AG's on CNBC

Earlier this week, CNBC's morning program, Squawkbox, featured a state Attorney General as guest host. Due to proximity, I believe he was from Connecticut.

Along with him were two other AGs, including Iowa's Tom Miller.

The salient topic among the three was their drive, at the state level, to intervene in mortgage contracts and unilaterally attempt to force investors to adjust terms and avoid foreclosures.

My specific recollection is of Tom Miller describing his actions in Iowa as, and these are close paraphrases,

'doing what's best for all parties...trying to avoid foreclosures....helping investors.....just using Iowa common sense.'

Personally, I found Miller to be pretty disingenuous.

Essentially, he tried to paint his use of the state's legal compulsion with investors as 'helping them do the right thing for their own interests.'

Funny, but I'd rather think investors already know what's in their best interests. And don't need some public-payroll lawyer, who just happens to be Iowa's AG, to tell them what that would be.

I think what we're seeing is good, old-fashioned FDR-style, heavy-handed state intrusion into the sanctity of the private, legal contract.

The last time I saw anyone write about 'Iowa common sense,' it was Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man," and the portrait it painted of the corn state's residents wasn't all that flattering.

If Iowa's common sense is to force investors in mortgages on property within the state to take new terms as dictated by the state's AG, has all that much changed in the century that has passed?