The Real Foreclosure Deadbeats - the Banks

[Better Believe It]

Let’s Not Start Lionizing the Real Foreclosure Fraud Deadbeats – the Banks
By: David Dayen
October 14, 2010

The improper affidavits were the tip of the iceberg, but even if they weren’t, the chain of so-called clerical errors that would get a servicer to foreclose on a home that didn’t even have a mortgage would involve so much fraud at so many stages that it makes a mockery of the notion of private property altogether. The smug cheerleaders who want to make this about borrowers and not criminal fraud really make me sick to my stomach.

Let’s Not Start Lionizing The Anti-Foreclosure Deadbeats
By: John Carney
Senior Editor, CNBC.com

It’s actually a bit sickening to hear defaulted borrowers describing the misdeeds of banks as “mortgage fraud.” What some banks have done might well be fraud—but the fact of that fraud doesn’t erase the other fact that the borrower agreed to make payments or face the penalty of losing her home.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39657316

Actually, it does erase that fact. That’s how the law works. In the individual case that John Carney cites, the borrower claims that CitiMortgage is trying to foreclose upon her without owning the mortgage. That would mean that Citi has no legal right to evict this woman from her home, period. She didn’t force Citi to sell her mortgage to Fannie Mae, and then use the faulty MERS system to cloud the title. I don’t have the right to foreclose on the woman’s house either, but under Carney’s logic, I might as well try, since what matters is that she didn’t keep up with her payments. The fact that some bank is going around taking possession of homes they don’t own should scare the living daylights out of people, even pretend financial reporters like Carney.

By the way, these same banks knew about this criminality for years, fostered it, and ignored the consequences. Sounds a lot like those “deadbeats” Carney is so fond of castigating for knowing the risks when they signed the papers on the mortgage. Banks knew them too.

As an aside, I don’t know if Carney’s actually talked to anyone who’s fallen behind on mortgage payments in this economy, but classifying them as “deadbeats” just seriously mischaracterizes them. Almost everyone I’ve talked to with a mortgage problem either lost their job, saw their hours and salary cut, or found their home deeply underwater through the accident of buying at the wrong time. In almost all of those cases, they were simply less responsible for their situation than the bank trying to foreclose on them with false documents. And every single one of these people are willing to pay to stay in their homes – they’ve spent months or sometimes years going through the nightmare that is the loan modification process, and frequently had it chew them up and spit them out, with the banks gouging them and then forcing them to choose between a balloon payment with tacked-on fees or eviction. Whether they just got overwhelmed by the mass of troubled borrowers, fell subject to constant tweaking by the Treasury Department that disabled their efforts or screwed their customers as a matter of policy, the results were the same.

Read the full article at:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/10/14/lets-not-start-lionizing-the-real-foreclosure-fraud-deadbeats-the-banks/

[lob1]

1. In a way, they're doing the same to social security.

They stole the social security money to use for other things. Rather than repay the social security money, they just say "It's gone, get over it. We need to cut social security." They stole the money, yet they want us to be penalized for their crimes.

Edited to add K & R.

[earth mom]

3. The writing was on the wall when Congress did not Impeach Bush. Most of Congress is guilty

of corruption and they KNEW they would open a hornets nest on themselves if they Impeached Bush.

BUT-if those jerks in charge screw up and mess with Social Security there WILL be hell to pay.

Bank on it. :grr:

[Greyhound]

2. K&R for more of that "change".

[Scruffy1]

4. The banksters and oil companies own us.

Our politicians just give them what they want or they face exposure or massive amounts of dough spent against them and a media out to destroy them. As long as we have a media payed for by advertising we will get the same results.

[Greyhound]

5. As long as we have administrations that refuse to enforce the laws

we will never improve. Carter was the last President to make even minor use of the Sherman Act. Clinton finally killed altogether.

Now they won't even talk about it, and why should they? We're not in any position to oppose them.

[ljm2002]

6. Wow. The article you cite is basically saying...

...that fraud committed by the BANKS does not erase any obligations on the part of borrowers.

One wonders if he thinks that fraud committed by the BORROWERS would erase any of the banks' obligations? (bet I can guess which way he'd fall on that one)

In other words he is arguing that the law isn't for the little people, silly.

It's funny too -- as soon as the little people start insisting on their institutions following the letter of the law, then all of the sudden the letter of the law just isn't that important.

In fact, as we saw a few days ago, what they will try to do now is to change the law.

It never ends.

[truedelphi]

7. WHAT IS ESPECIALLY DISTURBING WHEN ONE EXAMINES THE LIONIZING OF

the banks and the denigrating of the middle incomed, is this:

The average tax payer in the USA now owes $ 13,400 + on account of the fact that Congress, Obama and his economic henchmen have extended some 12 to 14 Trillion bucks to the Banking Class.
That is the amount that will eventually come due to us when the final tallying of all the Bailout Craziness needs to be allocated. (Elliot Spitzer provided this number the other day.)

If we the little people had simply been offered that 13 Trillion, we could have easily paid off our mortgages, created small businesses, and paid off student loans and credit cards.

Instead we face being put out on the street, while the same banks that screwed us over are continually given Bailouts.

[Better Believe It]

8. Borrowers fraud by "the little people" ???? Your term to describe working class people is .....

insulting and condescending.

So those poor hard working souls on Wall Street are being victimized by "little people" who are trying to screw them out of their well deserved billion dollar bonuses and derivative payments.

Shall we all shed a tear for your poor, exploited masses on Wall Street?

Let's hope they break the chains that bind them!

They have been naught.

They shall be all!

Taxes are for little people!



Billionaires for Budget Cuts

[ljm2002]

9. Well I was trying to indicate...

...how I think they would say it: i.e., "The letter of the law was never meant to be used by the little people to defend their own interests, perish the thought!"

So if you think the phrase is condescending, well yes, that's sort of the point.

I consider myself to be one of the little people. I was going to use the phrase "the little guy", but then people get upset because "guy" implies "male" (although it's a word that I use inclusively, but most people still seem to hear "men" when you use the word "guys" so I stuck with the little people).

Maybe I was not being clear. It's heads they win, tails we lose. If we try and use the letter of the law to protect our own interests, then we are shirking personal responsibility. Never mind that we are pointing out their FRAUD, they point right back at us and say "So you want a free house? Is that it?" All the while, they never account for their free estates and free yachts. Because if they made those bundles of money through FRAUD, then they have money they do not deserve and they are freeloading just as surely as all of us with free houses are (and we all know how prevalent that problem is...n't). On the other hand, if any of us little people was caught committing FRAUD, then we could be prosecuted and also have our house and assets seized. And THEY would be seen as the aggrieved party.

Not the most equal of social contracts, that.

[Better Believe It]

10. OK You're clear now. I generally used the term working people or working class.

And I think that's really what most people mean when they use the term "little guy" or even "little people".

But many in the media use those terms because they don't like suggesting we have classes in this society.