Archive for June 2009

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When people hear that teenage girls are being exploited as sex slaves in the United States, they probably think it’s something involving the poor and underprivileged. They also probably believe that if their daughter was being exploited as a sex slave, they would see signs of it and would be able to intervene.

But people who think that way would be wrong. Just ask Theresa Flores.

Flores, who appeared Friday on TODAY, doesn’t have to cite studies or statistics or third-person accounts to prove her assertion. As a 15-year-old girl from a good, upper-middle-class Catholic family, she was used as a sex slave for two years in an upscale suburb of Detroit.

And her parents didn’t have a clue what was happening.

It has been 28 years since Flores’ nightmare began. But the problem has, if anything, gotten worse as the Internet has made it easier for predators to meet girls and profit by forcing them into sexual servitude.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission filed an insider-trading civil suit earlier this month against perhaps the most widely loathed wheeler-dealer of the Housing Bubble: Angelo Mozilo, co-founder and longtime CEO of Countrywide Financial Corporation, the largest mortgage lender at the peak of the boom.

The Economist writes: “As is the way these days, the SEC’s case rests largely on internal emails.” [Accusing Angelo June 5, 2009]The SEC released excerpts from Mozilo’s emails to even more aggressive Countrywide executives in which the boss privately questioned his own firm’s new lax credit products. For example, on April 17, 2006, he sensibly lambasted Countrywide’s subprime 80/20 loans (in which borrowers would fund their nominal 20 percent downpayment by taking out a simultaneous second mortgage):

“In all my years in the business I have never seen a more toxic prduct [sic]. It’s not only subordinated to the first, but the first is subprime. In addition, the FICOs are below 600, below 500 and some below 400[.]“

Unfortunately, Mozilo’s intermittent spasms of skepticism didn’t have much effect—because he was also:

• Imploring government regulators to allow more zero down payment mortgages and liar loans in the name of fighting racist redlining;

• Publicly reassuring investors about the creditworthiness of Countrywide’s increasingly bottom-of-the-barrel borrowers;

• And…accelerating his own stock sales.

In February 2007, Countrywide’s shares peaked at over $45. The following summer the subprime resale market collapsed, setting off the current global economic collapse. Mozilo was lucky to talk hapless Bank of America into buying Countrywide in 2008 for less than one-tenth of its peak price.

Still, you can’t say that Mozilo didn’t warn you in countless speeches over the years that Countrywide’s corporate strategy depended upon pouring colossal sums down the rathole of lending to “underserved Americans” (i.e., minority and lower income borrowers).

For instance, in the top story in National Mortgage News on February 17, 2003:

“Mr. Mozilo labeled downpayments as ‘nonsense’ and said credit score requirements are ’still much too high.’… the outspoken industry leader called on his colleagues to ‘take a chance on making mistakes rather than foreclose on the opportunity’ to put minorities and other underserved families into homes of their own.”

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Lottery chiefs were last night under fire for ignoring struggling Brits while giving millions to obscure foreign causes - including £310,000 to help African pygmies make pottery.

Your hard-earned cash will go to Rwanda’s Twa tribe to “develop their traditional skills” with clay.

Another £467,000 is being paid to teach beekeeping in Kenya.
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BNP teachers can work without fear of political discrimination

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