“What may be good news for delinquent credit card holders may also be really bad news for banks.”
“It turns out the robo-signing of foreclosure affidavits is just the tip of the iceberg . . . “
“The same banks could even be potentially charged by the Justice Department under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Statutes for selling dubiously documented accounts to debt collection companies.” http://moneymorning.com/2012/02/03/robo-signing-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-for-the-banks/Home foreclosures continue to undermine the entire economy, causing an incalculable amount of residual damage including the costs to lenders processing them. The repossession of homes sets in motion a series of events that are all expensive and wasteful. The high cost of unemployment has been discussed previously, but the plague of foreclosures is not only destroying equity, it is also undermining the recovery.
What happens to all those people that lose their homes? Do they all move in with their in-laws and relatives? Do they sleep in their vehicles? One of the primary topics of any occupy-related discussion has been illegal foreclosures, the dispossession of those that were unfortunate to become victims to predatory lenders which found a way to package their losses and hand them to the taxpayers.
When one considers that it was also the taxpayers that funded bailouts of those same institutions at great and ongoing cost, it seems that they should also have a voice in the discussion about foreclosures. After all, millions of people rendered homeless by the banksters are also obligated to pay off the debt they incurred when they were bailed out. The national debt continues to undermine social security and other programs intended for those living in poverty here in the richest country on earth.
There is no better example of the damage caused by malfeasance in the banking sector than the consummately destructive act of taking away someone's home. I'm guessing it's also one of the primary contributors to homelessness. Why is this allowed to continue?
Here are some other views specific to the occupy phenomenon with some advice on how to proceed:
Truthout.org: Occupyourhomes.org
“Occupy Our Homes has three particularly good instincts.”
http://www.truth-out.org/how-occupy-our-homes-can-win/1328034041
Huff Post: focus on evictions
"'Fighting evictions is a much more collectivizable fight than loan modifications,' Meacham said. 'It's hard to take five people doing loan modifications and bring them together in one fight because their situations are so different. There are all these different types of horror stories with loan modification. Instead of making demands on the banks to tweak the process, we decided that the key thing was principal reduction. That's the one thing the banks were never going to give, under any circumstances, unless you force them. We saw we could use the leverage gained during the eviction fights to force them to do that.'"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-b-dean/how-occupy-our-homes-can-_b_1252186.html
'Time to Occupy'
“The offspring of the Occupy Wall Street movement are forging solidarity ties with neighborhood groups fighting for justice. Most prominent among these collaborations are with the Occupy Homes initiatives coming out of existing neighborhood activities.”
Sign the petition to help disabled foreclosure victim facing eviction by Wells Fargo:
http://www.change.org/petitions/wells-fargo-bank-reinstate-borrower?share_id=iytujdcEoT&
Foreclosure Action: Applause for Harris
The foreclosure action on Friday to show support for Kamala Harris was streamed by OccupyFreedomLA. Carlos Marroquin delivered the following letter to Ms. Harris after the speakers took their turn:
February 3, 2012
Attorney General Kamala Harris
Office of the Attorney General
1300 I Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Attorney General Harris,
We appreciate and applaud the steps you have taken to ensure that justice is served to address system-wide mortgage, foreclosure and securities fraud in the State of California by implementing the Mortgage Fraud Strike Force, and by backing away from the 50-state foreclosure settlement deal currently being pushed by the banks and the Obama administration.
We urge you in the strongest of terms to remain steadfast in your refusal to accept this deal. Instead, we urge you to implement an immediate moratorium on foreclosures so you can complete your own investigation and prosecutions of fraud and securities fraud. If the banks do not comply with this moratorium, we urge you to issue injunctions.
We urge you to sue the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) for deceptive practices (as a suit brought by Attorney General Beau Biden in Delaware has done), and bar MERS from:
1) initiating any foreclosure actions in the company's name, or via MERS in the name of a trust,
2) recording, assigning or taking any other actions on CA mortgages until the company has been audited and corrected,
and insist that MERS:
3) correct the chain of title on CA mortgages recorded in county offices,
4) pay a $10,000 civil penalty for each consumer violation here
We urge you to follow in Nevada's footsteps and support requiring banks, servicers and trustees to provide an affidavit proving a clear chain of title or face felony charges. Should the California Assembly and Senate enact a similar law, it would strengthen your enforcement authority over foreclosure fraud. The NV law has caused foreclosures to drop 88% since it went into effect in October.
We applaud your stand against the national settlement deal being brokered by the banks that makes a mockery of justice and fails to serve the communities of honest Californians. We agree that the deal is not good enough for California. It fails to serve the local governments that have watched 400 years of property law be destroyed. It fails to serve those who have been defrauded of their homes and lifesavings.
Lenders used fraud as a business model to create a system that guaranteed record profits and bonuses, while leaving a scorched earth of foreclosures and underwater mortgages.
Lenders put the 'lie' in liars loans, not the borrower, explains William K. Black, professor and former regulator who investigated the Savings & Loan crisis.
Credit rating agencies worked in collusion with the big banks to pass off toxic assets as highest-grade investments.
Fund managers gambled with the capital of mortgages and pension funds, putting those funds at undue risk.
The economic catastrophe that has resulted from these abuses has plunged the people of America into a plight unparalleled since the Great Depression.
In 2011, California was home to 38 of the top 100 worst hit zip codes — dominating the list of the top 100 zip codes hit hardest by foreclosures
Before any foreclosures resume, we need to see justice is served for bank-driven fraud and securities fraud. Specifically:
1) Completion of full investigation and prosecutions of lenders / banks / insurance providers / ratings agencies for mortgage, foreclosure and securities fraud throughout the system, including MERS and the companies it works with.
2) No "get out of jail free" settlement.
3) Correction of the property records.
4) Civil and criminal penalties commensurate with the vast scale of the crimes.
The financial industry through its dominance of the political and economic life of the nation executed a massive theft of private and public money. This historic crime of grand larceny and fraud must not be swept under the rug of history. It must be addressed, corrected and prevented from recurring.
Sincerely,
Occupy Activists
Cyber drama:
Another big stir allegedly the result of Anonymous hacktivists targeting FBI communications. Probably should have expected them to do something like this:
“The email, entitled 'Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call', was sent to over 40 law enforcement officers in the USA, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, France and Sweden, although only a small number of people are on the conference call.”
“The 16 minute conversation, which has been posted to a number of sites including YouTube, discusses ongoing investigations into hackers associated with Anonymous, AntiSec and LulzSec.”
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/03/anonymous-fbi-pceu-hacking-conference-call/
This is the Youtube video
This pastebin post accompanied the video:
UPDATE 7:30: Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of winter.
Grumpy
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