Power of Public Pressure

I saw this as a comment to one of the news feeds online... I don't know the author and I did not change their spelling or grammar... I am posting purely on the merit of the content...  Why do we allow Congress to do what they do? And for so long?

FROM THE COMMENT:

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.



Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.



Copy and forward this to a minimum of twenty people in your address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.



Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below..

A. Two Six-year Senate terms

B. Six Two-year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms



2. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.



3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.



4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.



5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.



6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.



7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.



8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.  The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.

Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

What is the next big thing?

In any business we are often forced to ask ourselves, what is the next big thing? I have spent many years in the financial services arena. And from the very beginning of my career, that very question has always been in the forefront.

When I started we made small loans $300 - $1,500 and we asked, "What’s the next big thing?" Then we raised the loan limits... at one point we were actually loaning people up to $10,000 on an unsecured basis... and we asked, 'what's the next big thing?"

Eventually we began to make Real Estate secured loans and we still asked, "what's the next big thing?" Well Loan Brokers became the rage and 'sub-prime mortgages came into vogue... Soon investors developed an appetite for the so-called sub-prime loan and then big banks got into the fray. And still we asked, "What’s the next big thing?"


Then came the implosion of the Sub-Prime market and then the total Real Estate bubble burst... Today the Loan Servicers are now in the forefront, they are dealing with massive delinquencies, loss-mitigation, foreclosures and shadow inventory. And guess what the question is that they are asking? You got it, "What is the next big thing?"

While attending the Mortgage Servicing Conference in Dallas Texas the week of 4/5/2011 the answer included shadow inventories, outsourcing and a new phrase was coined, "strategic default"... that is when the house across the street from you has lost so much value that letting your house go back to the bank is a strategic way of thinking.

So what IS the next big thing? During the conference it was proclaimed that mortgage defaults are no longer delinquency problems but they are marketing problems... there are not enough skilled sales people on the servicing teams that can sell customers on the virtues of loan modifications and the like... Guess what, the servicers will look for more skilled sales people, like the old lending type Account Executives...

What’s the next big thing you ask? It appears we have come full circle. I doubt that we will ever see the undisciplined (and unregulated) days of the past. But I do expect that the mortgage lending business is bouncing back...

 

And when it has completed its cycle, I have but one question... what is the next big thing?