Arkansas Humor

Uncle Brice

Solving America's Financial Crisis

A few minutes ago I watched all them big heads in Washington yapping about how they could spend $700 BILLION taxpayer dollars and maybe not solve anything.

Not being one who has ever been accused of putting too much thought into things that could be solved with a little Arkansas common sense, I came up with a solution to both the banking crisis and the energy crisis.

More than one prognosticators has mentioned that about half the cost of a barrel of oil is due to speculative buying and selling in the oil futures market. In other words, there are folks buying and selling oil that don't even know where to put it in a car.

So here's the deal for futures trading. Any person or entity that purchases an oil futures contract must take delivery of that contract when it matures. Let me make this clear. John Doe Speculative Investor buys a February contract for, oh, let's say 30,000 barrels of oil. Come February, JDSI makes room in his cubicle to stack 30,000 barrels. He cannot sell those barrels until March. Or, if he still has room in his cubicle, he can buy more; I don't care about that.

If you purchase a contract for one month, you cannot sell a contract the same month. I believe that will take care of the oil crisis, at least the price you and I are paying at the pump, and that's the oil crisis we're most interested in.

Solving the Mortgage Crisis

Now that the price of gas is dropping by about half, the cost of producing groceries and getting them to the store is dropping, too. That means you folks who were lured into bad home mortgage deals by a combination of greedy folks in the investment industry and your own dang stupidity have a few more dollars to play with.

But you ain't gonna play with them; you're going to pay your dang mortgage payments. I'm gonna help with that, too, so don't get your drawers all twisted out of shape.

Every loan in foreclosure over the past eighteen months and those fast approaching foreclosure are frozen. You folks that were kicked out of your house should pack your bags and get ready to move back in.

Every mortgage using less than conventional mortage principles shall herewith and forever more be fixed at a 7% interest rate. Payments that were missed on these predatory loans are forgiven and shall be absorbed by the stupid people that made the loans.

If you, the homeowner, cannot pay your monthly payments at 7% interest, then you will lose your house again. I'm only giving you one chance.

Back to you stupid lenders. You cannot sell your loans to anyone else. You loan someone money for a house and they will pay you until the loan is paid off. You will earn 7% interest, which is more than enough to make a decent living. If you cannot make a decent living at 7% interest on a home loan and feel that you must go out of business, all loans held by you are forgiven. Yes, those loans are worthless, but you haven't screwed the homeowner in the process.

Now you ask, what is to become of investment bankers and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Well, let's look to history for the answer. What became of dinosaurs?

We can even look at Mr. Darwin's theory in a little more detail. Basically, his theory can be summed up thusly: things change. You either change with them, or you die. Next question?

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