the loan app from hell...
Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Welcome to EZBreeZee Mortgages. I'm Alan
Greenspan. No, no relation, sorry to say.
May I call you Bill and Hillary? Fine, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
and Bill it is. So you want to buy the old Rye Brook place, 4-something
acres, as I recall. That's $2.2 million, and, with the customary 20 percent
down - that's $440,000 - that leaves a mortgage of $1,760,000.
No problem. We do these kinds of deals all the time.
Now let's just have a look at your financial statements. Let's see. Bill,
you are the President of the United States, of course, and your salary is
-oh, dear - $200,000 a year. We usually recommend buying a house that costs
no more than two-and-a-half times your annual salary. That means you should
be looking for something around $500,000, perhaps a nice brick rancher on
a quarter of an acre, not too fancy a neighborhood? And I see here that
you'll be out of a job in 16 months or so. What will you do then? Open a
library. In Little Rock, Arkansas. Wow! I bet that will be some kind of
money-maker.
Mrs. Clinton, you're running for Senate, right? Let's see. Senators are
paid $130,000 a year - assuming, of course, you're elected - so even with
Bill's pensions, you should still be looking for a house in the $325,000
range. Maybe a nice center-hall colonial where the schools aren't so good.
Mrs. Clinton, you haven't worked outside the home since 1991, correct?
But you did some volunteer work, I see. You came up with a plan to
overhaul the entire national health care system? I see. It flopped, in
other words.
But I see you had several business ventures back in Arkansas. How about
this Whitewater Development Corp.? It went bankrupt. And Madison Guaranty?
Bankrupt. And Castle Grande? Bankrupt, too. If you had gone to Yale
Business School instead of Yale Law, you could probably get your money
back.
Now, don't get upset. It was just a little joke. A little bad luck with the
law, too, I see. Three of your business partners went to jail? Maybe you
could get your money back. This is an embarrassing question, I know, but we
have to ask because it does, after all, affect your ability to pay. Any
problems in your marriage? No? Fine.
Let's look at your assets: $1.5 million. Not bad. Yes, yes, Mr. Clinton,
we're not forgetting your Mustang back in Little Rock. But oh, those
liabilities. You owe $5.5 million. That means you're $4 million in the
hole. How do you expect to pay that off? You're hoping people will donate
to a special fund. So basically, you're relying on the charity of
strangers.
You also have some serious expenses. A kid at Stanford has got to be
setting you back $30,000 to $35,000 a year, probably more with the
airfares. And she wants to go to medical school? Ouch! And Mr. Clinton.
There's a little matter of a $90,000 fine for lying in court. I guess that
rules out putting your law degree to work. Say, now, how do we know you're
not lying on your loan application? Good point. It would look a lot better
if you were lying. Are there any other legal matters we should know about?
You say you're in the clear, Mr. Clinton, and the First Lady is pretty
much 'in the clear indictment-wise.' What does that mean? You don't think
- don't think - she's going to get hit with a perjury or obstruction of
justice rap. But we're not totally sure, right? That means there's the
remote possibility - note that I say 'remote'- that you could be trying to
pay off a $1.76 million mortgage while making 12 cents an hour stitching
mailbags for the feds and he is trying to make a go of a library in Little
Rock.
Let's review the situation. One of you is now unemployed and the other one
soon will be. You have these whopping great debts that you're hoping
someone is going to come along and pay. You have a financial history that
can only with great charity be described as 'checkered' plus a bunch of
serious financial demands and ongoing legal problems. Your tangible assets
seem to consist of an old Ford. So, congratulations! Welcome to the
EZBreeZee family of homeowners. You've got your mortgage!
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