Quote of the day

We are little lost children who believe in fairy tales. We believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. But we don't believe in the Big Bad Wolf. That would be an impossible conspiracy or organized planning. We are in denial. We are part of the conspiracy of silence. There is no such thing as organized crime on the international level. The economy is just a series of random events and unpredictable black swans.

- The Guest

Boston Globe reader: On the Bailout

A letter to the editor from a Boston Globe reader:

I have an idea for a piece the Globe should write ('Inside Congress’s housing repair kit,' July 31): an analysis of two buyers who bought roughly the same house in the same neighborhood for the same price (say $500,000) at the peak of the market. The first buyer does things the right way: 20 percent down, documents income, fixed interest rate, mortgage = 28 percent of monthly income. The second puts nothing down, lies about his income, gets a negative amortization adjustable rate mortgage that resets so that he now pays 40 percent of his income. Home prices drop 20 percent since they bought.

The first guy has lost all his equity. The second guy gets to participate in Barney Frank’s and Chris Dodd’s great bailout plan. He negotiates his loan down to $360,000 and gets a lower fixed rate than the first guy since his new mortgage is subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration (read: the US taxpayer). He is rewarded for stupidity and lying.

Do I have this right? Is this still the USA we live in?

I have never in my life been more sickened by a piece of legislation than this one.

What more could I say.