Hedge Fund Manager Don Brownstein: Enough With The Foreclosures!

Author:
Bess Levin
Updated:
Jan 14, 2019
Original:
Jun 15, 2011

"Jamie Dimon doesn't sleep in one of those foreclosed-upon houses."

Let's say there's 8 million households that are about to be foreclosed on. Those households will then move to another 8 million houses, at a cost-- both for the homeowner and the mortgage servicer...In a sense we are victimizing ourselves by forcing that outcome. We need to say: look, we made a big mistake. Don't spend any more money on that mistake. Why not just let these people be renters. Let them stay in their houses, as tenants. Don't move them. Stop doing that. It doesn't make any sense. Banks get no utility from owning a house. Jamie Dimon doesn't sleep in one of those foreclosed-upon houses. He doesn't use their bathroom factilities. He has his own house. [BI, earlier]

News

Crispin Odey is the founder of Odey Asset Management, a sausage brand ambassador, and a guy who unwittingly made fellow hedge fund manager Philip Falcone's life* a living hell when he pulled this stunt: ...Odey has upped the ante for poultry accommodation – he’s building a temple for his chickens for which the stone alone costs £130,000. The Palladian-style chicken house, designed by Christopher Smallwood Architects, has won planning approval from the Forest of Dean District Council, and will sit on the hillside above Eastbach Court, Odey’s Grade II-listed home. The temple’s roof – adorned with an Anthemia statuette – will be fashioned in grey zinc; the pediments, cornice, architrave and frieze are in English oak; and the columns, pilasters and rusticated stone plinth are being hewn from finest grey Forest of Dean sandstone. Naturally, the doors will be painted in the Odey Asset Management founder’s favourite Hague Blue – “to match the doors around Eastbach Court”, according to the plans...“The temple will be a lovely place when it is finished at the end of the year,” Odey said from a grouse moor. “The chickens will be grand.” Nice for the chickens, but obviously this gesture makes Phil look like a deadbeat by comparison, as he merely allows his pet pig Wilbur to live in his apartment and has never even suggested getting her her own place. You can bet someone will be printing a copy of the article and placing it prominently on top of someone's morning paper, and god help that someone if he doesn't get on the horn about building her the god damn Taj Mahal, ASAP. Crispin Odey’s chickens come home to (a luxury) roost [Telegraph via FT Alphaville] *And the lives of all deep-pocketed animal owners.