Articles by Rick Grant

There’s a whole science that grew up around looking back into time and trying to detangle, given the events, what is really going on. Scientists who study the universe do this, as do particle physicists who smash atoms together and study what ever gets left behind. Lately, we’ve seen the federal government spending a lot of its time doing this, through formal commissions, like the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and in its regular lawmaking activities.

Standing out in the rain this morning as I waited to vote in my local primary election, I wondered, as I often do, how real is our democracy? Is this just a show the powers that be put on to keep us believing that we have some control? Is our government like the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, pretending to give those they serve some choice in the matter while actually steering them into the products or services they want them to buy?

Milling through the crowd at the American Land Title Association's Business Strategies Conference in Las Vegas this week, I was impressed that quite a few vendors, agents and underwriters showed up for the event. I was also pleased with the general attitude of attendees.

I was visiting with a real estate attorney this morning. She was writing a story about the industry in terms that her local market could understand. She writes for a newspaper that serves a fairly swanky East Coast community made up mostly of retirees. Many of her readers are likely living in what once were their vacation homes, most of them paid off.

I’ve been watching the preparations for the Royal Wedding with some interest. Not the preparations the British are making for their big event, but rather the lengths some Americans I know are going to in order to ensure that they don’t miss it. Why do we care? I saw the same thing happen during the time of Princess Diana. I didn’t get it then, either. But I suspect that the heads of our largest U.S. banks understand it. They, and other large American corporations, may be the closest thing we have to royalty in this country.

It used to be that the American home was one of the most important status symbols in this country. Just getting into a home of your own was a big deal. It took years of saving, working on a plan that would result in a real estate closing, a very important affair with lawyers and everything. Most Americans started out with small tract homes in neighborhoods that were designed to hold their value so that when it was time to trade up, these homeowners could pass their dream down to the next generation and move up.

There was a time, back in the shadows of pre-recorded history, when entire societies rose and fell based on the power of their oracles. If you could toss a bag of rocks inscribed with runes or read the entrails of a sacrificed animal you were treated like a modern-day financial services analyst. And just like analysts from our own time, these godlike figures observed the same environment their patrons did — crunching the same data that was available to anyone else living at the time.