naked capitalism

Anonymous says:

News item from Indianapolis, made me wonder if Obama bought the election?

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“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

A former spokesman for the Obama campaign said 375 people were hired as part of the Vote Corps program and said people signed up to work three-hour shifts at a time. Three hours of canvassing got workers a $30 pre-paid Visa card.

The workers showed up to get their cards Wednesday morning at 10:00 am.

“There was a note on the door saying 1:00 pm and then at 1:20 pm everybody was like why is nobody here. They just got here and they’re trying to get it organized,” said Heather Richards, a former campaign worker.

The large gathering of around 375 people prompted police to call in extra officers and set up temporary barricades. The barricades helped keep the crowd from spilling out onto Meridian Street. Police say the several hundred people in line were for the most part orderly.

“No arrests. Some of the people were upset at first because the line wasn’t moving as fast as they thought it should. But we really haven’t had any problems,” said Major Darryl Pierce, Metro Police.

Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

“Still that’s not right. I’m disappointed. I’m glad for the president, but I’m disappointed in this system,” said Diane Jefferson, temporary campaign worker.

“It should have been $480. It’s $230,” said Imani Sankofa.

“They gave us $10 an hour. So we added it. I added up all the hours so it was supposed to be at least $120. All I get is $90,” said Charles Martin.

“I worked nine hours a day for 4 days and got paid half of what I should have earned,” said Randall Waldon.

Some people weren’t satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them.

“They say that they gonna call you or they going to mail it to you, but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens,” said Antron Grose.

“Talking about they’ll mail it to us. I ain’t worried about that, man. They’re not going to mail nothin’,” said Martin.

Note: The comments tool has been disabled for this story. It is WTHR.com’s policy to approve all comments before they are posted because we aim to maintain a civil dialogue on our site. However, because of the large volume of comments generated by this story, we do not have the time to approve them – therefore they have been turned off. We are sorry for any inconvenience. While our goal is to encourage interactivity on our site, in this case, we simply do not have the staff to devote the time to approving comments.

In response to a visitor who asked how many comments this story received, the number was in the hundreds.

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Too funny.

Anonymous says:

anon of 7:59 AM…

As far as I know this is not a blog to air your political bias.

What does the Obama campaign staff have to do with the possible depression that the world faces?

IMO, Shrub stole two elections outright…Do Shrubs actions compare to anything that Obama has done?

Your time would be better spent figuring out your personal financial situation and what you might do to protect yourself in the current slow motion train wreck…Leave the soap opera for others to ponder.

Don says:

We Should Move Away From Foreclosure System
I want to propose a thesis. The cause of this crisis was the foreclosure system itself. The crisis could have been avoided had a system been set in place that renegotiated mortgages immediately upon delinquent payments.

The cause of the crisis in the housing sector was a misallocation of resources by individual homeowners. The borrowers took mortgages that were eventually too high for them to afford. The loans/mortgages were based upon terms that were much more likely to lead to default/foreclosure.

But what if foreclosure had not been the option? What if the first option had been to renegotiate the mortgage/loan to a payment affordable to the borrower? The level of payment that the borrower could afford would then trigger a set of possible options:

1) Increase the price of the house
2) Increase the length of the mortgage
3) Base payments on percentage of income, so that they will rise as borrower’s income rises.

Now, however it would be done, wouldn’t this have been a better situation than the one we currently face? The reason to try a mortgage renegotiation plan now is to try and see if we can move away from the foreclosure system and devise one that keeps borrowers in their houses. Isn’t that a sensible proposal?

Don the libertarian Democrat

Don says:

River,Thanks for your comment. What got me thinking about this was a better way of deleveraging. I’m not suggesting mandating anything, by the way. Some people will definitely default. Obviously, also, many loans shouldn’t have been made. I’m trying to suggest a process that will ease the misallocation of housing by saving as many borrowers as possible. Where mortgages are bundled, having a system of possible solutions already in place might overcome the problem of how to deal with such foreclosures. The reason a lender would want to do such a thing would be to avoid defaults, deeply depressed housing prices, and negative effects on the economy.

But, again, thanks for the comments. I’ll consider them.

Take care,

Don the libertarian Democrat

Don says:

River, By the way, your comment taught me a lesson. In trying to be a little provocative to get a few comments, I didn’t clearly express myself. Thanks, Take care, Don

Anonymous says:

gladwell’s conclusions are pretty unsurprising, don’t you think?

only thing is, the ivy league schools gave up their legacy programs a long time ago and the folks who went on that dizzying trip of greed indifferent to their actions were weinbergs more than caldwills.