in the wind on this one, hopefully hoisted on their own petard, should provide entertainment for months to come.

How are those disparate impact apples tasting now, Tom?

The Incredible Sinking Deficit

The word from the Treasury confirms something we've believed for a long time: the cost of TARP to the American tax payers will end up being small potatoes.

The Congressional Budget Office says TARP’s subsidy cost to the government – including grants for mortgage aid initiatives – currently stands at $21 billion, down $3 billion from the last estimate of $24
billion.

Remember when everyone was moaning about a price tag that appeared to be 700 billion dollars? That was when many of us thought that the sky was falling. Of course, it might have, and if it had, the free market purists would have felt vindicated, while battling their fellow citizens for crusts of bread and potable water. The intervention was unusual, made only because the prognosis was dire and the geniuses in D.C. were tying to ward off a complete meltdown. In retrospect, I think it was necessary to avert a lot of pain and suffering.

Not that we didn't experience a lot of pain and suffering in any event.

Among the most interesting facts cited in the latest disclosures is the portion of the bailout funds that was intended to help hapless homeowners. HAMP helped 1.1 million homeowners receive a loan modification, which sounds like a god thing at first blush. However, the report also indicates that 300,000 of those modifications later went into default. That's a nearly 30% re-default rate, which is, no matter how you look at it, an arguably bad investment. On the other hand, it also means that over 70% o the borrowers were "saved," so there's "the glass is half-full" view of the matter.

Consumer activists would likely say that even more should have been done for more homeowners. Others would say that with that default rate, throwing more money down that rabbit hole would have been a bad idea.

I feel strongly both ways.

[REVISED 07.12.13 TO CHANGE "30,000" TO "300,000" AND TO MAKE OTHER MINOR CORRECTIONS]

 

The Constitution Can Be Awfully Inconvenient

The plans of North Las Vegas (aided and abetted by certain people connected with the Federal Reserve) to seize underwater mortgages from lenders has run into a speed bump from an unlikely source: a homeowner.

Gregory D. Smith has filed a complaint in Nevada District Court for “declaratory and injunctive relief to enjoin the city...from further implementing and carrying out a scheme to condemn and seize privately owned residential mortgages of North Las Vegas homeowners by use of eminent domain.”

In the complaint, Smith alleges that the move violates the 5th and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and the state constitution as an “unlawful exercise of the power of eminent domain.” It also alleges violation of a section of the state constitution “curtailing the use of eminent domain.”

In addition, the complaint alleges that the city’s move violates the U.S. and Nevada constitutions “due process” clauses, the Contracts Clause and Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and certain Nevada revised statutes “as an invalid and unlawful exercise of the power of eminent domain.”

I wonder who's backing Smith's play? It's Vegas, so there's no telling.

It must make the proponents of these eminent domain schemes extremely exasperated to have people throwing that outmoded parchment known as the US Constitution in their faces. This is a brave new world, where the "guhmint" gets to pick the winners and the losers in the game of life, and to remake the rules of the game whenever they damn well feel like it. The Constitution is just another outmoded concoction of dead, white, European males, none of whom ever had " a bunch of junk done to them" by unscrupulous mortgage originators. No progressive scheme to benefit the few at the expense of the many is going to be derailed by any of the first ten amendments to that Dead Sea Scroll.

Unless, of course, it is.

Whoever Greg Smith might be and whoever is supporting his lawsuit, we unreconstructed types wish him well.