Slumlord Millionaires

If you have millions to burn and are sick and tired of plunking it down for kitschy overpriced art, and you retain some of that dim, genetic memory of the good old days when plutocrats were still allowed to own people, then JP Morgan Chase has such a deal for you.

You can now indulge your primal urge of sucking the life out of ordinary people and extracting the value out of 5,000 foreclosed properties at the same time! JPMC, that too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail bank with a GDP bigger than most countries, recently stole some real estate for a second time, again on the cheap, in such blighted states as Nevada, Florida and California. You know, the very same places whose economies tanked when the Wall Street subprime bubble burst, and never recovered. Those same poor slobs that JPMC and its brethren swindled out of house and home just a few short years ago will be back, eating out of your hand, giving you an immediate 8% return on your investment. Heads you win, tails they lose.

Be advised that only families with a net worth of over $5 million are under consideration for membership in the exclusive Slumlord Millionaires Club. So hurry in! You will be able to declare your rental income at the same rock-bottom tax rates just re-gifted to you by the Fiscal Cliff Aversion Act. Your tenants will never bother you, either, because they won't ever know who you are. If something breaks, and they attempt to call Jamie Dimon to get it fixed, they will be put on terminal hold. And naturally they will not be allowed to deduct the rent from their own income taxes. That is because in the Banana Republic of America, the cost of living is something only the little people have to pay for. Plus, their work is valued a lot less than your wealth.

A few years or so from now, when the Slumhoard Millionaires Club has fully cornered the residential real estate market, and home prices have once again been artificially inflated to near-bursting, you can cash in quick as you kick the proles out. The cycle of greed goes round and round, much like the wheels of the bus you throw them under.

Meanwhile, do your patriotic one percentish duty and continue crowding all those first-time home buyers right out of the market. Realtors always give preference to hedge fund operators and other shadowy financiers, who can plunk down the whole purchase price in cash. Mortgages and down-payments are only for the little people. There's a logical reason why ordinary people applying for a mortgage often don't get approved, and it has very little to do with their credit scores. When the banks cheat people in this latest rent scam, they will do so through third parties. Their culpability will have been sliced and diced through the Oligarchy. DOJ heads will explode just with the effort of thinking what crime irresponsible behavior could possibly have committed this time by those wascally wanker bankers.

It's the paper trail, stupid. Even though the mega-banks have gotten off lightly when the government occasionally bothers to notice the paperwork that proves they've been defrauding people out of a trillion dollars in household wealth, there is the little matter of a cover-up of epic proportions by government watchdogs, causing a few Senators to blink and actually write a polite letter asking for particulars.

But don't let that worry you. You're a member of The Club -- a/k/a the Legal Protection Racket.