The Cranberries — Linger, live in London.

What’s on your mind?

Pouting Baby asks why Mrs. Ginni T makes mean phone calls. (photo courtesy of Jim White)

Pouting Baby is talking to us again.   -JW

When I read the newspaper on Tuesday, I learned that Mrs. Ginni T left a really funny message on the answering machine of Professor Hill.  The message didn’t make any sense to me.  Here’s what the paper said:

“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”

I talked to some old people who remember what happened back when Creepy Clarence was talking about being an important judge. The people talking to Creepy Clarence brought in Professor Hill and asked her about when she and Creepy Clarence worked together. He sure did some creepy things, so I don’t see why Mrs. Ginni T thinks it is Professor Hill who should say she’s sorry.

I noticed that Mrs. Ginni T made her telephone call really early on October 9. That’s a Saturday. That’s a funny day and time to call a Professor in her office. But Mrs. Ginni T had had a very bad day the day before. Here’s what was in the newspaper on October 8:

For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.

/snip/

But to some people who study judicial ethics, Mrs. Thomas’s activism is raising knotty questions, in particular about her acceptance of large, unidentified contributions for Liberty Central. She began the group in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and because it is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group, named for the applicable section of the federal tax code, she does not have to publicly disclose any contributors. Such tax-exempt groups are supposed to make sure that less than half of their activities are political.

Maybe on October 8, Mrs. Ginni T turned into Mrs. Gin and T because she didn’t like what the newspaper said about her. It’s too bad her telephone wasn’t from Horizon:

Reversing the incentives. (photo: The Doctr on Flickr)

Simply put, the problem with the housing market right now, not the problem for investors or banks but the problem for the people living in the homes, is that it has become more lucrative for many servicers to foreclose on the property than to work out a modification. That changes all of the incentives around housing, and makes fraud attractive. That the system was swamped with calls for modifications after pushing people into loans that they couldn’t afford when they recast makes fraud all the more attractive. Foreclosure pays in particular for servicers who don’t also own the loan: for them, they’d rather pay a foreclosure mill a flat rate to process the homes rather than pay more staff to do person-to-person modifications and all the things that go with that: verification of income, negotiation, etc. This happens to be, in most cases, the mega-servicers who are owned by the big banks.

And foreclosure not only pays for servicers, it really pays off for the foreclosure mill law firms, who can process this stuff at a rapid pace and, until the revelations, get judgments with virtually no opposition. And lo and behold, Wall Street private equity firms are behind the foreclosure mills in some cases. The lawsuit on behalf of homeowners claims that Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm, has benefited from what the lawsuit calls an illegal fee-splitting arrangement between Prommis Solutions and several of the busiest foreclosure law firms it controls. Great Hills is the biggest stakeholder in Prommis, a company that acts as a middleman between mortgage servicers and law firms. A lawyer for Prommis rejected that claim, and officials of Great Hill Partners did not respond to inquiries. But a review of public filings, company news releases and other public statements shows that several private equity firms or entities they control have stakes in the business operations of some of the busiest foreclosure law firms in New York, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Cue the line about Wall Street sticking its blood funnel into anything that makes money. Prommis Solutions adds nothing of value but is just a go-between for the servicers and the foreclosure mills. They just skim off the top. And their profit margins are likely pretty low, and so they encourage cost-cutting measures: