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heich0e · 1 year

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There's an arm tight around your waist when you wake. It's heavy and familiar. It pulls you a little closer as your return to consciousness becomes known.

"G'morning," you mumble, rubbing at your eyes with the point of your knuckle. You blink, once and then twice, as the waking world comes back into focus and takes the shape of a new day.

"Morning."

Levi's voice is always so raspy in the morning. So low and rough. You shiver a little at the sound, but hide it in a stretch–your movement stunted by the hold he has you in, pulled to his bare chest.

"What did you dream about?" you ask him sleepily, rolling over so you're facing his way. He lets you move freely, but keeps his arm over you, and you prop your chin in your hand once you're laying on your tummy. You watch him as he watches you.

"Dunno," he says indifferently. "You know I don't ever really remember stuff like that."

You scrunch up your nose, having expected the answer but being no less disappointed by it.

"What did you dream about?" he turns your question back to you.

"Got a boob job."

Levi's eyes widen in surprise and his lip curls in distaste.

"Why the hell would you dream about that?" he grunts derisively, almost sulking.

"Who knows," you shrug as much as you can given your position. "You loved 'em though."

Levi takes your face in his hand and squishes your cheeks together until your lips purse. His expression is surprisingly severe as he looks you in the eyes. "Don't even joke about that. I like them exactly as they are."

He leans forward and presses a kiss to your forehead, your lips still puckered thanks to his grip. He lets your face go after a moment, and then pushes himself up to slip out of bed, shuffling off towards the bathroom down the hall.

You lay back in Levi's bed for a moment, flopping down with your face pressed in the pillows. They smell like him: like his soap, and his beloved laundry detergent whose brand he's so loyal to he buys it in bulk and keeps stacked at the back of his closet.

Down the hall, you hear the tap running as he washes his face, just like he does first thing every morning. The next thing you hear is the medicine cabinet open as he retrieves his blue toothbrush, kept in a little storage holder next to the yellow toothbrush he'd bought for you a few weeks ago to replace the pink one he'd bought you before that.

You lay there, peacefully listening to the motions of his morning routine step-by-step, until eventually he comes shuffling out again in his slippers and heads towards the little kitchen on the other side of his bachelor apartment.

Next is the kettle, filled with enough water for him to have tea and you to have coffee, then onto the electric base to boil.

"Get up, lazy."

You smile into his pillow as he calls to you.

"Don't wanna," you say, rolling over onto your back so he can hear you clearly.

"You have work," he reminds you, though he really doesn't need to–you're as aware of the fact as he is. You groan defeatedly, pushing yourself upright.

Levi looks over at you from the kitchen where he's preparing two mugs–one with looseleaf tea in a steeper, the other with a single-cup percolator resting overtop, waiting to be filled. He watches as you stretch your arms up over your head, the hem of the long-sleeved shirt he'd loaned to you the night before lifting from the motion. Your muscles ache a little, not in an unpleasant way, and you're still a little stiff from sleep.

You roll yourself out of bed and into the kitchen after him.

"What are you gonna have for breakfast?" he asks, the kettle shutting off automatically as it comes to temperature. Levi has one of those kettles where you can choose the automatic shut off temperature because–in his own words–he'd rather drink nothing than drink badly made tea.

"I want that pie from last night," you say, reaching for the door of the refridgerator to retrieve the very pastry you speak of. The two of you had stopped at a diner for dinner after a long day, and you'd lost your motivation to eat dessert but brought a slice of apple pie home with you for later. Levi stops you with a strong arm hooked around your waist.

"You can't eat pie for breakfast."

You pout. "Why not?"

Levi huffs indignantly through his nose, like it pains him to even dignify your question with an answer.

"You need to eat something with some nutritional value to start the day."

"There's fruit in it!" you argue uselessly.

"No."

You fight weakly against his hold, reaching out towards the appliance he works to keep you from. "But I want pie."

Levi finally lets you go with a long, world-weary sigh, knowing that his water is going cold.

"I bought you jam," he grumbles, pouring the kettle delicately over the mug waiting for him at the counter. "If you insist on starting the day with sugar at least have it on some toast."

You open the door to the refridgerator and sure enough on the door beside his usual condiments there's a little bottle of jam waiting for you. The same brand you always keep in your own fridge for yourself. You smile, plucking it out, eying the takeout container with your apple pie a little wistfully before letting the door swing shut behind you.

You creep up next to Levi at the counter, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he pours the hot water over the coffee filter waiting over your favourite mug.

"Thanks for the jam," you murmur into the soft, warm skin of his cheek.

"Yeah, yeah," he says dismissively, nudging the loaf of multigrain bread in front of him towards you with his free hand. It's the really seedy, healthy kind your mom is always telling you to buy because it's high in plant sterols and good for your heart. You expected nothing less. "Just make your toast."

You know he wouldn't have stopped you even if you ate the pie.

You know he still would have made you your coffee and driven you to work and kissed you goodbye when he told you to have a nice day.

The same as always. Never changing. Because he likes you exactly as you are.

But you just laugh and do as you're told, and make his life a little bit easier–if only just for once.

#levi ackerman x you #levi ackerman x reader #levi x you #levi x reader #levi ackerman #aot drabble #aot writing #writing

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libraryofgage · 6 months

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PJO Steddie Part Three

Part One | Part Two

I hope y'all are ready for some backstory in this bitch hfdjsk

Anyway, we learn some more godly parents, but one remains a mystery for now.

Also, if you like my writing, maybe consider commissioning me! I have, like, student loans hitting harder than I'd like, so I've opened commissions on ko-fi. You can read more about prices and such in this post.

Anyway, hope you have fun reading! And, as always, if you see any typos no you didn't ;)

---

Getting to Athens, Tennessee, had required a mix of bus rides, a single divine taxi ride, and a pair of knock-off winged shoes that Eddie should probably put out of their misery before they get him killed. Getting back to camp, thankfully, only requires the van Steve and the kids use to get around.

Said van, at first glance, looks like a hunk of junk. It seems to have stepped right out of the 80s, its paint is faded and scratched with dents in more than a few spots, and the wheels look about two tiny potholes from popping. As they get closer, Steve pulls a key ring from his pocket, and Eddie notices that it's a physical key and not one of the wireless fobs.

When they get inside, though, the whole van is transformed. The seats are made of the softest leather Eddie has ever felt, there are seven in the back for all the kids to be comfortable without arguing about space, and the sheer number of cup holders is enough to bring Eddie near tears. "This is fucking metal," Eddie says, practically melting into the passenger seat as the kids buckle up in the back and Steve starts the van.

"I got it after we outgrew my BMW," Steve says, shrugging as he checks on the kids and Eddie before pulling out of the parking lot.

"Steve says it's a surprise gift from our father," El pipes up from the back.

"Yeah," Dustin says, his voice excited as he leans forward and pokes his head between Steve and Eddie, "Cuz he doesn't know he bought it!"

Steve snorts and pushes down the bill of Dustin's cap as he heads towards the highway.

"So, is Zeus your dad, too?" Eddie asks, twisting around to look at El.

"No. Steve and I share a human father," El explains.

Even without looking, Steve can feel Eddie's confusion. "I try not to think about how I came into being," he says. "Just know our father seems to be a bit of a slut for Greek mythological figures."

"Wait," Eddie says, waving his hand, "does that mean Zeus was, like, a woman? Is Zeus your mother?"

"No clue. Like I said, I prefer not to think about it," Steve says again, shooting Eddie a look.

And Eddie drops it despite his growing questions. When a gorgeous boy tells you to stop asking about the impossibility of his birth, you shut up and listen.

A while later, as Steve is about to drive over the Tennessee state line and the kids doze off in the back, Eddie glances at Steve and shifts in his seat. His leg starts to bounce, his fingers drumming against his knee, as he tries to figure out which question to ask first. Eventually, he ends up blurting out, "So how did you manage to not die?"

Steve blinks and snorts, stifling the rest of his laughter so he doesn't wake the kids. He glances at Eddie, an amused smile tugging at his lips. "Well, how much of the story do you want to hear?" he asks.

"All of it." Eddie wants to know everything about Steve. How has he kept all these kids alive and for how long? When did they start traveling the country like this? When did he learn about his heritage? What does he like? What does he hate? Does he believe in fated love and love at first sight?

Okay, that last one can probably wait a little longer. Like, two more days, at least.

Steve hums softly, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel as though he's trying to decide where to start. "I didn't know about Zeus until I was eleven," he finally says. "I only learned then because my dad couldn't figure out any other explanation for how lightning struck on clear days whenever I was angry at other kids."

"Didn't you have to deal with monsters?" Eddie asks.

"Yes. And no." Steve frowns, rubbing the back of his neck. "You know how in all those stories Zeus will change his form to get with all those women? Like, he'll become whatever he needs to get what he wants."

"I'm familiar, yeah."

"It's a little like that, but I don't change my form. I guess I change my vibe? I can make monsters think I'm the son of a lesser deity. It got even easier when El came along because monsters don't target her."

"Why not?" Eddie asks, perking up some. If El has somehow figured out how to make herself invisible to monsters, maybe other campers can learn, too.

Steve grimaces, and Eddie immediately pushes back the urge to push for more information when he says, "It's...complicated. Let's not get into it right now."

"Okay," Eddie says, flashing Steve what he hopes is a reassuring smile when Steve glances at him. "When did you meet El, then?"

"Five years ago now, when I was fifteen. El's mother showed up, dropped her off with me, threatened me with death if she ever got hurt, and then left. El was, like, just eleven at the time, and our dad was no help. He just shrugged it off and gave me a bigger allowance to care for her."

"Was he not around?"

"No. He...travels. We haven't spoken to him in four years. He hasn't tried speaking to us, either. Despite me literally being Zeus's kid, he can't exactly show me off or anything. And El...well, he can't take her to any functions, either."

Eddie nods, pushing down the urge to ask why. But Steve said he doesn't want to talk about it, so Eddie instead asks, "And what about the rest?"

Steve hums, merging into another lane. "Well, El and I stayed in place for about a year. Then we saw some weird snake monster dragging Will around like a road snack. We saved him, but I almost died. It was my first fight, you know? But I lived, obviously, and El and I agreed to take Will back to his hometown. School was one break anyway, so we just did a road trip in my BMW. We ran into Dustin and Mike along the way. Dustin had made these, like, mechanical wings, and Mike was goading him on to give them a try. We got to the cliff right as Dustin jumped off."

"Wait," Eddie says, holding his hand up to pause Steve's story. "Are you telling me the kid just...decided to recreate Icarus?" he asks.

"Yeah, pretty much. He thought he could actually succeed since he's so much smarter," Steve explains, getting an amused grin as he thinks of it. "Anyway, didn't work, obviously. Dustin fell but managed to catch himself on the cliffside, Mike was yelling his head off but not actually doing anything, and El just took off running toward them. Which meant I had to run toward them, too. So, Will is trying to calm Mike down, El is practically dangling herself over the cliff, and Dustin is lamenting the loss of his wings."

"How'd you rescue him?"

"I just climbed down myself," Steve says, shrugging like it's no big deal. "I had him get on my back and climbed up, chewed both kids out for doing something so dangerous, and then asked if they needed a ride home, which is how I found out they'd run away and were just wandering."

"Half-bloods running away is pretty common," Eddie says, sinking down in his seat as he watches the trees rush by in the darkness. "A lot of us don't feel understood by our human families, or we don't want to endanger them when monsters track us down."

Steve nods, gripping the steering wheel a little harder. "Yeah, that's what Dustin and Mike said, too. I couldn't just leave them alone, so I invited them to come with us. Mike and Will get along really well, and Dustin is a little shit, and it's good for El to have friends her own age, so it all worked out."

"That still leaves out three whole kiddos," Eddie says.

"Well, Lucas and Erica we met in Will's hometown. Their dad and Will's mom had found each other and, like, bonded over having demigod kids. When we brought Will back, we met Lucas and Erica at this, like, barbeque thing to celebrate him being safe. And their parents ended up suggesting that we continue the road trip so the kids could be around others like them before school started again."

"Usually," Eddie says, fiddling with one of his rings, "parents go two ways. They either get really obsessed with keeping their kids safe to the point they're never let out of the house, or they completely ignore and reject the godly influence. But it sounds like their parents weren't doing either of those."

"Having each other helped. There was someone they could turn to when they felt doubt or just wanted to complain. When you're isolated, though, you just do whatever you think will keep you going, even if it might hurt the people you care about."

"You put that...really well."

"I've had a lotta time to think about it," Steve admits, frowning slightly before sighing and continuing with the story. "Anyway, we met Max and her brother a few towns over. It's...not a great story, actually. Her brother was a dick, like, massively horrible. He had a lot of problems and took way too much after his godly father in terms of anger. We ended up fighting because of how he treated Max and it didn't end great, but Max joined us and that's when I realized we needed a new car because the kids were piled on top of each other in the back. We got this conversion van in the next town with my dad's credit card, and we've been traveling ever since."

It's a lot to take in, and Eddie can tell there's a lot that Steve is leaving unsaid, but he doesn't call him out for it. "Okay, so, the whole not dying thing?" he asks.

Steve snorts. "Well, when you're chaperoning a gaggle of demigods, you get good at fighting off monsters. We've also had some...help along the way from a few goddesses, though."

Eddie perks up, looking at Steve like he's an alien. "You got help from goddesses? Which ones?"

"Sometimes, I'll pray to Hestia and she'll direct us to a motel with vacancies that'll be safe for the night. Or, uh, Demeter. I'll pray to her and fruit will grow on some trees or something. Hecate treated us to lunch once, said she found us amusing, and thanked me for the entertainment. Nike, Lucas, Max, and I have all played basketball together. I mean, she smoked us, no question, but she's part of the reason this van can run a few more miles without any gas. Hera helped once, sorta."

"Hera helped you? Hera? The goddess notoriously known for hating children of Zeus? That Hera?"

"Yeah, kinda surprised me, too. But, I mean, she's also the goddess of motherhood or something, right? And all she really ever wants is Zeus to be faithful. I don't think it's too much to ask, and I can't imagine the bullshit she goes through because of him. Anyway, we were getting attacked by this hydra, and I was really struggling to protect the kids. I mean, those heads were practically tearing me apart. And then she just, like, walks up and flicks her hand and the thing is gone. She told me to do better and then, like, disappeared. Not the weirdest thing that's happened, but it's up there."

And Eddie is starting to understand how they're not dead. It's just Steve. Like the prophecy was just Steve. Somehow, he's managed to get himself into the good graces of several goddesses and get their help. It's not entirely unheard of to get a god's favor, but having so many just be genuinely interested in you is unthinkable.

Eddie gets it, though. Steve fascinates him. He's like a magnet that Eddie doesn't want to fight. "So, uh, the kids," Eddie says, trying to keep his mind from lingering on Steve and just how incredible he is, "Who are their parents?"

"Lucas and Erica are kids of Aphrodite."

"Oh, does she like you, too?" Eddie asks.

Steve frowns, looking like he's just been reminded of something sour and gross. "No, we're not on good terms," he says, his voice a little frosty, and Eddie's mouth is suddenly dry.

"Good to know," he manages, his voice a little strained.

"Anyway, Dustin is a child of Athena. Max's mom is Nemesis. Will's dad is Morpheus, and Mike's dad is Plutus. Which has worked out well for us, actually. He keeps finding money on the street whenever we really need it."

"What about El?"

"El's mother...is complicated. We don't really talk about her," Steve says, his words soft and pleading, and Eddie immediately zips his mouth shut, winking conspiratorially at Steve when he glances over.

Then he unzips his mouth and says, "You know, you're pretty metal, Stevie."

Steve laughs, quickly slapping a hand over his mouth and glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure the kids are still sleeping. When he sees that they are, he relaxes a little. "I've never been called metal before," he says, glancing at Eddie.

"Well, that's a shame. I'll be sure to tell you whenever you're being particularly metal, big boy."

"Big boy?" Steve asks, amusement clear in his voice, and Eddie suddenly worries that Steve doesn't actually like the nickname but it trying to play it off.

Unfortunately, the problem is that Eddie has never been one to filter himself. So when Steve calls him out for the nickname and he panics, Eddie's knee-jerk reaction is to say, "Oh, would you prefer something else? How about pretty boy? Sweetheart? Gorgeous? Handsome?"

Even though it's dark out, Eddie can still see the blush that spreads across Steve's cheeks, the way his fingers tighten on the wheel until his knuckles turn white. He's getting flustered, and Eddie feels himself getting flustered, too, at the idea that it's because of him. He suddenly wants to see what else he can say or do to make that blush spread, and he wants to know just how far it spreads beneath the collar of Steve's shirt.

"Just, uh, whatever you prefer, I guess," Steve mumbles, keeping his eyes resolutely focused on the road and missing Eddie's surprised expression. He does, however, sneak a glance just in time to see the surprise morph into an unbridled grin.

"Sure thing, sweetheart," Eddie says, leaning back in his seat and looking forward to spending the rest of this road trip discovering what makes his Stevie tick.

----

Tag List! There is still room, I think lol

@mugloversonly, @mentallyundone, @hairdryerducks-blog, @carriethesaint, @lunabyrd, @weekend-dreamer7, @farfaras, @littlelady03, @my-tears-are-becoming-a-sea20, @mogami13, @a-little-unsteddie, @itsall-taken, @queenie-ofthe-void, @tinyplanet95, @littlebluejane, @hangoversandhandgrenades, @rabbitwhoeatsstars, @bisexualdisastersworld, @steddieinthesun,

@paintgonewrong, @sadcanadianwinter, @deehellcat, @blanketlicker, @angrydonutdestiny, @booksareportal, @fallingchemicaldiscos

#steddie #steddie fic #semi divine steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #percy jackson au #the party #my writing

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anonymoushouseplantfan · 1 year

Note

The Royal Family’s Apology for their treatment of Meghan Markle:

I’m sorry we spent £32 million on your heavily promoted wedding

I’m sorry The King stepped in to walk you down the aisle

I’m sorry we spent £1 million on your first-year wardrobe

I’m sorry you only undertook 72 days of royal work

I’m sorry we gifted you and your husband the titles of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Earl and Countess of Dumbarton and Baron and Baroness Kilkeel

I’m sorry we spent £4 million-a-year on your security

I’m sorry we hid your alarmingly shady past from the public

I’m sorry we covered up your rampant bullying of young professional women and then covered up the results of the bullying investigation in order to protect you

I’m sorry we gifted you an 11-room house on the Windsor estate, for free

I’m sorry we footed the £3.2 million bill to renovate your house to your liking

I’m sorry we granted you the honour of marrying in the historic Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle

I’m sorry we gave you your own independent team of staff

I’m sorry we appointed you your own adviser and assistant to make the transition to royal easier

I’m sorry you were the first girlfriend to be invited to spend Christmas at Sandringham with Queen Elizabeth II and family

I’m sorry The Queen invited you to a theatre charity less than four weeks after marrying H - the earliest ever joint engagement with The Queen

I’m sorry we invited you to the funeral of the longest-serving monarch in British history after you continued to slander everything she ever worked for in multiple interviews and podcasts

I’m sorry we granted you, an American, your own coat of arms from the 500-year-old College of Arms

I’m sorry we didn’t silence you by making you sign any NDAs, allowing you to sign multi-million-dollar deals for books, interviews and podcasts

I’m sorry we’re the reason George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey and Elton John pretended to like you

I’m sorry we gave you the opportunity to co-write a cookbook, guest edit British Vogue, and ‘curate’ your own fashion capsule.

I’m sorry we advised you twice not to wear those blood diamonds gifted by Jamal Khashoggi’s murderer

I’m sorry our support made you feel emboldened to behave appallingly towards staff and ticket-holders at Wimbledon

I’m sorry your behaviour on the Oceania tour angered your hosts and we covered it up by encouraging positive coverage from the press

I’m sorry we invited you to The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee after you’d called us all racist abusers on international television

I’m sorry we thought you’d like to be patron of the UK’s National Theatre, we didn’t realise you’re not interested in the theatre

I’m sorry nobody stopped you from wearing a maternity coat and announcing your 8-week pregnancy at the wedding of your husband’s cousin

I’m sorry you publicly announced your first pregnancy on Infant Loss Awareness Day

I’m sorry we lied to the press about the existence of the nude pictures you took of yourself, easily available on the internet

I’m sorry we let you live free-of-charge in a two-bedroom London property while the free five-bedroom country house we gave you was renovated

I’m sorry we introduced you to world leaders, high-ranking officials and A-list celebrities

I’m sorry we helped perpetuate your lie that your degree was in ‘international relations and theatre’ and not ‘communications’

I’m sorry for all the jewellery we gifted you, including a pair of expensive pearl earrings from Queen Elizabeth II

I’m sorry we helped perpetuate your lie that you worked at the US Embassy in Argentina for several months instead of attending classes at the Embassy school organised by the uncle you didn’t invite to the wedding

I’m sorry we loaned you the use of a historic diamond-encrusted tiara

I’m sorry we took an interest in what colour your future yet-to-be-conceived baby’s hair would be

I’m sorry we permitted you to only allow American press to the unveiling of your first child in Windsor Castle, as requested, instead of British press

I’m sorry we helped cover up that you worked with the authors of Finding Freedom

I’m sorry for allowing you to keep all those freebies you’re definitely not allowed to keep

I’m sorry your husband, a prince, didn’t explain how to courtesy to The Queen

I’m sorry we acquiesced to you inviting celebrities you’d never met before to your wedding

I’m sorry we didn’t clamp down on you monetising your official royal engagements

I’m sorry we respected your boundaries by not hugging on first meeting

I’m sorry we allowed you to mistakenly believe you were more popular than Catherine and William

I’m sorry for providing a team of highly-trained, expensive doctors at your disposal

I’m sorry we funded a household staff of cooks, cleaners and nannies for you

I’m sorry nobody asked if you’re okay.

So sorry about all that.

😂😂😂😂

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yourtongzhihazel · 2 months

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Here's something that's really fucked up: debt runs the economy.

When someone incurs debt (borrows money), that then becomes, essentially, capital. The debt can generate profit in the form of interest payments so it becomes a commodity; a kind of security that has a value and can then be traded on the securities market. This is why you can buy, say medical debt, or mortgages, or loans and become the recipient of the debt's payout.

However, just like with every market, there will be speculation. Hoarding up a specific kind of security, for example, can drive up its price and thus make it more profitable to sell the security itself than to actually collect payments on the debt. This incentivizes financial institutions (banks and shit) to generate as much debt as possible to sell the debt as securities on the market for profit.

The decades long process of generating sub-prime mortgage loans that culminated in the 07-08 recession is an example of this sort of securities trading. When someone went to actually collect on the debt, in this case the leyman brothers, but only got a bunch of defaults, the entire securities market crashes through the floor because suddenly the speculated value vanished into thin air as there was no real money to be made from the debt. This then snowballed into a general recession as the financial institutions most involved with the securities trading refused to give out loans (both due to the crash of the securities market and a lack of on-hand capital among other factors).

In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin outlines the concentration and domination of financial capital as one of the primary drivers of a global imperialist capitalist system. Because the monopolistic banks handle the actual capital of industrial monopolies, they hold a power over the productive monopolies. They can see how much profit a certain company has, how much on-hand capital, how many employees, etc. etc.. Because they have this information, they can then selectively hand out capital in, for example, the form of loans to manipulate industry. This is further helped by the banks and industry (as well as government) intermingling with each other: government officials, industrial magnates, and financiers sit on each others boards of directors. Under imperialism, these dominating financial institutions also hand out capital to developing countries, foreign companies, and even foreign non-dominating financial institutions.

All this to say: this interconnected web of finance capital is all connected to the dominating monopolist banks in the imperial core which hold it up. And when these monopolistic financial institutions themselves stumble and fall, the entire world falls into recession. Capital stops flowing into the global south and instead the debt is recalled; the banks demand repayments on the debt they handed out. 9 times out of 10, these repayments cannot be done and so restructuring of the global south, outlined by the debt holders (the imperialist banks) occurs.

This is how a financial bubble in one country cascades into a global recession that greatly affected the global south more than the very country the bubble originated from.

#mmp #death to the usa #marxism leninism #Yes this is very much an abridged summary. more detail can be added

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nkonson · 7 months

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Credit card - Understanding the Motive Behind Banks Offering Free Credit Cards

#credit card #credit card debt #credit card holder #credit cards #personal loans

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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months

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Wall Street Journal goes to bat for the vultures who want to steal your house

Tonight (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Tomorrow (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

The tacit social contract between the Wall Street Journal and its readers is this: the editorial page is for ideology, and the news section is for reality. Money talks and bullshit walks — and reality’s well-known anticapitalist bias means that hewing too closely to ideology will make you broke, and thus unable to push your ideology.

That’s why the editorial page will rail against “printing money” while the news section will confine itself to asking which kinds of federal spending competes with the private sector (creating a bidding war that drives up prices) and which kinds are not. If you want frothing takes about how covid relief checks will create “debt for our grandchildren,” seek it on the editorial page. For sober recognition that giving small amounts of money to working people will simply go to reducing consumer and student debt, look to the news.

But WSJ reporters haven’t had their corpus colossi severed: the brain-lobe that understands economic reality crosstalks with the lobe that worship the idea of a class hierarchy with capital on top and workers tugging their forelacks. When that happens, the coverage gets weird.

Take this weekend’s massive feature on “zombie mortgages,” long-written-off second mortgages that have been bought by pennies for vultures who are now trying to call them in:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zombie-mortgages-could-force-some-homeowners-into-foreclosure-e615ab2a

These second mortgages — often in the form of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) — date back to the subprime bubble of the early 2000s. As housing prices spiked to obscene levels and banks figured out how to issue risky mortgages and sell them off to suckers, everyday people were encouraged — and often tricked — into borrowing heavily against their houses, on complicated terms that could see their payments skyrocket down the road.

Once the bubble popped in 2008, the value of these houses crashed, and the mortgages fell “underwater” — meaning that market value of the homes was less than the amount outstanding on the mortgage. This triggered the foreclosure crisis, where banks that had received billions in public money forced their borrowers out of their homes. This was official policy: Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted that forcing Americans out of their homes would “foam the runways” for the banks and give them a soft landing;

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

With so many homes underwater on their first mortgages, the holders of those second mortgages wrote them off. They had bought high-risk, high reward debt, the kind whose claims come after the other creditors have been paid off. As prices collapsed, it became clear that there wouldn’t be anything left over after those higher-priority loans were paid off.

The lenders (or the bag-holders the lenders sold the loans to) gave up. They stopped sending borrowers notices, stopped trying to collect. That’s the way markets work, after all — win some, lose some.

But then something funny happened: private equity firms, flush with cash from an increasingly wealthy caste of one percenters, went on a buying spree, snapping up every home they could lay hands on, becoming America’s foremost slumlords, presiding over an inventory of badly maintained homes whose tenants are drowned in junk fees before being evicted:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

This drove a new real estate bubble, as PE companies engaged in bidding wars, confident that they could recoup high one-time payments by charging working people half their incomes in rent on homes they rented by the room. The “recovery” of real estate property brought those second mortgages back from the dead, creating the “zombie mortgages” the WSJ writes about.

These zombie mortgages were then sold at pennies on the dollar to vulture capitalists — finance firms who make a bet that they can convince the debtors to cough up on these old debts. This “distressed debt investing” is a scam that will be familiar to anyone who spends any time watching “finance influencers” — like forex trading and real estate flipping, it’s a favorite get-rich-quick scheme peddled to desperate people seeking “passive income.”

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, distressed debt investing is too good to be true. These ancient debts are generally past the statute of limitations and have been zeroed out by law. Even “good” debts generally lack any kind of paper-trail, having been traded from one aspiring arm-breaker to another so many times that the receipts are long gone.

Ultimately, distressed debt “investing” is a form of fraud, in which the “investor” has to master a social engineering patter in which they convince the putative debtor to pay debts they don’t actually owe, either by shading the truth or lying outright, generally salted with threats of civil and criminal penalties for a failure to pay.

That certainly goes for zombie mortgages. Writing about the WSJ’s coverage on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reminds readers not to “pay these extortionists a dime” without consulting a lawyer or a nonprofit debt counsellor, because any payment “vitiates” (revives) an otherwise dead loan:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/wall-street-journal-aids-vulture-investors-threatening-second-mortgage-borrowers-with-foreclosure-on-nearly-always-legally-unenforceable-debt.html

But the WSJ’s 35-paragraph story somehow finds little room to advise readers on how to handle these shakedowns. Instead, it lionizes the arm-breakers who are chasing these debts as “investors…[who] make mortgage lending work.” The Journal even repeats — without commentary — the that these so-called investors’ “goal is to positively impact homeowners’ lives by helping them resolve past debt.”

This is where the Journal’s ideology bleeds off the editorial page into the news section. There is no credible theory that says that mortgage markets are improved by safeguarding the rights of vulture capitalists who buy old, forgotten second mortgages off reckless lenders who wrote them off a decade ago.

Doubtless there’s some version of the Hayek Mind-Virus that says that upholding the claims of lenders — even after those claims have been forgotten, revived and sold off — will give “capital allocators” the “confidence” they need to make loans in the future, which will improve the ability of everyday people to afford to buy houses, incentivizing developers to build houses, etc, etc.

But this is an ideological fairy-tale. As Michael Hudson describes in his brilliant histories of jubilee — debt cancellation — through history, societies that unfailingly prioritize the claims of lenders over borrowers eventually collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Foundationally, debts are amassed by producers who need to borrow capital to make the things that we all need. A farmer needs to borrow for seed and equipment and labor in order to sow and reap the harvest. If the harvest comes in, the farmer pays their debts. But not every harvest comes in — blight, storms, war or sickness — will eventually cause a failure and a default.

In those bad years, farmers don’t pay their debts, and then they add to them, borrowing for the next year. Even if that year’s harvest is good, some debt remains. Gradually, over time, farmers catch enough bad beats that they end up hopelessly mired in debt — debt that is passed on to their kids, just as the right to collect the debts are passed on to the lenders’ kids.

Left on its own, this splits society into hereditary creditors who get to dictate the conduct of hereditary debtors. Run things this way long enough and every farmer finds themselves obliged to grow ornamental flowers and dainties for their creditors’ dinner tables, while everyone else goes hungry — and society collapses.

The answer is jubilee: periodically zeroing out creditors’ claims by wiping all debts away. Jubilees were declared when a new king took the throne, or at set intervals, or whenever things got too lopsided. The point of capital allocation is efficiency and thus shared prosperity, not enriching capital allocators. That enrichment is merely an incentive, not the goal.

For generations, American policy has been to make housing asset appreciation the primary means by which families amass and pass on wealth; this is in contrast to, say, labor rights, which produce wealth by rewarding work with more pay and benefits. The American vision is that workers don’t need rights as workers, they need rights as owners — of homes, which will always increase in value.

There’s an obvious flaw in this logic: houses are necessities, as well as assets. You need a place to live in order to raise a family, do a job, found a business, get an education, recover from sickness or live out your retirement. Making houses monotonically more expensive benefits the people who get in early, but everyone else ends up crushed when their human necessity is treated as an asset:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Worse: without a strong labor sector to provide countervailing force for capital, US politics has become increasingly friendly to rent-seekers of all kinds, who have increased the cost of health-care, education, and long-term care to eye-watering heights, forcing workers to remortgage, or sell off, the homes that were meant to be the source of their family’s long-term prosperity:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

Today, reality’s leftist bias is getting harder and harder to ignore. The idea that people who buy debt at pennies on the dollar should be cheered on as they drain the bank-accounts — or seize the homes — of people who do productive work is pure ideology, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on the WSJ’s editorial page, but which sticks out like a sore thumb in the news pages.

Thankfully, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is on the case. Director Rohit Chopra has warned the arm-breakers chasing payments on zombie mortgages that it’s illegal for them to “threaten judicial actions, such as foreclosures, for debts that are past a state’s statute of limitations.”

But there’s still plenty of room for more action. As Smith notes, the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement — a “get out of jail for almost free” card for the big banks — enticed lots of banks to discharge those second mortgages. Per Smith: “if any servicer sold a second mortgage to a vulture lender that it had charged off and used for credit in the National Mortgage Settlement, it defrauded the Feds and applicable state.”

Maybe some hungry state attorney general could go after the banks pulling these fast ones and hit them for millions in fines — and then use the money to build public housing.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in London and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

[Image ID: A Georgian eviction scene in which a bobby oversees three thugs who are using a battering ram to knock down a rural cottage wall. The image has been crudely colorized. A vulture looks on from the right, wearing a top-hat. The battering ram bears the WSJ logo.]

#pluralistic #great financial crisis #vulture capitalism #debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid #zombie debts #jubilee #michael hudson #wall street journal #business press #house thieves #debt #statute of limitations

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134340am · 2 years

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hi hi!! could i get an iced caramel cold brew with kuroo?? <33 :)

"babe," kuroo starts, his voice drowned out by the hiss of the steam wand. "will you leave me if i can't give you a house in five years?"

you frown. "no, i won't. why?"

"okay, then, will you leave me if i can't give you a house and a car in five years?"

"no, of course i won't leave you." confused, you turn to peer over at your boyfriend—who's tapping his foot along to the jazzy playlist blasting from the coffeeshop's speakers. "what's this about, tetsu?"

"hmmm. say, what about ten years?" he ignores you. "is that too long of a wait time? we'll be in our thirties by then, and—"

"tetsurou. i'm not going to leave you if you can't give me a house or a car or, or an automated laundry drying rack or whatever. why do you keep asking?" you put down your cake knife, wipe your hands on your apron, and stalk over to the bar to see your boyfriend swirling through his latte art with a long metal toothpick, effectively destroying the milk foam heart. "hey, why are you— that latte art looked fine."

"nah, i messed up. it looked more like an onion than a heart."

"huh. then what's this about me leaving you?"

"because i did the calculations in my head last night, and if i work here," kuroo gestures to the empty coffeeshop before you, tables wiped and floor mopped and lights dimmed, "till i graduate, and then get my first job and give money to my dad and start paying off my student loans, this and that... well, i'm just saying that it's going to take a while before we can settle down in a place of our own."

you watch as his toothpick swirls round and round his coffee, the heart (or the onion, according to him) now a homogenous off-white blob.

"and how accurate are those calculations?" you grab a cup off the drying rack and start polishing next to him.

"fairly accurate, i think? i can do up an excel sheet if you want."

you bite back a grin at how earnest he sounds. “tetsu, my love. even if you do up your calculations on excel, run it through an expert, or use the world’s most powerful computer, you’ll still be wrong.”

“...why?”

“because you forgot to factor in me.”

clink! kuroo drops his toothpick back into its holder.

“if we’re going to get married, and buy a house, and a car, and an automated laundry drying rack, we’re going to do it together. there’s no way i’m making you shoulder all that financial burden alone.”

“but i want to provide for you. it’s my job, y’know?” he says, voice quiet. “if possible, i’d send you home right now and just close up on my own. you should be in bed with a face mask on, not polishing cups.”

“no way, tetsu. we’re going to close together, and do life together,” you put down your cup and grab his wrist, his wrist bone hard under your thumb. “first jobs, marriage, getting an apartment, kids. i want it all to be a you and me thing, not a you and you thing.”

you pull him closer to you, staring hard at his handsome side profile. even with the exhaustion of the past day painted on his features—dark undereyes, nose shiny, and his hair sticking up in the back, you still find it hard to resist the urge to hold and kiss him.

“i want to kiss you,” he blurts out, as if he read your mind. he pulls his wrist from your hand, reaching for your waist—but you stop him with a hand on his chest, suddenly overcome with shyness.

“you can’t, we’re working.”

“but we closed half an hour ago!”

“there are still cameras around, silly.” but you let kuroo pull you close and excuse the hand he’s settled on your hip in favour of looking at the latte he was messing with.

the big milk foam blob was accompanied by two similar, smaller blobs on its left and right.

“it’s a bear,” your lover says proudly. “for you.”

“it’s cute.”

“i love you.”

you hum, leaning into his warmth. “i love you too.”

student loans, housing, your shift tomorrow—those can wait.

for now, it’s just you and kuroo and his failed latte art, surrounded by the scent of sweet coffee and cake. and it’s more than enough.

it’s all you ever wanted.

#beep boop i hope i managed to get the rough idea across #i was just thinking that kuroo would grow up to become a person with a fair amount of worries for the future #especially when living in tokyo.... it's competitive #i don't want a house!!! not yet!!!! i just want to have fun loving my barista bf y'know!!!!#bahahah anyways : ) ty for reading if u did #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsurou x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fluff #kuroo fluff #yuna writes

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carriesthewind · 1 year

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a question, if you don't mind it! I read your post about the IA, and it makes a lot of sense, I wasn't aware of how their lending system operated, so thank you for that. I was curious, does there exist/do you know of any digital library that operates fairly and without harming authors? lending on a one to one basis etc? this isn't an "aha, there is not ethical option available to me so I'm allowed to steal, gotcha!", I just genuinely hope something like that exists bc for several reasons I don't have access to a physical library rn. thanks and I hope this isn't a bother <3

Hi Anon!

Unfortunately, I think the answer to what you are looking for is going to boil down to "there are a lot of free online books and resources, but not resources that will allow you to borrow any given book." But it's going to be a little bit of a complicated path to get there.

Part of the problem is the words "fairly" and "without harming authors." Because "fair" does not necessarily equal "legal," and authors can and do disagree about what systems cause them harm. So is "controlled digital lending"(CDL) (where instead of buying or licensing an e-book, the lender digitizes print book and lends the digital copy) that's one-to-one owned-to-loaned fair and not harm authors? Well, as the district court held, it's certainly not legal in the U.S. (because to be clear: while the IA was/is not doing one-to-one owned-to-loaned, the holding of the court was that even it it was, that would violate U.S. copyright law). But is it fair (or more fair and equitable than current digital copyright law) and does it harm authors? As I've said in a previous post, I have not stated and will not state a personal opinion on that. If you want to read more, the statement I previously linked by the National Writer's Union takes a position that it is unfair and harms authors; for a counter-position that it is fair and does not harm authors, here's the memorandum the EFF filed in support of their motion for summary judgement for the IA. And you can find lots and lots more written on both sides of the issue. (If you are struggling with where to start: a google search for "internet archive controlled digital lending" will bring up a lot of articles about the case with links to various statements and opinions.)

If you are looking to avoid illegal or disputed CDL, there are options, but they are limited: that is, there is plenty of digital books and reading material that is legally and fairly available online, but you are unlikely to be able to borrow any specific book. Some options that exist:

On the IA's "Open Library": anything in the public domain (including, as of 2023, anything published or released in the U.S. prior to 1928), as well as anything where the rights-holder has allowed the IA to distribute their work. (If legality matters less to to you "fair" and "harms authors," you might also be ok with works on IA if the author has permitted the IA or another site to loan their work in defiance of an allegedly unfair or exploitative contract.)

If you want to avoid the IA's "Open Library," HathiTrust Digital Library won their copyright case (correctly, imo) and host a bunch (17+ million) of digital books and other items. (By the way: this was a case where the IA - as one of their partner organizations - was on the right side and the Authors Guild, who sued them, was, imo, on the wrong side. Just to emphasize how complicated this is.) But (unless you are a member of one of their partner institutions - mostly universities) your access is limited to reading works that are in the public domain or for which they have been given permission from the copyright holder.

Lots of individuals and organizations post written material for free online! For example, while many journal articles are hidden behind paywalls, many are not; lots of short story magazines (esp. genre fic) have free digital versions; and lots of people post books for free online under a Creative Commons License. I don't know of any universal library for these kinds things though - where to look will depend on what you are looking for.

Beyond that, it depends on where you are and what you are looking for. For example, if you aren't in the U.S., there may be country-specific digital resources (e.g. does your country have a national library, and does it have digital resources)?

You can try looking into:

Local university or resource centers: sometimes, even if you aren't a student or profession, many of these institutions offer resources, including digital resources, to their local communities.

Local museums: same as above.

Local cultural or other kinds of resource centers: sometimes these kinds of organizations will have community libraries. These will often be specific to the interest of the organization in question, but it's worth checking!

Finally, if you are in the U.S.: if your lack of access to a physical library is based on the fact that you can't physically get to or access the library, but you do have a local library, you have options! Even if you can't get there to access a library card, some libraries will allow you to create a card online just for their digital collection. And many libraries have resources to assist home-bound patrons - it's always worth calling and asking.

If anyone else has any other suggestions, please feel free to add them! (Especially if you have information on non-U.S. and/or non-english specific resources)

#libraries #internet archive #asks #anonymous

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gccbusinessfinance787 · 2 years

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focsle · 1 year

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Hello! I don't know if this is exactly your wheelhouse, but I was reading about Fredrick Douglass and it briefly mentioned that he used a Seamans protection certificate in his escape from slavery; I was wondering if you had any thoughts/ info about these as it relates to Black seamen in the US, especially the South. If not, absolutely no worries! Love your blog.

Oh yeah, I went down a rabbit hole sometime back about seamen’s protection certificates in the context of what they meant for Black mariners and US Citizenship!

To summarize that above post, Seamen’s Protection Certificates spoke to the contradictory legal status of Black mariners in the antebellum US when naturalization was only accessible to white men. It’s a paper that says that one is a US citizen, but was not considered ‘valid’ documentation for accessing the rights of a US citizen. But for all intents and purposes, it still signaled that the man in question was indeed a citizen when abroad. This contradiction (as well as other legal contradictions) was leveraged by people fighting for access to naturalization and a full legal identity for African Americans.

But while the certificate did not truly grant citizenship to Black sailors, it still served as a form of protection both in states where slavery was law, as well as ‘free’ states, where the Fugitive Slave Act quickly destabilized any sense of security one might have there. The seamen’s protection certificates had only a brief vague description of the holder. As such, some free Black men would take the risk of loaning their papers out to those escaping enslavement who roughly matched the written description, similar to how States’ ‘free papers’ were also loaned out for the same purpose. As Douglass mentioned in his autobiography concerning his use of said papers:

“But I had one friend—a sailor—who owned a sailor’s protection, which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers—describing his person and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which at once gave it the appearance of an authorized document.”

Nearly 1/3rd of applications for seamen’s protection certificates were made by men of color because of the protection they afforded against being kidnapped into slavery. Even though there was a lot of backpeddling from officials saying that the protection certificates didn’t REALLY mean citizenship, it was still an official document stating someone’s freedom and thus had tremendous value in allowing a man to move freely through the world. Here’s an old but good article about seamen’s protection certificates in general that speaks a little more to that.

In the context of mariners in the South, here are some examples. This one, from the National Archives is for a man named William Wright, from Viriginia who applied for a certificate in New Orleans in 1810.

And another from the collections of Mystic Seaport of a man named Jonathan Miller, born in New York but applying for the paper in Galveston Texas. The language is a bit different from the boilerplate seamen’s protection certificates like the one above, so I think it’s slightly different as a legal document—but still, in 1856, would hold the same sort of odd wobbly status.

The museum’s interpretation of this was that it was likely applied for and used as a form of protection in moving freely through the South, rather than Mr. Miller specifically using it for a maritime purpose.

#asks #anonymous #awhalin #and broader maritime history

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