Banking on humor to bail out industry

Flickr photo by Nesster.

Editor's note: The state of the economy and real estate market has got you down? Let humor serve as a temporary bailout for your dark mood. This piece is intended to tap your funny bone and return the liquidity of laughter to the marketplace. …

Today, American Express announced that the credit-card company has been converted to a bank, following the same move by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs last month. This entitled them to receive federal financing.

GM is jockeying for federal bailout funds, and others are expected to line up for help.

Here is a fresh list of other firms and companies from the real estate world that are getting federal help (It's our fictional take on April Fools' Day in November.):

• Las Vegas top producer Helen Boomster has converted her business into a bank and received federal bailout funds, which will help her afford for-sale signs and to buy Trulia ad words. She has not sold a home since 2005.

• Orange County, Calif., mortgage broker Ted Ezzzy has converted his one-man shop to a commercial bank, which will help him close his one pending deal, a borrower with perfect credit who has 80 percent down but cannot get loan approval.

• Zillow, HomeGain and Realtor.com have all applied to become federally chartered savings and loans so that they can subsidize clicks to real estate agents who have become banks and so they can all do inter-bank loans among themselves for fun and profit.

• Economist Robert Shiller has converted himself to a bank so he can charge a transaction fee on every word he says about the housing bubble.

• The California Association of Realtors has gotten a lifetime banking license for the current and all future CAR presidents so that they can legally create IRA accounts for MLS CEOs who may lose their jobs in the MLS consolidation.

• Blogger Dustin Luther has converted himself to a commercial bank so he can start a small business loan program for bloggers who write great stuff but are tired of waiting tables at night.

• ZipRealty has converted itself to a bank so it can start a special low-interest auto leasing financing recovery program for real estate agents who cannot afford their car payments.

• Inman News has converted itself it to a bank so it can provide nothing-down loans to its readers to buy memberships.

In this environment, only a good laugh gets us through the day. Have you heard of anyone else converting themselves to commercial banks? We would love to hear about them.

***

What's your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor.

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.