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Portfolio Insights by Brett Arends Archives | Email alerts
Sept. 30, 2011, 12:11 a.m. EDT
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) "â? Bring on the barricades! Protesters are coming to downtown Boston Friday. I've just received notice that up to 1,000 people are expected to "march"? on Bank of America "to rally against Wall Street greed, predatory lending, and skyrocketing foreclosures."?
We've seen protests in New York and elsewhere. A family in California is barricading themselves in "their"? home "â? presumably they mean the bank's home "â? to prevent foreclosure.
Bah.
I hate to break it to the marchers, but Bank of America /quotes/zigman/190927/quotes/nls/bac BAC +3.08% CEO Brian Moynihan has bigger problems. His stock has halved since the start of the year. Wall Street greed? Maybe he could give these folks train tickets down to Greenwich, Conn., to march against the hedge funds shorting his stock.
"Down with greed! Down with speculators!"?
The other banks are under similar pressure. Citigroup's /quotes/zigman/5065548/quotes/nls/c C +3.78% down more than 40%. So is the Vampire Squid /quotes/zigman/188479/quotes/nls/gs GS +3.69% .
Raw capitalism appears to be eating its own"? which is sort of the point of it.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering if these marchers understand anything at all.
If you're a homeowner thinking of joining these rallies across the country, here's some free advice.
Don't march. Walk!
That's right: walk. As in: "?away from the home.
Under U.S. law, many homeowners can get an amazing do-over.
They can walk away from their mortgage, send in the keys, and in most cases the lenders will have to eat the loss.
Heads you win, tails the bank loses.
"Losing"? a home in which you have no equity is a meaningless loss. Your thinking is about as upside down as your mortgage.Walk away and rent.
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Brett Arends is an award-winning financial columnist with many years experience writing about markets, economics and personal finance in Europe and the U.S... Expand
Brett Arends is an award-winning financial columnist with many years experience writing about markets, economics and personal finance in Europe and the U.S. He has received an individual award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his financial writing, and was part of the Boston Herald team that won two others. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and has worked as an analyst at McKinsey & Co. He is a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) and Accredited Asset Management Specialist (AAMS). His latest book, "Storm Proof Your Money,"? has just been published by John Wiley & Co. Collapse
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