A good friend of mine sent me an article to read about Wall Street that I found very invaluable. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print .  It is a longer read than most articles, but well worth the time.

When you finish reading this article you will feel both proud and dirty all at once, as I do.  It’s evident that we all play a role in the food chain of the crumbling financial crisis.  And, by “all”, I mean lead buyers, lead generators, lead aggregators, lead exchanges, lead service providers, lead management systems, and the rest of the ecosystem.

On one hand, we should be proud that we got ours.   I received my share of the spoils – LeadROI was acquired for being one of the top lead management systems in the mortgage industry.  Matt Taibbi puts it, “ordinary American dumb people…are too intimidated to even try to understand.”  But those of us who participated in the bull riding were successful.  I learned a lot about the industry leading marketing and production analytics at the steel mill of the unregulated financial industry – Countrywide.  These days it is rather surprising to see a resume without an entry that touches the financial industry directly or involves some adjacent product or service.  Sure, we weren’t the CEOs of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, part of Cassano’s 400-man team at AIG, or a member of the Morgan Mafia, but we definitely all got ours.  Whether you sold loans, sold banner ads, sold leads, sold software – there was a piece to take, and we took it!  At least we didn’t just sit around just watching “probable downfall of Western civilization.”  The party isn’t over, and we’re at the after party to the after party, where loan mods, credit repairs, and REOs are being served at the bar.

All that said, I feel far dirtier after reading this article than I felt proud.  There are episodes of American Greed, there is the Anderson Cooper Most Wanted list, the 20/20 documentaries.  Those at or near the top the emergent layer of the rainforest that is the financial industry, are getting all the limelight on those shows, in the papers, on the documentaries, in front of Congress.  So does that mean all of us in the understory layer are guilty-free?  We are all part of the problem, and why not be if it makes money, keeps us employed, keeps the lights on, pays the medical bills?   I was at Countrywide during the height of the boom when the end was nowhere in sight, and then helped brokers and direct lenders with converting as many leads as they could.   I do take some responsibility that I served as an accomplice in this.  I won’t make it on a probable Michael Moore’s documentary, as most of us won’t, but I sure as hell feel like I was supplying some of the tools to make the bomb.

I think that as the small number of gigantic trees at the top begin to fall, as the new Administration brings regulations back, the insects and predators near the bottom of the forest will be faced with new problems.   Or will we thrive?  Loan mods!  Credit repair!  Tax help!  Sue your bank!  The end doesn’t seem in sight.  But just as the seemingly immune OTS is being reviewed, I’m sure someone can take a peak under the wet piece of wood and see what’s lurking beneath.  It’s not hard to understand how it all works from the bottom to the top – and I mean from the banner ad impression to the insuring of CDS – someone just needs to look.

In the mean time, let the party continue!  Leads anybody??