My Kind of Town, Chicago Is
In a stunning bit of moronic populism, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, one Tom Dart, has taken it upon himself to cease evicting people from foreclosed properties. Basically, the good sheriff has decided to ignore valid court orders that require him to evict the tenants.
Dart’s foolish act will accomplish two things. It will make credit harder to get for landowners in Cook County, and it will further extend the mortgage securities crisis.
When banks lend money, they lend on a set of basic expectations. Among these expectations is that government officials will follow the law. When government officials change the rules midgame, i.e., ignore the rule of law, lenders flee the jurisdiction. Lenders cannot be certain that their investments will be protected and honored.
Additionally, now the holders of mortgage backed securities are looking at Dart’s illegal act and thinking “I wonder how much of the collateral for these mortgage backed securities I’ve got on my books is in Cook County, and how can I quantify this new ‘we ignore the rule of law’ risk?” Good luck assessing the market value of a product whose value is already suspect and is now entirely dependent on the whim of short-sighted government hacks.
So, full marks to sheriff Tom Dart for failing to comprehend the impact of his actions. Incompetence, populism and politics in Chicago. ‘Puter is shocked.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.