Mortgage Sluts People are gettin' down like it's 1929
Posted by
zeitgeist
Nov 27 '08, 11:26
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On Craigslist New York, you could indeed say that a panic -- of the erotic kind, at least -- has a firm "grip" on Wall Street. One Casual Encounters ad headline reads, "RESESSION SEX: FULL SWAP." [sic] Another ad explains, "Perfect and easy way to beat the Recession on an ongoing, regular basis. Nice compensation for a brief 15 minute interlude." Ad posters are "In search of some charity during some tuff economic times." There are jobless sex slaves. They even come in pairs: "We are a Latin couple that is feeling the effect of out current economic situation. ... She is a total FREAK, and she into anything as long as its not degrading." Another sells itself saying, "Maybe we can set up a regular thing. I'm a product of our recession and lost my day job, so I'm free all morning and all afternoon!"
Locally, we're not immune to "market surges" in the least. Budget shrinkage might be happening in someone else's collective pants, but our Craigslist Casual Encounters recession sex needs are ... wonderfully overly specific: "Maybe you're my boss at the brokerage firm I'm interning at. ... Jobs are tight after the mortgage meltdown and there are more layoffs than hires. One day you tell me to meet you at your condo. I come over totally unsuspecting ..." Articulate, even, "Times are tough, no doubt about that. I realize there are many out there who are behind on bills, college tuitions, maybe even mortgage payments." Or not, such as the ad titled, "CHECKOUT THIS STIMULOUS PACKAGE," suggesting mutually satisfying coupon clipping -- in the nude. Then there's the "Handsome Barack Obama type" who "would enjoy some pleasant company while I'm enduring the stress of these crazy economic times." And the guy in Let's make our own bailout simply wanting "to forget the turmoils on Wall Street and Detroit during the day." There's also "Laid Off Guy seeks Laid Off Gurl ('to get over our frustration and depression')". And in Russian Hill, there's apparently a "BANKING CRISIS!!!! No Withdrawals allowed!"
But will call he you the next day? Hell, it sounds like thanks to Black Fridays and Bailout Mondays, he'll spend the whole weekend with you. And I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the cheeseball women's mags begin touting "Recession Sex: 50 Tips for Thrifty Trysts!"
Though any headline that reads "No sex please: we're in a recession" just doesn't ring true. By now, it's quixotic -- and oh-so-ABC News trite -- to relate the anecdote about the recently laid-off woman ("Kimberly" -- not her real name) who submitted somewhere between 20 or 30 applications (from day care facilities to department stores.) She endured subsequent rejections, only to then quickly score an all-expensed, high-paying job escorting at the Mustang Ranch. The brothel's manager tells ABC News, "I have more ladies coming in now than I ever did before because of the economic times." Still, the manager explains that the poor economy has actually forced her to lay off 30 percent of her staff.
The headlines proclaim, "Oldest profession hit by recession," and Google News will return results telling us that brothels, porn and sex work is taking a serious hit in the current economic crisis. So are gaming, travel, and gadgets. We can certainly then correlate unemployment and tighter budgets with bargain-hunting sex work clients and Craigslist layabouts with their freebie sex driving markets downward (like, to their knees). But me, I blame the hos -- of all genders -- who helped lay the groundwork for Wall Street's blue balls: the mortgage sluts.
Not the people on your local Casual Encounters currently trying to make the best of dire straits (and that pesky morning hyperinflation, or late night soaring interest rates). Instead, I point the Jeff Stryker dildo of blame at the mortgage boom bank employees and mortgage brokers who would openly, casually, even expectantly swap sex for borrower portfolios. And it just so happens that many of the lurid tales of wholesaler brokering-sans-panties happened here in the Bay Area.
According to a must-read recent article in BusinessWeek, "Sex, Lies, and Subprime Mortgages":
Dozens of former brokers and wholesalers say the trading of sexual favors was so common that it came to be expected. [Mortgage wholesaler Sharmen] Lane recalls one visit to a mortgage brokerage near San Jose (Calif.) in which the manager lewdly propositioned her in his office. She says she declined the advance, and he didn't sell her any applications. But other female wholesalers didn't have the same qualms about crossing the line. "Women who had sex for loans were known very quickly," says Lane, who left New Century before it failed in 2007 and now works as a $200-an-hour life coach and motivational speaker in New York. "I didn't want to be a mortgage slut."
... But in the mortgage business, it went further: The women allegedly offering sexual favors were bank employees. Evan Stone, president of Walnut Creek (Calif.) mortgage brokerage Pacific Union Financial, says "minimally trained and minimally dressed" wholesalers often wooed brokers. He says he regularly got visits in his suburban office from representatives wearing unusually short skirts to entice him and his team of brokers to party at the local Ruth's Chris Steak House. Stone says one New Century wholesaler offered to fly him to Chicago to "have a good time." He says he declined all offers of sexual favors. "There were some indecent proposals made," he says. "That was part of building the relationship."
Wholesalers also offered sexual favors to co-workers. To drive up their commissions, some enticed loan underwriters at their companies to approve questionable applications. A vice-president at Washington Mutual who once wielded $500 million to make loans recalls an incident in which a female wholesaler wanted him to approve a loan that didn't fit guidelines. The manager, who requested anonymity, says the co-worker, wearing a low-cut shirt, knelt down at his desk and said: "I really need this. What do I have to do?"
Of course, it's easy to read this, hear the wakka-wakka porn music begin, and since the Pac Union president's name is Evan Stone, I feel the need to remind you that he is in no way related to the other Evan Stone, who brokers his services to subprime porn productions. (But is it a coincidence?) Though it's not really all that funny while Americans across the nation are struggling to keep their homes through the holidays -- victims of subprime lending, which seems to me to be the darkest shade of sex work imaginable this season. If you read the whole BusinessWeek piece, you'll walk away realizing that sex work shouldn't be called the "oldest" profession, but perhaps the most honest profession.
So, free your mind and your mortgage will follow? Not necessarily. At least the Craigslisters are saving on energy bills with jobless body heat, honing their creative writing skills and many, like this ad in New York, put it as simply as needing to connect intimately in scary times: "We are an all American couple that is feeling the effect of our current economic situation." Another New York Casual Encounters author summed it up succinctly, stating, "I would have never thought that CL would be a barometer for the economic health of the nation but it certainly reflects reality unfortunately. (Oh by the way, I am a cute European in NY, not looking to pay to play, but am available to meet should someone be so inclined.)"
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