Friday, January 13, 2012

More Housing Crash Porn: MetLife Quits Mortgage Business, to Cut Most of 4,300 Workers


Seems like any business remotely connected to the housing market is collapsing these days. Here is Bloomberg with the latest:
MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer, said it will shut its home mortgage-origination operation, costing the company at least $90 million and most of the 4,300 employees at the unit their jobs.

“The majority will no longer have a position,” said John Calagna, a spokesman for New York-based MetLife, in an interview yesterday. About 20 percent of the workers are based in Irving, Texas, and the rest are scattered throughout the U.S., he said.

MetLife said in October it was seeking a buyer for the mortgage unit after announcing plans to sell deposit-gathering operations to reduce federal oversight. The firm reached a deal last month to sell about $7.5 billion of bank deposits to General Electric Co. The Federal Reserve, which oversees MetLife because of its size and banking operations, rejected its plan last year to raise the dividend and resume share buybacks.
Yet check out what they are trying to blame their troubles on...anything but the widespread chicanery that was going on during the housing bubble years:
“It’s hard to sell a banking business right now, especially a mortgage business, given all of the potential pitfalls” tied to regulation, said Dan Theriault, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC who has a “hold” rating on the company. “They said they had two options, they could sell the bank or wind it down, and they’re doing a combination of the two.”
Yeah, that's it. It's the namby-pamby regulations that have been enacted in the wake of the crisis and not the rampant fraud that went on in the industry for much of this past decade that's to blame. Right here you can see in graphic detail just how the Wall Street assholes don't get it, and they never will.


Bonus: "The world famous Met Life representative is the very symbol of security in an uncertain world"...Ha!

4 comments:

  1. Of course I despise the 1%, and the Randian ideologues who fixed things so they could take an ever bigger slice of the pie. But is that really the underlying problem or are they just good at seizing the opportunities as the empire inevitably declines?

    Have you read Chris Clugston?

    http://wakeupamerika.com/PDFs/Broader-Perspective-Assessment-of-Future.pdf

    I would be interested in a TDS perspective!

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  2. @Gail - interesting. I wasn't familiar with Clugston, per say, but I'm definitely familiar with many of the points he makes in that paper. In fact, I'm very much in agreement with him in general. My take on the 1% is that they are very good at thriving withing the current paradigm, but many of them may not fare so well when the collapse occurs--which could be why they are fighting so hard to stave it off.

    There is a great scene in Max Brooks's outstanding zombie novel, World War Z, in which a group of Hollywood types have holed up in a seemingly impregnable-to-zombies luxury fortress. Attention whores that they all are, they stupidly broadcast their doings to the world, reality teevee-style. Of course, the place then gets overrun, not by zombies but by still-alive human survivors.

    Which is a great allegory of the hubris in the face of changing conditions that will lead to the downfall of the elites as well as what Clugston writes about the desperate coming for any preps that a doomer might make.

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  3. I'm not sure the 1% is fighting so much to stave it off, as they are to garnish as much as possible for themselves in advance.

    And as you observe Clugston posits, that is the aching irony of it all - there really is no way to prepare for collapse. You can prepare for a last stand. But not survival.

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  4. Wonder if this has anything to do with them withering.
    Class Action Suit Brought Against MetLife By Michael K. Stanley / LifeHealth Pro / January 13, 2012 << A class action suit was filed on Jan 12, against MetLife Inc., (MetLife) (NYSE:MET) with charges stemming from allegations that certain officers and directors violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by knowingly making misleading statements pertaining to the company’s financial obligations and therefore distorting the attractiveness of company stock. >>

    ReplyDelete