I Want Your House: A Three Step Solution to Our Financial Crisis

Author: Paul deVere

“Grub Street” is not in Beaufort County. It is not even in the U.S.A. According to Wikipedia, “Until the early 1800s, Grub Street was the name of a street in London’s impoverished Moorfields district. In the 1700s and 1800s, the street was famous for its concentration of mediocre, impoverished ‘hack writers,’ aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, who existed on the margins of the journalistic and literary scene.”

As one of the nation’s top, yet virtually unknown, über-economic gurus, I am almost embarrassed to say this, but the solution to our financial crisis has been staring me right in the face. I come by my economic credentials much better qualified than all those talking heads on CNBC or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. After all, they’ve got real jobs. I’m just a writer.

I can look at our economy from a totally unbiased view. First, I don’t own any stock, so whatever happens in the equity market isn’t terribly important to me. Second, my retirement plan: I have been telling retirement counselors for years that writers don’t retire, they just die. Hence, I have no 401(k) to worry about.

Finally, I am an “über-economic guru,” because I happen to know how to spell “derivatives” and because I know the difference between SDS (extremists, i.e.:Students for a Democratic Society people, 1960s) and CDS (extortionists , i.e.: the credit default swap people, 2000s).

And I apologize. Rather than being proactive (i.e., calling President Bush), I was waiting around for the G-8 to slip me yet another emergency e-mail (i.e., “Warren Buffet wants to buy Iceland. What should we do?”).

So, again, I’m sorry I did not step up to the plate sooner. So finally, here’s my well-reasoned, three-step solution to the financial crisis:

Step One: The banks need $700 billion (nine zeros)? Go to the pros! Get the UNITED WAY in there! Those people can get blood out of a turnip. Think of it. There’s that thermometer we all see out on U.S. 278. Put it on the sidewalk at 11 Wall Street in NYC. Granted, $700 billion (or whatever) is a bit steep, but they’ll have the whole country to work with! A couple of months—and several phone calls later—the thermometer pops and the U.S. economy is saved! They are that good. The United Way doesn’t ask, “How much do you need?” They ask, “How much do you want?” Problem solved.

(Now, as a backup for those recalcitrant few who hang up on the United Way forks, we’ll have the South Carolina Troopers’ Association in reserve to make up any shortfalls. Those people NEVER take “no” for an answer.)

Step Two: Everybody in Washington and on Wall Street is complaining about all those “toxic” mortgage securities. We don’t need more regulation! And we don’t need Treasury to go out and buy them all up. Wrong department! We already have a huge number of people experienced in “toxicity.” Washington, where has your head been? Let the experts do it.

Get the EPA in there and clean up the mess! They pretty much have the Love Canal, Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill under control. Up the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and all that toxic stuff gets buried right next to the radioactive waste the DOE plans to store at Yucca Mountain as soon as they get approval by the EPA to open the place up. Let’s work together here, group.

Step Three: Now that the financial crisis is solved, let’s jump to the next point on my über-economic guru agenda. I admit I am very excited about this. I want your house.

Well, I don’t know if it’s your house exactly, but as a U.S. taxpayer, I now own a good chunk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have something like $5 trillion mortgage-baked securities on the books, and somewhere in there is a mortgage that I’m pretty sure is for the oceanfront house just down the street. It’s had a real estate lock box on it for about 10 years and nobody ever goes in there. Toxic or not, I want that house. The view is fantastic. The yard needs work and the carport could use a good blowing. Goodness knows how many colonies of rodents have taken up residence over the years. I’ll deal with that. And it will probably need a new roof in a couple years, but I’ll just go out and find a toxic bank that will give me a toxic loan. They obviously have plenty to spare.