the 99% waking up
As I look at the Occupy Wall Street throngs, which amuse and delight me to no end, I can't help but think how inevitable this is and how totally avoidable it was if American society had just had a bit of actual valuing of the things to which it pays tribute with it's mouth. Who is really to blame. Any Rand contributed some by influencing the lust for greed and giving philosophical permission to ignore restraint and common sense. Yet we can't get too carried away blaming anyone group or philosopher. Before we start blaming the other party, the secular humanists, the republicans the democrats the atheists and vegans British petroleum and who have you, we need to think about ourselves. Follow my reasoning now becuase I think I can show that the whole thing could have been avoided if people in American business, especially real estate, were as much into seeking the Christian life as they are talking about it on Sunday.
So the first step in my argument is to show that the housing crisis was the lynch pin that started the dominoes falling. There's an excellent chart that traces the crisis through quotes of the major figures and show the pivotal nature of housing.
It's way to big to post here but if you follow it out it shows how pivotal housing was in the whole problem. That is found on the website of an insurance company (mint life) and summed by the this quote:
Almost overnight, the talking heads went from perpetuating the euphoria of investors to rushing to pronounce the economy dead. Last year, when lenders started dropping like flies as foreclosures rose and margins were called, the problems of Wall Street became more and more apparent, and lending guidelines were tightened to the point that many individuals were stuck in their time-bomb loans, and thus began a vicious cycle. But what led to this? Here is a visual guide to help you understand the events leading up to the bailout.Another quote from a different source that sums up the pivotal nature of the housing problem.
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was one of the first indicators of the ... Domino effect as housing prices declined .... Subprime lending was a major contributor to this increase in home ownership rates and in the overall demand for housing, ...... to be rescued in crises the way banks are, should be regulated like a bank. ...Housing didn't cause the crisis but it helped bring it on and if the housing crsis had not happened the crisis might not have happened.
Many have blamed Ayn Rand. The Ayn Rand people are scrambling to argue that it's actually too much regulation that did it. We need of selfish economic gluttony and less punishment for the criminals who steal houses and have gotten away Scot free. That's about as intelligent as bleeding people with leaches; the patient hemorrhaging well bleed him some more let more bad blood out. Greenspan was a Rand enthusiast and the whole of wall Street did become engrossed in selfish economic gluttony and tried to just run everything with no government and whatever they could get away with they deserved to keep.
Back in the early part of the decade when I used to see 'get rich quick' scam ads featuring real estate as the golden goose I knew at that time we were in for a crisis some day. I would see ads and things talking about how easy breezy it is to "buy houses and flip them" one need never be poor again. I thought to myself "doesn't anyone ever buy houses to live in anymore?" I said then "it's going to go bust." Little did I know how right I was. The greed of America, we exist to make money. We live to get more stuff. It never has to stop, the market will always go up and up. Guess what, the bubble did burst. Who takes the fall? The poor average American, people who just want to live in a nice little house with their memories of helping their father. The bastards who grow richer every day by sucking the blood of such ordinary people don't have to pay because they are the ones the laws are designed to protect, not the struggling homeowner but the brigandage which exists to feed off the homes of Americans.
The predictable results:The Foreclosure crisis is now spread over 2 million homes.
PBS News Hour Extra. Oct 22, 2010
Since the economic crisis began in December 2007, millions of Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure, sending families scrambling to find a place to live -- sometimes moving into relatives' houses, settling in homeless shelters or on the streets.
Confirmation on the number from real estate sourcesForeclosure, which is when a bank takes away a house because the owner cannot pay back a loan, is at the heart of the economic crisis. During the 1990s and up until 2007, banks and lenders encouraged people to buy expensive homes with loans far beyond their earnings. In some cases, lenders tricked homebuyers with payment schedules designed to start out low, but balloon after a few years.
More than 2.5 million Americans are currently at risk of losing their homes. In recent weeks there have been halts to foreclosures due to questions about paperwork and whether lenders and banks followed the rules when processing foreclosure paperwork. In Florida, activists such as Lisa Epstein have been investigating banks' fraudulent mortgage practices, including using ”robo-signers” to sign legal documents necessary to evict vulnerable homeowners.
Based on RealtyTrac data, since December 2007 (the official start of the recession) and through June 2010 there have been a total of 2.36 million U.S. properties repossessed by lenders through foreclosure (REO). In addition there have been 3.48 million default notices and 3.46 million scheduled foreclosure auctions.Thanks to action by States Attorneys general there was a temporary moratorium on the illegal house stealing. but that's back on now. Their house stealing only slacked off for a few weeks. That's just a temporary lull. The temporary stop is due to action by attorneys general. It has been found that mortgage companies were illegally foreclosing, just rushing paperwork through without any actual regard to real documentation of the house. This is nothing more than thieving. They are literally house thieves.
PBS
Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, had stopped foreclosures as it investigated its methods, but plans to restart its foreclosure offices as early as October 25.
Illegal Foreclosures? The State investigates Three Top South Florida Law Firms....
all Business a D&B company
Publication: LexisNexis
Date: Wednesday, August 11 2010
Foreclosure mills cranking out the theft of houses. Not just in Florida. It's all 50 states:Three of Florida's largest foreclosure law firms are under investigation by the state attorney general following allegations they illegally rushed thousands of cases through the court system.
The firms, dubbed "foreclosure mills" because of the large volume they handle, are the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale; Shapiro & Fishman, which has offices in Boca Raton and Tampa; and the Plantation-based firm of David J. Stern. All three handle foreclosures in Palm Beach County.
Tuesday's announcement of the investigation by the Economic Crimes Division of the attorney general's office says "thousands of final judgments of foreclosure against Florida homeowners may have been the result of the allegedly improper actions of the law firms."
Several reports have surfaced in recent months of judges throwing out foreclosure cases in which key documents, such as assignments of mortgages and notes, appear to be doctored, backdated or filed by groups with no standing to foreclose on a property.
Also, attorneys defending homeowners against foreclosure have complained the amount owed a lender on a defaulted loan sometimes cannot be substantiated.
The convoluted boom-time financial practice of repeatedly buying, selling and bundling mortgages exacerbates the situation, making it difficult sometimes to determine who is truly owed the balance of a home loan.
"On numerous occasions, allegedly fabricated documents have been presented to the courts in foreclosure actions to obtain final judgments against homeowners," the statement from Attorney General Bill McCollum says.
Action Alert
Carl C. Asbury Save My Home Lawgroup
Action Alert – Foreclosure Fraud – Tell your Attorney General “Don’t Sit Down with the Banks! Stand up Against Fraud!”
A 50-state task force investigating U.S. foreclosure practices may meet with lenders as early as this week, less than a month after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. suspended some home seizures.
“We’ve had several conference calls with major lenders,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in an interview, declining to specify which ones. “The banks want to sit down with the attorneys general. These meetings are being set up,” said Suthers, whose office is a member of the executive committee of the task force.
All 50 states on Oct. 13 announced a coordinated inquiry into whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. The probe came after JPMorgan and Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC mortgage unit said they would stop repossessions in 23 states where courts supervise home seizures and Bank of America froze foreclosures nationwide.
Not only have the mortgage companies been found to be actual thieves, as I thought way back when I was dealing with them, but even the people claim to have you, the knights in shining armor who are going to come to your rescue are merely vultures circling waiting end. The state of Indiana has taken actionIndiana Real estate Rama
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller urges Hoosiers to avoid foreclosure rescue scams
VINCENNES, IN - October 21, 2010 - (RealEstateRama) — Many homeowners facing foreclosure who are frustrated with their loan servicers turn to for-profit foreclosure consultants whose advertisements often promise any home can be saved from foreclosure and their services are 100% guaranteed. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller today announced the filing of 10 lawsuits against companies making such claims calling them false and illegal, including one complaint which was filed today in Knox County against Integrated Financial Solutions, headquartered in New Jersey. All of that going on like business as usual. These are not gangsters or drug dealers in crack housing stealing homes, these are ordinary Americans, by all demographics 80% Christians, chruch goers 50% nice people doing business as usual. It would American of them not to do it.
So even the 'good guys' are the bad guys. The only good guys in it are the victims who lose their houses. No one is there to help them and even the laws are against them. The mortgage company, which is just a better organized gang of thieves, those are the one's the laws protect. The media is complicit too. look at the huge discrepancy when they talk about causes. Everyone is afraid to call it like it is. PBS attributes the crisis to lowering prices.These so-called ‘foreclosure consultants’ are taking advantage of Hoosiers who are facing desperate financial hardships and scamming them out of thousands of dollars. They are operating illegally and this will not be tolerated in Indiana,” Zoeller said. “Working to protect Hoosier consumers includes bringing actions against those who violate our state laws and also warning people to protect themselves, their family and their neighbors - don’t let a loved one fall victim to these scams, no matter how convinced they may be of their legitimacy.”
The lawsuits were filed in nine different Indiana counties by Zoeller and his team of deputy attorneys general serving in the Homeowner Protection Unit. The coordinated filing was done in an effort to raise awareness of the pitfalls of hiring for-profit foreclosure rescue companies.
PBS source above
Part of the financial crisis, however, is that the value of homes has dropped sharply. Therefore, many homeowners who pay their mortgage on time still owe more than their home is worth. For example, if you bought a house for $300,000 in 2007, your house might be worth $150,000 today. Owing more than the house is worth is called being "under water."
Now all of that is pivotal to the rest of the crisis. Without the housing crisis the banks and the rest of it probalby would either not happened or been forestalled for some time. The same kind of economic gluttony and selfish lack of restraint is also at work in all other areas, especially the banking industry. Remember Enron?
Before we resort to the kind of hysterics the insurance companies engininered the summer of o9 with the death panels and fights at town meetings and tear the country apart over abstrous economic theorie most of us don't understand anyway, and ideologies most of us are not well read in, let's go back to the basics. If people had unselfish, people had not followed an ethic that greed is good and unrestrained greed is even better, a sharp cookie deserves to keep whatever he can get his hands on, followed the rules they way they were meant to be would this hapepned? We would have had no core housing crisis to set off the banking crisis and no excuse/reason/need for the bail outs. Without chaning any laws at all we could have avoided the whole thing if people had used some guts and some ethics and not accepted predatory lending.
I'm not saying we can just increase our chruch going and we don't need economic reform. Of cousre we do, it's all very complex so we need more education to understand the reforms so we know who to vote for. We need structural change in the system and I am still a Socialist (within democratic limits--including small businesses). Without messin with any of that the whole thin probalby would not have happened if people lived up the Gospel they claim to believe. How many of those predatory lenders were going to chruch on Sunday and singing about Jesus and praying to God and being told "God wants you to make money, name it claim it?" If those people had followed their consciences and if their consciences had been guided by the Holy Spirit and the conviction of the Lord the whole thing would have no happened.
the first thing we have to do is start with our own hearts. We need to ask ourselves hard questions about "do I really believe in God or believe in money wearing the Mask of God?" Then we need to follow Jesus and stick to what he says. Put that firs ahead of the money making bit.
The lesson is it matters what we do. I matters that we do the right thing or that we don't do it.
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