Main Street

Interesting Things Around the Internet

• Ford had an unexpectedly profitable third quarter. Meanwhile, it’s still asking its workers to make concessions—after they already did so in March.
• So this couple falls behind on their mortgage payments after wildfires in California leave their small business struggling. And then they can’t even find out what bank they’re dealing with as they try to save their home:
  

  The couple alleges that Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman’s then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003.

  Unable to identify a lender, the couple could neither capitalize on a mortgage hardship provision that would allow them to defer some payments, nor on a state law enabling them to offset their debt against separate, investment-related claims against Goldman.

  In July, the Beckers won a David-and-Goliath struggle when Goldman subsidiary MTGLQ Investors dropped its bid to seize their house. By then, the college-educated couple had been reduced to shopping for canned goods at flea markets and selling used ceramic glass.

• An $87 million fine for workplace safety violations. That’s after 271 notifications for failing to correct hazards, and 439 “willful and egregious” safety control violations.
• Matt Yglesias, noting that a 3.5% growth rate isn’t going to do much to unemployment:
  

  Two points: One is that incumbent members of congress need to get their heads out of the sand and recognize that they’re likely to be kicked out of office by angry mobs if this comes to pass. A lot of politicians and political operatives in DC are very impressed by polling that shows people concerned about the budget deficit. I think it would be really politically insane for people to take that too literally. If congress makes the deficit even bigger in a way that helps spur recovery, then come election day people will notice the recovery and be happy. If, by contrast, the labor market is still a disaster then people will be pissed off. It’s true that they might say they’re pissed off at the deficit, but the underlying source of anger is the objective bad conditions.