We interrupt this rally for what must be the funniest story I have read in I don’t know how long:
Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests
Even for the once-notorious Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, it may
have been a first: Two men were arrested on Tuesday after pushing a
corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a
check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check, the
police said.When Virgilio Cintron, 66, died at his
apartment at 436 West 52nd Street recently, his roommate and a friend
saw an opportunity to cash his $355 check, the police said.They
did not go about it the easy way, the police said, choosing a ruse that
resembled the plot of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” a film about two young men
who prop up their dead employer to pretend that he is alive.>
You may now return to your previously scheduled activities . . .
>
Source:
Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests
BRUCE LAMBERT and CHRISTINE HAUSER
NYT, January 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/nyregion/09dead.html
In support of FreeMarkets, and corporate greed the “Money Honey” will be crossing the Writers picket lines, and going on Jay Leno.
Not that I care to support such a ridiculous Union, but they do deserve to get paid.
Another of today’s headline is almost just as silly:
“St. Louis Fed President Poole said U.S. economic fundamentals remain strong and 2008 looks to be a year of rising growth. He also noted it is too early to tell if housing problems will push the economy into a recession.”
Wow.
Those two must be bankers…
“”St. Louis Fed President Poole said U.S. economic fundamentals remain strong and 2008 looks to be a year of rising growth.”
The man is absolutely right. There will be rising growth…in unemployment, credit cards, auto loans and mortgage defaults, as well as an exponential growth in volatility and choppy action in the markets before a probable steep downturn. John Hussman rightly wrote that “investors should recognize that a 30% market decline is only a standard run-of-the-mill bear.”
As for pushing the economy into recession, there is no need to push anymore since recession is most likely already upon us.
Up until August they coulda got him a $500,000 mortgage, and it wouldn’t have even made the news ;)
It doesn’t exactly strike me as funny. sad maybe.
What an iconic story reflecting the state of our banking industry. Just how different is this story from the CEOs and CFOs wheeling their defunct enterprises over to the Fed or the Treasury for a hand-out on the basis that the new liquidity will enable their enterprise to stay afloat when they know the business is kaput? The only different might be the scale and audacity of the theft.
They couldn’t get a check cashing store to honor his check. I bet if they’d had taken him to countrywide they could have gotten a 650K mortgage – easy!
I love euphemisms…like “soft consumer demand.” It sounds so much nicer than “too poor to pay the bills.”
Bloomberg
Shares of AT&T Inc dropped to their lowest in nearly five years in New York trading after chief executive officer Randall Stephenson said slowing economic growth led to “softness” in the home-phone and Internet businesses. […] “As people foreclose on houses, you’re obviously going to have access-line disconnects…”
You have to look at the corpse-wheeling story in the context of what a fantastic windfall $355.00 would have been considered even split between these two men.
One hundred seventy seven bucks and fifty cents. Enough incentive to wheel a dead man through the streets.
Social security? Barely….