Washington Policy Makers Resist Calls for a Big Fix in Foreclosure Crisis
Washington policy makers, who moved swiftly to calm markets during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, have resisted calls for similarly broad steps in response to concern that banks may have acted illegally to seize homes.
President Barack Obama and the federal agencies that share responsibility for housing finance are opposing calls for a nationwide foreclosure freeze, fearing further damage to the housing market. Even as bank stocks tumbled yesterday on concern that the mishandled loans will increase costs for lenders, the White House and federal regulators avoided any grand gestures designed to reassure investors.
Obama this week endorsed a coordinated investigation by attorneys general from all 50 states into whether lenders used false documents to justify foreclosures. Mounting a response on the federal level is complicated by the fact that responsibility for overseeing housing finance and foreclosure law is fragmented among U.S., state and local agencies, with no single regulator shaping policy.
"We can see all too painfully the results from that gap," saidClifford V. Rossi, executive-in-residence at the Center for Financial Policy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
U.S. regulators say they are aggressively investigating whether employees of lenders including Ally Financial Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have falsified documents used in foreclosure proceedings.
Nice that they are mouthing these platitudes while the situation on the ground is that as a homeowner you would have to be ready to sue the bank to stop all foreclosure actions in order to make the bank prove they really have the documents which represent your debt and that they legally transferred the original note thru every intermediary. So all these people who can't afford their payments ... they need have 'their lawyers' on retainer? Who is kidding who?
This govt which got elected as if they existed to protect what they clearly believe is 'their' stupid electorate from rapacious profit and evil property, is not acting, will not act and cannot act in the face of what may well be a tacit conspiracy of wink and nod negligence and in terms of moneys, the largest in human history, because the bitter reality is that very large business, very large banks, very large govt all exist together in the same space, and WE DO NOT.
This is an ENTIRELY separate issue from whether these mortgages should have been let or not. In fact, an easy construct could be made that by allowing mortgages which could not be paid en masse, grouping them into bonds, euchring the system into re-rating these bonds highly, knowingly illegally transferring the debt notes, and believing all the while that the govt would be compelled to step in, in the right place, at the right emergency moment, and then be compelled to allow you proceed to illegally repossess the properties the unethically let, and illegally transferred debts represented to RE-SELL THEM at greatly reduced risk to well qualified buyers is the greatest scam of all time. Perhaps in the UNIVERSE.
TARP saved the bond market values the mortgages were based on since this market existed only as vaporous promises. Now the banks want the original assets as well. Assets they may not hold debt on legally.
SCREW THEM.
GET THE TAR HOT, PEOPLE.
4 comments:
This is a very interesting case. Two issues need to be balanced, one of which could lead to our economic collapse, and the other of which could lead to our collapse into lawlessness.
The first is the moral issue of the individual's responsibility to pay off his debts. If individuals do not pay off debts they owe, our country will collapse economically.
However, the second issue, the legal issue, is even bigger (and when is the legal bigger than the moral?) If our government does not enforce the law when it comes to property, we will no longer have a free nation.
If the banks have chosen not to follow the legal procedures required to establish and maintain ownership of property, then IT IS THEIR FAULT that they would lose control of that property.
An individual would be required to follow through on the legal procedures to maintain his control of his property; he would have to fill out the necessary paperwork, and pay his mortgage and his taxes, or he would surely lose his property. Likewise, the banks must be held to the same standard, or we will collapse into lawlessness.
Thinking this through further, though, it is clear that if the banks don't own the property, NEITHER DO THE INDIVIDUALS, because the ownership agreement has not been followed through by the establishment of a deed.
So, here's a question to ponder, and in the question lies a very heavy warning:
If neither the banks nor the individuals own the property, then who does own the property?
Do we follow the thread back to the last owner established by a deed?
Or, is the property ceded to the public good, to then be redistributed,
and, if so, by whom?
Or, is the property simply seized by the government outright, to be redistributed as the government sees fit.
Given the nature of our current administration and Congressional representatives, what do you think the solution would be?
He who is living in the house, WINS OR the previous owner.
Banks lose.
When you sell a house you have a record.
I sold for $xxx,xxx to Joe Blow, and Bank of Boston gave me a check.
If you bought it, you have the records of the other side. Who had the original mortgage.
But suppose you don't want to produce it. You are up to date in payments and you find out the YOUR BANK has been fucking people illegally in this.
YOU PAY the taxes, not the bank.
Don't you fight with all you have?
Every case will take years.
It could be unimaginable.
If the only banks with legal real estate assets and claims are the original loan makers ... what kind of write downs are we looking at, at the big investment banks?
This SHOULD HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO THE ADMIN RIGHT AFTER TARP AND THE ELECTION.
It's NERO.
They did health care and talked cap and trade while this was around, and there were fewer and fewer jobs?
Epa,
I see that in my comment above I was confusing note and deed.
However, the questions remain the same.
Yes, you're right that rationally the person living in the house would retain ownership, but how are the banks going to feel about that, and how is law enforcement going to feel about it when the banks call in the marshalls, and how are the marshalls going to feel about it when people begin exercising their second amendment rights, huh?
That's why I do not understand WTF this admin was thinking about with this hanging around.
" how are the banks going to feel about that" they will have no RIGHT to feel anything, legally, if they do not have the physical paper which short circuits the process right there. It has to because in FL they caught the banks trying to foreclose on a guy who WAS PAID UP! But the bank had no paper.
CHAOS
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