Happy Independence Day

I posted this five(!) years ago, and it still brings tears to my eyes. If it doesn't for you then... well... you're not American.

 Happy Independence Day, America. I guess we're still working on what, or whom, we are independent from.

Massive hydraulic fracturing proves a point I made more than five years ago

Maybe you remember it. Whether you remember or not—remember this: I was right then, and I’m still right, now. In the post linked above, I attempted to explain how advances in technology change not only how we estimate energy reserves, but also our ability to extract and exploit reserves once believed to be inextractable and unexpolitable. The recent advances in massive hydraulic fracturing technology have led to significant increases in the efficiency of current and expected future extraction methods. These advances have also led to changes in how we estimate reserves in the ground.

The result? The shift in the Production Possibilities Curve that I predicted in May 2010. These advances have also positioned North America as the global leader in proven oil and gas reserves, and a long run drop in oil and gas prices.

Here are some excerpts from the May 2010 post:

What the doom-and-gloom crowd don't tell you about is the economic concept of production possibilities, time and the effect technological change has on production.  This is not an oil only concept.  It applies in every market.

I'm an economist, so I can't have a discussion on economics without a chart.  To the right is what's called the Production Possibilities Curve.  The vertical axis, C, represents capital (plant, equipment, etc).  The horizontal axis, L, represents labor. Any point on one of the curved lines represents a mix of capital and labor that produces the same quantity of a good or service.  It doesn't matter if the good or service is oil, gas, coal, legal services, cars, buildings, widgets, software or blog posts--substituting more labor for capital will not increase production any more than substituting more capital for labor.  Certain industries, like oil production, are very capital intensive.  Oil producers spend hundreds of billions of dollars on capital but don't spend as much on labor.  Conversely, legal services are labor intensive.  What this means is that most industries have mixes of capital and labor that are defined by the nature of the industry itself, rather than the decisions of the producer.  The producer may fiddle a little here and there with the mix, but his or her industry most likely determines the general neighborhood of the mix.

What the producer will not do is produce an amount that falls to the left or below the curve.  The profit motive causes the producer to add more capital and labor until the curve is reached.

What the producer cannot do is produce an amount that falls to the right or above the curve, and the limit is imposed by the state of technology at the time the production commences.  This is important to understand.  The production possibilities chart I have presented here shows two curves--one for period t and one for period t+1.  As a result of the growth of technology between the two time periods, the same mix of capital and labor is capable of producing a greater quantity. Only a change in technology can cause the entire curve to shift out and up (conversely, only external intervention in the market can cause the entire curve to shift in and down, but that's a blog post for another day).  And, technology tends to have a larger impact on capital-intensive industries than labor-intensive industries, because technology tends to affect the productivity of capital more than it does the productivity of labor.  That is, more efficient capital tends to make labor more efficient, but more efficient labor has a much more limited effect on the productivity of capital.

These are basic tenets of microeconomics and are—or should be—taught to every sophomore economics student (we don’t let freshmen take economics).

What is great about such tenets is that empirical data tend to demonstrate how effective they are in describing economic phenomena, and what you are seeing in the explosive growth of energy production and the precipitous decline in energy prices constitutes all the empirical data you need to reach the most reasonable, most logical conclusions.

When I published my 2010 paper, the “peak oil” folks and Paul Ehrlich neo-Malthusians came after me with vitriol. How dare I say that we would never run out of fossil fuels!

 Read that 2010 post. It’s a chapter right out of a Microeconomics 205 lecture.

Five years later, I’ve been proven right.

And I’ll be right in another, 5, 10, 15 years. The data don’t lie. People do.

The Office of Personnel Management gave up my personal data

To the Chinese, it appears. My name, my address, my social security number. Not only that, but my wife’s name, the names of my children and all of their social security numbers, too. They also have the names and locations of my references that I used to apply for a Top Secret clearance in 1990. All of which is now in the hands of potentially bad actors who might attempt to use that information for nefarious purposes.

The letter displayed below says that my personal information “may have” been compromised. Right. Trust me—it was compromised.

I was disappointed to say the least, but I did not panic because:

1. Anyone who knows me knows that I am somewhat anal when it comes to system security. If you’re good enough to get through my security system you get an IP address of 0.0.0.0. A Black Hole.
2. I haven’t had a Top Secret security clearance since leaving the Department of the Army in 2006, nine years ago almost to the day. I still maintain an active Secret security clearance.

In my circle, I’m known as a white hat hacker. I’m the kind of guy who goes down the hall and checks a door knob. If it’s unlocked and there’s something valuable behind it, I alert the person responsible for securing it .I don’t wait until my black hat peers compromise, pilfer or otherwise steal that stuff of value.

But that’s what OPM has done in this case—they let the black hats walk through that door and take everything they wanted. Then they decided to tell us what “may have” transpired?

Here’s the letter I received from OPM on Monday. I’m only posting the first two pages, with certain parts blacked out.

Two things worth observing here. OPM is offering me an 18-month, no cost-to-me credit monitoring service. Please refer back to bullet No. 1 above. I already have LifeLock; and who wants to trust the lowest bidder on a government “security” contract? CSID may be great. But that’s Ok—no thanks.

The second thing, and the one that bothers me the most, is that there will likely be no one held accountable for this egregious negligence. Just like the VA scandal, the IRS scandal and the disaster in Benghazi. No one in this administration pays a price for incompetence or inattention to duty. We do, however.

And that’s what it is, ladies and gentlemen: Gross negligence and incompetence. Because the people responsible for protecting my sensitive info were asleep (or drunk) at the switch that data is now in the hands of God knows who.

Am I mad? Hell yes. Am I worried? Not even a little. I’m a low value target and I’m really hard to get to. You’re gonna have to come to the door to get anything, and if you do, you’ll be staring down the barrel of my brand new Browning tactical shotgun, loaded with buckshot.

Standing on the edge of history, Alabama fell off

On January 1 in the Sugar Bowl, Alabama fell off the cliff. Slipped into the Dark Side. Blew it.

Wile E. Coyote style.

You may recall this post from December, in which I explained how the Crimson Tide could make history while sticking a thumb in the eye of the talking heads who were incensed over Alabama’s rematch against LSU a coupla years ago.

You might also remember this post from November, where I expressed discomfort over Alabama’s apparent attempts to match speed and tempo of teams that play basketball on grass.

But my discomfort actually goes all the way back to January 2014, where I first lamented the exasperating tendency of trying the up-tempo style against teams that are designed for it.

Tidefans.com’s Senior Editor JessN picks up on what happens when a team tries to do what it was never recruited or designed to do:

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4. Offensive playcalling got too cute by half. Alabama fell in love with the pass early, likely because defensive scouting told the coaches to do it. Ohio State’s presumed defensive soft spot was a secondary that was short on experience, albeit long on turnover-forcing ability. Alabama got to see too much of the latter. Alabama never tried Tyren Jones at running back, and didn’t use T.J. Yeldon enough even though he appeared reasonably healthy. Derrick Henry only got 13 carries. As TideFans.com talked about in the preview, OSU DE Steve Miller was extremely vulnerable to the run and Alabama had good success going at him, but Kiffin didn’t do it enough. And when Blake Sims did make a mistake throwing the football, Ohio State made him pay, unlike so many other teams before. …

5. Turnovers again come up big. It was touched on above, but this was the season’s real pink elephant and it showed up again in the Sugar Bowl. Blake Sims was picked off three times and the second one was arguably even more damaging than the first, which went for an Ohio State defensive touchdown. Alabama finished the season on the wrong side of the turnover margin, which speaks both to the more chance-taking nature of Kiffin’s offense and the inability of the defense to force turnovers, particularly in the passing game. Cyrus Jones also missed the ability to possibly pick-six Cardale Jones but dropped the pass. For 2015, Alabama has to figure out what went wrong here in 2014, on both sides, and fix both.

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When Blake Sims got rattled, he either made a play with his feet, or he tossed an interception. It seemed that there was no willingness to simply throw the ball away, something QB’s have been doing since the inception of the forward pass. I appreciate his competitive spirit and desire to make something out of nothing, but sometimes, you just have to give up on a play and try again.

But you don’t do that 10 seconds after the ball is set and the down marker is flipped. Jess is right—the playcalling was too cute and it was costly. He also correctly points out that some of our most effective offensive weapons watched much of the game from the sidelines. How does Derrick “The Hammer” Henry only get 13 carries? Why is TJ Yeldon watching?

Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson must have been watching that game, shaking their heads in some truly sore WTF moments.

Another point along my line of thinking that this is not Alabama Football: Against Auburn in the Iron Bowl, Alabama had a time of possession of 26:06 versus Auburn’s 33:54. Against Mizzou in the SECCG, it was 23:17 to 36:43. And against Ohio State, it was 28:14 to 31:19. Those numbers mean something—and what they mean to me is that slowing down and playing smashmouth football produces more wins than not. We went 2-1 in those games, but I’m not comfortable seeing my team’s offense on the sidelines more than the other team’s offense. That’s… well… just not right.

Jess however is right—changes need to be made, and my opinion is that the changes need to include a serious examination of what has made Alabama such a dominant program in the conference and in the country, and see if that style of play can be implemented as successfully as it was beginning with Saban’s first step on the campus in Tuscaloosa.

As far as I’m concerned, Alabama had a great season. Blake Sims  turned out much better than many people expected. Amari Cooper deserved the invitation to New York. Landon Collins proved equal to the hype. Lane Kiffin turned out to be a gifted—even if aggressive—playcaller and QB coach.

In 2014, the Tide got yet another SEC Title and had yet another shot at the Crystal. We’ve got a great team coming back in 2015 by any measure.

But it could have been better, and it could have been historic.

Y’all, please… “Golf” is not a verb

There is a recent article from the New York Times describing how President Barack Obama plays Golf. In essence, it seems that the semi-retired President has a game that is not all that good, despite his well-publicized and multiple attempts to practice it. Well, mine isn’t all that hot either; primarily because I don’t have time to hit the links as much as I used to. But the point I’m trying to make here is that “Golf” is no more a verb than football, basketball, hockey or soccer.

It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. Another one is that I don’t think “text” is a verb, either. That battle I’ve already lost, apparently. I won’t dwell on the fact that I’m an analog boy in a digital world.

But anyway…

Ever hear of someone going footballing? Nope. Me, either. How about someone going basketballing? Uh uh. Me either. Football is a sport. Basketball is a sport. And Golf is a sport. So when even the Grey Lady uses the word “Golf” as a verb, I haz a face palm.

I’m gonna keep this post short and simple by saying that if you enjoy the sport, you don’t “Golf.” You are not a “Golfer.” You don’t go “Golfing.” what you do is tee the ball up and play Golf. Just like you tee the ball up and play football, or tip the ball off and play basketball.

Okay? Okay.

Happy New Year, and may your New Year’s resolution to improve your Golf game take your handicap to a happier and more productive level.

One of the last of “Bear’s Boys” goes bowling

The University of South Alabama, in only its second year of Division I bowl eligibility, has made it to the Camellia Bowl. With a 6-6 record for the 2014 season, coach Joey Jones is taking the Jaguars to Montgomery for what could be an interesting matchup against Bowling Green.

Joey Jones and I were classmates at Murphy High School. Although we ran with different crowds, I remember Joey as an affable, polite but competitive fella. Another thing about him was his popularity, especially among the girls. To put it bluntly, you had to wait until he’d decided who was going to the dance with him before you asked a pretty young lady for the pleasure of her company.

Oh, and he could run like the wind. I’ve never seen a white boy run that fast (that’s not racist; it’s the truth and the truth is never racist). My bet is that at age 52, he can still probably outrun most of his players.

Jones is also the last of a dying breed—coaches with ties to legendary Alabama coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. Coach Bryant recruited Jones as a wide receiver, and he lived up to the hype. He lettered for four years, graduating in 1983. While you might look at 71 catches for 1,386 yards and 15 touchdowns as somewhat pedestrian given the work of men like Julio Jones and Amari Cooper, consider the fact that Jones was playing in the Wishbone system, which rarely featured the pass catching ability of a 5-9, 165 lb speedster. He averaged nearly 20 yards per catch, which means that every time he touched the football it was First Down Alabama.

Coach Bryant referred to him as something of a secret weapon—a player that no one would pay much attention to until he was beating every defender to the end zone for the score. He did that 15 times in his career at Alabama in a system that emphasized the ground game.

As a coach, he’s pretty much doing the same thing at South Alabama. No one paid much attention to USA until they started beating more established FBS schools like Troy and Kent State, Nick Saban’s alma mater.

A 6-6 record is certainly no world beater. USA has taken its share of beatings in so-called “paycheck games,” where a team travels to a major program’s home field, takes a whoopin’ and collects a nice fee from its host. This is the same thing Southern Miss, Florida State and others have used to build their college football programs.

But through his time at USA, Jones has served with class, dignity and integrity. There are butts in the seats at every home game, and USA doesn’t have to print tickets in the local newspaper to get them there. People in Mobile eagerly pay to go to Jag games because… well… it’s a Jag game. He’s taken a brand new program to heights that make UAB fans gasp in horror. UAB is giving up its football program, while the nascent Jags program is making gains no one really believed to be possible so early in the program’s life.

One thing about the crowds you see at Ladd Peebles on game day: There are Alabama fans, Auburn fans and LSU fans sitting right next to the fans and alumni wearing red white and blue. This is a football program embraced by the entire community.

Consider this as well: Only five years into college football, USA is actively considering probably not if, but where to build an on-campus stadium. Could this sort of speculation be happening if it weren’t for Joey Jones? I’m laying odds on “no.”

One of the great things about college football is history and tradition. You build things one brick at a time, and before you know it, you have something standing before you that is legendary and remarkable.

Coach Jones is on his way to doing just that and on December 20 in Montgomery, a very important step will be taken with the Jags first ever bowl game. Win or lose, Coach Bryant must surely be smiling from Heaven over this. One of the last of his boys stands on the edge of greatness, and the future looks quite bright.

US to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba. Democrats can kiss Florida goodbye for 2016

This is no small tremor. This is quake with a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter Scale. As somebody who previously lived and worked in South Florida for years, I can attest to two irrefutable truths: One, that the large Cuban expatriate community in that part of the state bitterly opposes any normalization of relations with the Castro regime. Two, that anyone (or party) who proposes or moves forward with such “progress” will be punished on the first Tuesday in November.

Ms. Clinton, Ms. Warren, or any other Democrat seeking the presidency in 2016 can officially kiss the state of Florida goodbye.

In a nutshell, US contractor Alan Gross, who has been jailed on espionage charges for nearly six years, is being released by the Castro regime in exchange for three Cuban nationals convicted of spying on anti-Castro activists in Florida. The Obama regime claims that this is a humanitarian exchange, but let there be no doubt: this is no quid pro quo deal in any way, shape or form.

Contrary to what Ed at HotAir.com believes, the Cuban ex-pat community in Florida is monolithically opposed to any actions that take pressure off of the banana republic regime that has enslaved millions, jailed thousands and continues to oppress the Cuban people. If they were predisposed to violent uprisings (they’re not), the ex-pats could make the Ferguson riots look like a peace march.

Back to my point of the post’s title, it’s important to note that two men of Cuban descent are considering a run at the White House in 2016. These are Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. Another man considering a run is former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a man that the Cuban ex-pat community named an “Honorary Cuban” in 2007.

Expect all three of these distinguished gentlemen to denounce today’s developments, and if one of them should gain the GOP nomination, the monolithic Cuban ex-pat electorate south of I-4 will crawl naked over broken glass to vote for the guy who opposes normalized relations with the regime that has bloodied and impoverished one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean..

Update: right on cue:

Rubio says he'll "make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt" to remake US relationship w Cuba. He'll be in majority...

— Rick Klein (@rickklein) December 17, 2014

Update: And Mr. Bush:

"I don't think we should be negotiating with a repressive regime to make changes in our relationship [until Cuba changes]," Bush said at an event in Florida on Wednesday morning,according to USA Today. 

Crimson Tide standing on the edge of history

On January 1st 2015, Alabama plays Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl, the first round of the first ever College Football Playoff. If the Tide can defeat the Buckeyes, then on January 12 they will face the winner of the Rose Bowl’s Oregon – Florida State battle in Arlington’s AT&T Stadium.

History can be made here. If Alabama defeats the Rose Bowl survivor and takes Title 16, it will forever erase the memory of the Miami dynasty of the 1980’s and make the Capstone the most storied football program in the history of storied programs.

Y’all know I’m a homer. I don’t hide that fact. I wear it like a badge of honor. But I am not an in-your-face Bammer either. I don’t dress up like a clown on game day. I don’t have a home with every corner decorated in Crimson and White. Hell, I don’t even have a Bama room.

But I know history unfolding when I see it, and folks… this is history unfolding.

Since his arrival in Tuscaloosa, head coach Nick Saban has led the Crimson Tide to three national titles, including two in a row. No one in the BCS era had ever repeated as BCS Champions and now that the BCS era is over, that feat can never be repeated. So there’s one angle on the “making history” narrative.

How’s this for making history: What team has the opportunity to claim both a BCS repeat and the first ever CFP Championship? Well, there’s only one, silly. And that’s Alabama.

Anyone who thinks this will be a cakewalk to glory is delusional. Ohio State is a worthy opponent, coached by a man who has beaten Alabama on his own way to a national title. Neither Florida State nor Oregon—two teams with quarterbacks and offenses that have given the Tide trouble in the past—aren’t slouches, either. The CFP committee made the right selections for the four team field. Saban and his brain trust have their work cut out for them, but no one thinks that Bama doesn’t have the tools to get it done.

That said, how prescient was the post from June 2012 from KrAzy3? The man laid out an argument that makes many people squirm, and he’s probably right that at some point in the future, the dropoff in quality between the No.3 team in the field and the No. 4 team will be significant enough to make people wonder why we went to a four-team field.

But a key point he makes is that the CFP is the direct result of the BCS pairing SEC West runner-up Alabama against SEC Champion LSU in 2011, which led to the historic BCS repeat. The talking heads and pundits at ESPN and Sports Illustrated were outraged, and the powers that be in college football went from being apathetic towards a playoff to rushing headlong towards one so that such an absolute tragedy never happens again.

This should make even the most casual Alabama fan laugh his or her ass off: Alabama is poised to ruffle the feathers of those little biddies all over again.

Win two more admittedly challenging games, and become the first team to win a championship in a playoff system that resulted from you winning a championship that almost no one outside the friendly confines of the Heart of Dixie thought you deserved.

If Alabama brings home the hardware on January 12, 2015, the Tide will have the last laugh, will have made college football history, and it will have Bama fans cackling in delight at the irony of it all.

An earlier version of this post had the CFB Championship game on January 14.

In warfare and politics, it is wise to choose your battles carefully.

Sorry, Erick Erickson. Sorry, Sean Hannity. Sorry, Mark Steyn. Sorry, Mark Levin. Sorry, Rush Limbaugh.

You’re all wrong. The CROmnibus bill that is so vilified by pundits on the right doesn’t make for good policy. On that point, most people on the right can agree. I don’t like it either—it spends too much and doesn’t fix any of the myriad of problems this country faces going forward.

But two facts make passing the spending bill good politics. First, until this Congress adjourns, the GOP is a minority in the US Senate and there is still that recalcitrant demagogue in the White House. Republicans could have made a stand on principle by denying the President the funding he needs to effect his extra-constitutional XO on immigration. That’s a losing battle, and every sentient conservative knows it.

Second, what passed the Senate last weekend puts Barack Obama in an unwinnable position. He can veto the bill, which essentially shuts down the government. Or, he can sign it and allow the Dept. of Homeland Security to be funded until February, upon which he’ll be forced to either sign or veto a bill that defunds his lawless action. Either way, he can’t win. He gets defunded, heads or tails. And, by the time  Valentine’s Day-ish arrives, he’ll be facing the largest Republican majority in Congress since his Kenyan father was but a wee radical.

Sometimes, you have to trade part of the loaf so that you get to eat. Or, as I opined in last year’s post regarding the strategy and tactics of Sam Houston, you need to carefully choose when and where to fight your battles.

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As a student of History, this is where I believe the lesson so aptly taught by Sam Houston comes in. In 1836, Houston, with a poorly trained, poorly equipped and vastly outnumbered force of volunteers, repeatedly retreated rather than fight the Mexican Army in the struggle to liberate Texas. His apparent refusal to take a stand and fight the demonstrably brutal General Antonio López de Santa Anna dismayed his officers and political supporters, but it was an effort to buy time and avoid a crushing defeat. Santa Anna had already overrun and massacred the defenders at the Alamo near San Antonio, and had ordered the mass execution of approximately 300 to 400 members of the Texas Militia at Goliad.

Houston wanted to fight on his terms, not Santa Anna’s, so he waited until Santa Anna made a mistake. Santa Anna did just that—dividing his forces in an attempt to surround Houston’s growing force of Militia and well trained regulars.

At the battle of San Jacinto, Houston made his move. In about 20 minutes’ time, Houston’s forces surprised and overwhelmed Santa Anna’s, ending the struggle and forcing Santa Anna into signing the treaty of Velasco, ending Mexican rule of Texas and paving the way for Texas to join the United States of America.

What can be learned from this, in the context of the current political struggle to wrest control of this great country from the grip of the brutally oppressive leftists?

In warfare and politics, it’s important to choose your battles wisely. Don’t strike when your enemy is strong and you are not. This is a divided government, but conservatives have control of only one house of Congress. No stand taken on principle has a prayer in hell of getting adopted and made the law of the land.

Bide your time. Consolidate your forces. Let your opponent make a mistake. The more arrogant and self-confident your opponent—as both General Santa Anna and Democrats (along with a sycophantic media) are—the more likely it is that your opponent will make a mistake that neither he nor his allies saw coming.

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The iconic pundits I mentioned above are as exasperated with the GOP leadership as Houston’s officers and supporters were in 1836.

I find it ironic that Texas Senator Ted Cruz led the battle against the CROmnibus. It’s almost as if the man hasn’t learned the lessons from his own state’s history. Sam Houston could have taken a stand on principle, but he knew that his troops would be destroyed and his cause lost if he stood on principle at the wrong time or the wrong place.

I am a big fan of Ted Cruz. The man speaks about the Constitution like it is the document that sets forth what the co-equal branches of government can and cannot do, which is exactly what the Constitution is. But you can’t fight every battle against a superior force, which is exactly what the GOP in this Congress faces. Taking a stand on principle against a foe with superior numbers and a tactical advantage might as well be facing a Santa Anna firing squad. You always lose.

Why sacrifice so much to gain so little? Why not wait, as Houston did, until your enemy is weak and makes a mistake? Why throw your advantage away now, when you can use it against a weakened enemy later?

In January, a new Congress will be seated. As noted above, it will be the largest Republican majority since before WWII. Before them almost immediately will be the issue of whether or not to fund President Obama’s reckless and irresponsible attempt to encroach on the powers of the Legislative Branch.

There is much work to be done between January 2015 and December 2016, including a new budget resolution that will be bitterly fought between the Capitol and the White House. In February 2015 however, there will be an even more bitter fight over the President’s lawlessness, and choosing that San Jacinto that was the right strategy.

There’s an old saying: When a bear and an alligator do battle, the victor is determined by the terrain.

Choose your battles carefully. Do not strike when your enemy is strong but when he is weak and in an unwinnable position, as Mr. Obama will be two months hence.

Yeah, you gave up funding an irresponsibly out-of-control government until next year, but what you gained is ground that you can fight on, and a battlefield that you can win on.

Let’s fight the budget battle in September of 2015. Let’s fight the lawless President in February 2015.

And Mr. Cruz, study your history, sir.

Are you being harassed by Green Tree Servicing? You are not alone

A year or so ago, my mortgage was sold to Green Tree Servicing, a South Dakota financial concern owned by Tampa-based Walter Investment Management. Green Tree specializes in serving sub-prime, nonconforming or other credit challenged mortgages.

My mortgage is none of the above. It’s a conventional 15-year mortgage. My credit rating is solid gold. We have been homeowners since 1988, and in those 26 years we have never missed a mortgage payment.

Nevertheless, Green Tree still uses the debt collector tactics applied to people struggling to pay their bills.

This is exactly what happened one day after a mortgage payment was due sometime in early 2014. The calls came at all times of the day, starting at 7:30 am and not stopping until 8:00 pm. The spiel is always the same: “Your payment is due immediately. If you do not make a payment by phone, it will hurt your credit score.”

They’ll claim that the amount paid from escrow is insufficient. They’ll claim that your payment can’t be posted because of the alleged escrow shortage. They’ll claim to have made a “forced insurance” payment because your homeowner’s policy doesn’t fully cover the dwelling and that you owe the difference. All of this is bull hockey.

The callers are consistently rude, unprofessional, pushy and insistent. They simply don’t listen. The calls also come from offices across the country. I’ve gotten rude, harassing calls from Texas, Missouri, Florida, South Dakota and Georgia.

I’m not the only one getting the unprofessional and illegal tactics, either. In fact, there are four other people in my school parish that are getting the same thing. Google “Green Tree Harassment,” and watch as thousands of links appear. The BBB, with which Green Tree is not accredited (I wonder why), has to date fielded nearly 2,000 complaints.

So, how’s that working out for them? Well, have a look right here of how the parent company’s stock price has performed over the last two years.

If you’ve been a victim of Green Tree’s harassment, there are steps you can take.

Step 1 is to consult with an attorney. Most will review your case for free (for reasons explained below).

Step 2 is to write a cease and desist letter to the company’s registered agent in your state. You will need to use your state’s Secretary of State’s website or office to identify the agent. Here is the text of the letter I sent:

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Your name and address here

Date:

Green Tree Servicing, LLC

c/o CT Corporation System

2 North Jackson Street, Suite 605,

Montgomery, Alabama 36104

Re: Account Number — [enter account number here]

Sent via USPS Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested

Dear Green Tree Servicing:

Pursuant to my rights under federal law, I am demanding that you cease and desist telephonic communication with me, or about me to third parties (i.e. family, friends, neighbors, employers, etc) in relation to this account, including, but not limited to this list of telephone numbers:

[List numbers here]

Please direct future contact to me in writing only, addressed to my residential mailing address, which is shown above.

I would like to kindly remind you that Federal law requires collection calls to cease upon written request. See Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C § 1692 et. seq (“FDCPA”).

After effective written notice of request for telephone contact to cease has been received by your registered agent, financial penalties of $500 – $1,500 can be awarded per violation.

I will vigorously assert my rights under any applicable federal or state law, and I will seek relief in the form of monetary damages if these harassing calls are not ceased upon effective delivery of this letter.

Sincerely,

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If you continue to receive harassing phone calls after getting the return receipt on your certified mail, keep a record of each one. The FDCPA allows monetary damages for each call, and makes the offending company pay attorney fees, so all damages paid by the offender go straight to you, while the attorney working your case gets paid by the offender.

What’s cool about this is that it might take a while for your state’s registered agent to notify the company, which in turn means that it might take a while for the company to notify its field offices that they are in receipt of a C&D letter and that they must stop calling. So it’s likely that even after you get your receipt from USPS, some calls are going to continue. 

While this process can be a general pain in the ass, it is effective. It also works with other debt collectors. Say you have a kid with a delinquent student loan whose debt has been sold off to a debt collector. Write them the letter above and your phone goes silent.

One caveat: FDCPA does not prohibit a lender from seeking to collect its own debt. So if you borrowed money from Hometown Bank, NA, that bank has a right to attempt to collect on delinquent debt. However, once Hometown Bank sells your loan to a sub-prime servicer or debt collector, the terms of FDCPA apply.