The Bankster's Holiday

It must really be fun being a bankster. You get free everything: basically: free holidays, free health care, free lunch, tax free, freedom to do whatever you want or go where you want at somebody else's expense, and best of all, free money. You even get free access to Congress, the White House, and Wall Street. Pretty good deal, all in all.

But what do banksters do for fun, when not watching their private sports teams, America's Cup yachts from their private helicopters or aircraft carriers? Well, now I know, from personal experience, and my suspicion is that anyone who reads this blog will recognize their own place on this game board as well: it's called 'pawn.' But the game isn't chess, because that would be pretty much equal between two players, and if there's anything banksters hate it's fair play, or equality in terms of, well, terms.

What banksters love above all else is to toy with people's hopes, dreams, expectations, and, well, nest eggs. Picture a sparrow, two sparrows, who have painstakingly built a nest in a nicely blossoming cherry tree. Picture their carefully laid nest egg, guarded day and night. If they're lucky, maybe they have two eggs, or even three, just in case.

Now picture a crow.

OK, you get the idea. So back to the Bankster's Holday. Crows may actually steal eggs for sustenance. Not so, banksters. They steal your nest eggs because they can. Granted, it probably gets boring after a while, jetting from bank to bank, Cannes to Canton, Dubai to Detroit (to see how your takeover is going), Denver to Downton, Sydney to Seattle, just to check up on your obscenely gross assets and golf swing. You need some real excitement, and if you aren't one of the lucky ones to own your own sports team, you have to settle for owning a few cities, or states, or countries, and playing with the occupants thereof.

Here's an example, from my personal archives. Back in the 1990s, when my Florida mysteries were making their rounds in America's bookstores and libraries (and me too, to talk and sign on occasion) I bought a house in my then-hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a fixer, which was something as a freelance author I'd come to excel at: living in a home (as a single parent with my son Jonathan, then a ten-year-old), fixing it up nicely, living there a few years, then reselling at a profit (don't try this at home, at least not any more). This was my plan. Unfortunately, some local teen crackheads had other ideas, pretty much charred the place before I could move in, and I ended up selling it for a loss. Oh well. Life goes on.

Or so I thought.

Flash forward fifteen years, to Seattle, where I currently reside. I'm home with my wife and daughter, having dinner, when there is a knock on the door. Foolishly assuming it's just one of our condo neighbors bearing gifts of excess baked goods or such, I open up and am greeted by none other than a process server, who cheerfully hands me a stack of documents and splits the scene.

What I am left holding, apart from the bag, is a lawsuit, entitled Countrywide Savings aka The Bank of America, plaintiffs, v. Yours Truly, along with a list of others including, oddly, an old defunct hospital and several other persons I've never heard of, plus one guy whose name I vaguely recall because he's the one to whom I sold the old burned fixer in St. Pete fifteen years before. Which is what this lawsuit, it seems, is all about.

Bank of America, in effect, is demanding immediate repayment by the Defendants (i.e. Yours Truly et al) in the amount of approximately $258,000, plus interest, for a mortgage on said property that I sold in 1998 for--get this--$25,000.

Never mind that I sold this property free and clear two decades ago. Never mind that the money is for a mortgage taken out by a subsequent owner (actually subsequent to the guy I sold it to). Ostensibly, in addition to making a half dozen or so people's lives miserable (namely anyone who ever owned said property that can be process-served during dinner somewhere), the BOA bankster's alleged purpose in said lawsuit is either to extort the mortgage money out of somebody or other, or get ownership of said property by way of foreclosure.

Now a thinking person (not popular or beneficial to be these days) might assume, no problem, sign off on whatever BOA wants me to sign off on so they can go ahead and foreclose already on whoever the doofus is whose name is on the title now who didn't pay that $258,000 mortgage. If you thought that, as I did, you'd be wrong. Which is why thinking people are not doing so well these days in these so-called United States of America. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

What the Bank Of America actually wanted, apparently, since they ignored my offer to release any alleged interest in said property, was to have fun. At my expense. So after ignoring my attempted communications with their lawyers (and their subsequent lawyers a year later), without informing me in any way what they actually wanted from me, apart from demanding that I repay somebody else's debt of $258,000, was to see me squirm. Or if not squirm, at least see if they could make me dance. Or if not dance, at least make my fly at my own expense from Seattle to Tampa to answer a legal summons, signed by one of BOA's very own judges, with the friendly overture of "You are commanded to appear" followed by a time and place, namely the Circuit Court of Pinellas County, Florida, at the county courthouse in Clearwater, Florida (former home of Jim Morrison, as it happens), at a certain time and date, period, or else.

Luckily for me, I have friends in Tampa Bay, and thus had a place stay. Unluckily for me, my friends, nor I, had a private jet, so I was required to utilize America's fine commercial airways system, which is always fun, I suppose, for those who get to pull the strings and not have to actually fly on them. And even my friends, some of whom are lawyers, could offer no insights as to my rights or obligations in this matter beyond showing up, because, after all, I was not dealing with any actual people (the SCOTUS assertion that "corporations are people" notwithstanding) and the legal nuances, known only to banksters and their lawyers, it seems, were such that no one had a clue what this was all about, least of all me.

So I showed up at the appointed time and place in the Pinellas County Courthouse and Florida Circuit Court to see what the heck this was all about. The entire courtroom, it seemed, was for foreclosure cases only--apparently a popular pastime in Florida these days, because the room was packed. There was a line where litigants (plaintiffs, i.e. lenders, and defendants, i.e. homeowners) were supposed to sign in. My case being "BOA v. Ayres etc." I checked in, even though I was the only one to do so, that I could see, from either side of the aisle. Then the judge came in. I'd swear it was the same judge who used to preside in my favorite TV show "Boston Legal," but then looks are deceiving.

When the judge asked if there was anyone present who did not wish to contest foreclosure I stepped forward.  "Who are you?" the judge asked me.

I gave my case number, and then explained that I was neither the property owner, mortgage holder, nor lender, but had been ordered to show up here anyway all the way from Seattle for some reason. The whole room kind of fell silent, and even the judge seemed perplexed.

"So you want to dismiss this case?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

That was not supposed to happen, apparently, and where the BOA sitcom scriptwriters apparently messed up. Suddenly a bunch of guys in suits came running up from the back of the room waiving briefs. "Your honor," one of them shouted. "We are contesting this case, not dismissing it."

At which point the judge said, "Maybe you'd better talk to this guy out in the hall."

So we all filed out: me, two lawyers representing the actual homeowner, the actual homeowner, and two lawyers representing the good old BOA.

They all wanted to know who I was, which was interesting, since even the court hadn't bothered to ask. The BOA lawyers were of course amused that I had actually shown up in court like they'd demanded, all the way from Seattle. Apparently in their world a summons is merely a suggestion. And the actual homeowner's lawyer was equally amused, and no doubt these lawyers would all have some good laughs together over cocktails later. But meanwhile the BOA lawyer was quick to inform me that I had been dismissed from the case since I was no longer of any use to them since they'd actually found the actual homeowner who'd actually borrowed the $258,000 plus interest, who was actually standing there.

"That's great," I said. "It would have been nice to know that before coming here. Can I get that in writing?"

Well, presumably I would, as soon as they rescheduled their trial date, which had been postponed, I was now informed. Meaning that even if I wanted to defend myself from my still-unstated offenses other than once having owned the offending property, that I'd come all the way from Seattle for no reason in any case.

"And can I get my travel expenses reimbursed?" I then naively inquired, which got another good laugh from everyone. Such clowns, us traveling writers.

But at least the banksters got what they wanted, as usual: a few laughs, at someone else's expense. No wonder Barack Obama keeps J.P. Morgan/Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at his side at all times. He must be a barrel of fun. And fun is probably hard to come by these days, in Washington, D.C..