COLUMBUS DAY: LESSON IN HUMILITY

Oct 13, 2014

Columbus Day is a lesson about how much we can get wrong and still stick with it not only for generations, but for centuries. It is illustrative of the unraveling of the truth in the economic crisis that has been with us since securitization boiled over in 2007 — starting a unprecedented number of foreclosures, evictions, increased homelessness, and displacing, thus far, more than 5% (15,000,000 people) of the entire population of this country and millions more in other countries. Like many events in our history, we see a general consensus forming around assumptions and presumptions that are wrong but regarded as axiomatically right.

The “discovery” by “Columbus” did lead to historical changes in power and evolving history, Colonization and the distribution of wealth, as well as numerous wars. So chronologically it is important as a milestone event that our human species made important by their subsequent actions. But the facts upon which the story or myth of Columbus are mostly wrong — the product of myths promulgated by various interested parties. The same is true for the mortgage crisis, the crisis in student debt and household debt generally.

First of all — Columbus was not his name. In Italian it is Cristoforo Columbo. And there is a question about whether he actually hailed from Italy (Genoa) or Portugal, where his name is different than the first two names mentioned. More importantly the expedition was a Spanish expedition not Italian, and not Portuguese.

Second, he didn’t discover the Americas. He found the Caribbean Islands and called the inhabitants, “Indio” for Indian in English. So our entire history of “wild “Indians” is wrongly named as well as wrong in content. The Indians were so named, he said, because these were “Indian” Spice Islands in the East, not the West.

In addition he refused to admit and even disclaimed that he had discovered a new continent. The historical anomaly seems to be traced to a “history” written in the early 1800’s filled with incorrect facts.

Yet he is credited with discovery of the new continent which (a) was not true and (b) was denied by the “explorer” himself. This did not stop history books and teaching in schools all the myths about the discovery of the Americas, which incidentally is named for Amerigo Vespucci — who IS the explorer who found the American continent a few years after the Columbus trip. Vespucci, by the way WAS ITALIAN, so Italians still have reasons to celebrate their history with respect to the “discovery” of the Americas.

Third, Columbus did not “prove” the earth was flat. By 1492, most scholars completely agreed with Copernicus’ theory that the Earth was spherical and had a circumference of 25,000 miles — not the much smaller estimate of Columbus who thus completely missed the calculations of where he was heading and where he ended up. THAT did not stop textbooks and thousands of other books from taking it as nearly scripture that Columbus was the person to discover the America’s, was an expert navigator, and who made some giant contribution to science.

And fourth, in the arrogance of people in power, EVERYONE completely ignores the elephant in the living room — that the “indigenous people” of the Americas were obviously here thousands of years before Europeans crossed “the pond.” They were here before the rest of us and had discovered the continents, colonized them, created empires and had advanced the sciences and other areas of knowledge. Many concepts in our U.S. Constitution are based in part on on well crafted rules governing the “nations” of indigenous people.

So we basically got just about everything wrong about the 1492 voyage of the Nina, the Pinto and the Santa Maria. And that is what we are doing about our economy, banking, finance, and consumerism. But the axioms, legal presumptions, and other “truths” about the economy, about finance and in particular about the alleged securitization of debt while assumed to be true — are not any closer to the truth than the truth about our own political and geographical history, which, if accurate, would include the “indigenous people” who were here thousands of years before Europeans “found” the continents.

But of course if we were tell the story as it really happened, that would include the barbarity and accidents that occurred that decimated the tribes, villages and cities in the Americas. It would require taking responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions of people who were either massacred by European armies or killed by bacteria, viruses and fungi that arrived for free on the boats of European settlers. The concept of bathing without clothing had not yet occurred to the Europeans, so they carried many bugs — and immunities built up over time. The “indigenous” people bathed regularly and thoroughly and so were not presented with plagues and other decimating illnesses until the Europeans brought those death diseases to the shores of the America’s. Without developing immunity to these diseases, the people who were here for so many thousands of years, fell ill and died — entire villages disappearing in a matter of days. Some of this was intentional — who gave blankets to the “Indians” in trade, that were known to carry disease. It was easier to kill them by poison than by battle.

That means any responsible history of the Americas would mention the 1492 trip as pivotal from a political point of view but only a small part of the entire history of the American continents. It would require starting at the beginning when there were no people here and then progress through the first explorers to reach here, colonize and grow societies for thousands of years — in contrast with a few hundred years of European involvement. That would put things in perspective.

While comparisons cannot be exact, the above “history” illustrates history repeating itself with the tens of millions of current Americans who essentially lost their lifestyle through loss of homes, jobs and savings caused by Banks who were allowed to corner the market on money.

The securitization of debt is not a fact.
The mortgage and security instruments were not valid.
The foreclosures were mostly wrongful, even as a daily increase in foreclosure judgments raises the total by as much as 20,000 per day nationwide.
Borrowers don’t owe what is claimed.
Borrowers don’t owe even what they think they owe.
Borrowers are not credited with payments made by them or on their behalf.
The creditors (investors) were screwed out of what they expected — a note and mortgage sitting in REMIC Trust.
Practically none of the claimants in any foreclosure action have any right, justification or excuse for making claims on the borrowers whose lives they are ruining.
The presumptions used in court are causing most cases to arrive at the wrong conclusion and pushing the burden of proof or burden of persuasion over to the borrower who has the least knowledge about what happened.
The owners of the debt were the investors— not the REMIC Trusts, not the pretender lenders, nor anyone else.
There are no governing documents because the REMIC Trusts were never funded nor did they acquire the loan documents, nor did they receive the loan documents — the submissions to the court notwithstanding (fabricated and robo-signed).
There are no loan documents because the actual lenders never received any note or mortgage that was executed by the borrower.
Most of the loans are undocumented, unsecured loans that have been paid off multiple times. Foreclosure simply does not apply.
Both investors and the borrowers were tricked into becoming lenders and borrowers in deals that were not never disclosed to either of them.
The documents at closing were improper and invalid.
Closing agents committed error by receiving money from one source and using documents that were made out in favor of an unrelated party — but they were tricked into it by the Wall Street Banks who will be more than happy to throw the closing agents under the bus — except that this might have a negative impact on their plans to rev up another mortgage crisis.

Which brings to me to the final observation, that government and media got it all wrong just like we did with the various discoverers of the American continents. By assuming that the “primary dealers” (i.e., mega banks who had siphoned off most the liquidity in most world economies) were essential to the continued functioning of the financial system, they gave free money to the people who caused the problem and are already in the process of doing it again. The code words too big to fail was scary as hell, but wrong. There are and have been for controls in government agencies, and more than 7,000 private institutions who could have easily taken up the opportunities and responsibilities to our society and its financial system. Since these things tend to escalate, we might be longing for the simpler days of 2007-2009 when the stock market declined into the 5,000 range, and NASDAQ declined to under 2,000.

Basing policy and court decisions on a lie is never good. It encourages moral hazard and it destroys the citizens’ respect for government institutions that are increasingly seen as puppets of the Banks, who should be broken up like various utilities and other entities in our history. In the meantime we continue to live with our “living lies.”

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