Competition, yeah man. Boxing, basketball, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, you name it baby, we love it, right? Wait a minute what about real estate?

That’s right real estate we compete against one another, don’t we? How about mortgages don’t the mortgage companies and the mortgage brokers and bankers compete against one another? Isn’t that called the free market system? Yes but? But … Yup … but, and that’s a heavy but man because in reality we don’t. In reality, the AIG’s and the Wal-Marts drive everyone else out of business because … well because they’re too big to fail, right? I mean, even when they fail they, obviously, don’t fail because they’re bailed out with our money. They want, and get privatized profits and socialized losses and that’s a tragedy, because they do, but the worse tragedy is us because we put up with it.

The current administration has given the banks free money but they are not passing it on at the rates that they should. It should be 3% for anyone that has the credit score and credit history to back up their eligibility. The problem wasn’t the loans that are going bad the problem was why they went bad and the lenders not only funding them but also funding junk derivatives; derivatives that are a total, as of today: of $47 trillion dollars, with a T, of toxic CDO’s (collateralized debt obligations) and CDS’s (credit default swaps), that the banks have sitting on their books. This is only on paper but soon enough it will come due and banks will fall; BIG BANKS.

A small(er) company than Bank of America (for example) starts worrying about paying their bills? Lower their prices to compete better, like Wal-Mart and B.O.A. do, right? Wrong … they only advertise this lie; that they are lowering their prices … like the bank that says they will give you a mortgage for absolutely no fees or only a 1% origination fee … the real fees are hidden in their yield spread (you qualified for 5%; you got 6%) and the sad news is: we take it.

Yes, I admit I take it too but I tell them; yes I tell them about it … the truth … the truth so many people have no ears to be able to hear with; it pains them, they don’t understand it; they don’t want to hear it, and like Jack Nicholson said, in “A Few Good Men” (I’m an ex-Marine, humor me here) “You can’t handle the truth.” And many of us can’t and won’t hear the truth, maybe not until at our very death-bed we realize that we only hurt ourselves when we lied to others and, more importantly, to ourselves about anything especially where it concerned money! Why do I mention money? Because it’s all about money and I always try to also remember that the greatest human being who ever lived, and whose example I use, was also the poorest.