Those Lying Adults

Remember how, as a kid, you’d stand in line at a store begging your dad to buy you something. The desired item was, of course, unnecessary and expensive. Dad now faced a conundrum. He didn’t want to crush your hopes as you stood there with big eyes, clutching a Power Rangers doll. But he also wanted to keep his budget in check and maintain the illusion of being in charge. So he’d say “I’ll think about it.”

I thought of this the other day as I read a story about Fannie Mae, the government-subsidized home mortgage giant. Fannie Mae has been trying to get foreclosed homes off its books. So, it has people who provide lists of foreclosed homes to real estate brokers. For the brokers, this info is pure gold. If you know which homes are being foreclosed on before the other brokers do, you can beat the competition and make The Big Bucks.

Which, incidentally, is the entire purpose of life.

So there’s this Foreclosure Specialist working for Fannie in Southern California. And he’s feeding the info to realtors, but only those willing to exchange a portion of their realtors’ commissions for the info. In other words, the Foreclosure Specialist is demanding kickbacks. He’s just another go-getter in The Greatest Nation On Earth Pretending It’s Not Utterly Corrupt. So he tries to give a realtor the inside scoop on 15 properties. And he says “If you give me twenty percent of your commission, the number of home-listings I provide will keep growing.”

At which point the realtor says “I’ll think about it.” And later, while he’s “thinking” about it, he calls someone at the FBI.

It’s funny how all that ill-begotten money suddenly becomes meaningless the day they slap on the handcuffs.

The moral of the story is straightforward: Adults are liars.  If you’re a kid and an adult says “I’ll think about it”, you know he’s lying. So you pout and double down on the pressure/guilt until you win. And if you’re an adult caught up in fraud, and someone utters that phrase to you, they don’t mean it either. It’s time to grab your passport and get out of the country, quick.