Simple Loans For CEOs

We recently refinanced our mortgage, saving a bundle, but not without costs or risk. The risk of signing our compliance over to a lender likely to sell our mortgage to another lender of their choice, (not taking responsibility for us as a risk a la the mess we are in now), the risk of signing a contract heavily weighed against us (and I do admit---it is our loan to pay) and the risk of agreeing that the 30 pages we signed were written in "plain language"----while being ridiculously far from it. Due to all the words, we paid a heavy legal fee for what amounts to a simple transaction.

I want contract reform. And I cite the article by Siegel&Gale posted below.....

Sep 8th, 2009 posted by Irene Etzkorn
$25 billion? Use Short Form; $100,000? Use Long Form

Little did I expect to find a nugget of simplification in an article about Henry Paulson and the distribution of TARP money, but that is exactly what I found in the October 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. It seems that while homeowners were asked to read and sign dozens of pages of legalese to get measly home mortgages, the CEOs of the nation’s major banks signed a lightly populated two-page commitment to borrow billions. Consisting of four clear, concise bullet points, the “Application for TARP Capital Purchase Program” demonstrates that the need to get something done is best achieved through brevity and clarity. There was no time for the banks to take the application away for legal review and wordsmithing—four clear, one-sentence bullet points stated the commitment each bank was making.

If billions can be borrowed on a short form, can simplified applications for car loans, mortgages, and student loans be far behind? Will the CEOs of these banks consider the time, money, and effort they would save if they adopted this approach in their day-to-day transactions? Why, that would be an economic stimulus in its own right.