You are very kind, Mr. Higham. Thank you.

I could be snarky about the closing paperwork and ask if you understood every word of what you read, but I’ve got a story you might prefer to the snark. My wife has a real estate license and so has been to a few closings and she won’t go to one if I go.

My very first closing, I read everything. There is stuff in there that nobody in their right might would agree to if they had a choice. Did you notice, for example, that you are required to pay for a termite inspection but if you read the termite inspection report it says they are not responsible if you have termites when they claimed you did not have termites?

That kind of thing, if you will pardon the expression, bugs me.

Getting back to what we agree on, I have a question and I assure you it is not rhetorical. I have asked it many times and never got an answer even close to being a keeper.

When Mitt Romney ran for POTUS, he had a paragraph in his stump speech where he accused Barack Obama of cutting banks out of the student loan process “for political reasons” and promising to reverse that decision.

As I understand the public policy issue, when the banks were acting as middlemen, they were taking on no risk because the loans were federally guaranteed, but they raised the interest rate a fraction of a point to compensate themselves for their trouble, which was mainly shuffling the paper. I was in my second career at that time (university teaching) and so I knew first hand that university financial aid offices were more than happy to do the paper shuffle for nothing. The people who actually put their hands on the files were mostly work-study students who were paid by federal grants anyway. One financial aid officer would run a stable of a dozen or so work-studies and they would whip those suckers right out even at the beginning of semester rush.

So, Gov. Romney clearly thought his promise to let the banks re-enter the transactions rated applause. I heard him pause for that several times but there was nothing but crickets. It appeared the friendly audiences to whom he was speaking had no strong feelings about whether banks should have a role in the student loan process. From the campus, I can say that the folks who worked in the financial aid office — some of whom were Republicans — -preferred to handle it themselves.

So why was it something Romney thought worth touting? I can understand why he would want to do it but not why he would want to brag about intending to do it and attack Obama for having changed the flow chart.

The only time I was able to ask a banker, he said the banks needed to up the interest a smidge to compensate for the risk. I called BS on that on account of the federal guarantee and he moved right along (it was a cocktail party on campus and he was a donor — I’m sure the dean loved that I offended him, but I did not intend offense).