I think it was Ludwig von Mises, considered by many to be the greatest economist of the 20th century, who said, “It’s the goddamnedest thing when the subprime lending market collapses and your mortgage division hemorrhages money for months on end and then your shareholders overwhelmingly reject your leadership by voting for dissident board candidates. Fuck.”
On the one hand, I have an antisocial personality spectrum diagnosis that causes me to take pleasure in the misfortune of other people. But then, over here, you have my short attention span, which makes it hard for me to follow the details of the collapse of the housing market. With H&R Block’s management shuffle, these two neurological pathologies have achieved a kind of equilibrium – I don’t necessarily need to know the details of chairman Mark A Ernst’s recent resignation. I just feel good knowing that the business community is regarding him pretty much the way Internet folks regard that photo of the poor bastard with elephantiasis of the testicles. I’ve been told that there’s an editorial injunction against posting that picture because we totally overused it during Saundra McFadden-Weaver’s trial on mortgage-fraud charges.
Now Ludwig von Mises’ words seem almost prescient. They’ll be chaining up a white ghost bike outside the H&R Block Center at 13th and Main in Ernst’s memory, and also pouring out a Labatt 50, but Richard C. Breeden, formerly of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is stepping forward as the new chairman to lead H&R Block back into the vanguard of tax-preparation services. The shareholders like him, but they also liked Ernst just fine when he was generating billions of dollars in a risky market. Now, all of a sudden, they’re feeling conservative again and wearing wingtips and decorating their houses with grandma furniture.
If anyone needs a mono-line subprime mortgage originator cheap, please call Breeden. He needs to unload Option One, Block’s mortgage unit, as quickly as possible, and will entertain any offer. --Chris Packham
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