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Do you know people still living in their homes after defaulting on their mortgage payments? I do, and I wonder what that must be like. Some have been doing this for two years or more, so why doesn’t the bank evict them and auction the house?Because it’s afraid to. Because then the bank would have to sell the house for whatever it would bring on today’s real estate market - and that would be much less than what the bank pretends it’s worth. Because it’s likely the bank has several such properties - along with other banks - and all those houses are valued at what they were worth five years ago and would sell today only at far less than the amount owed on them. They’re counted as
assets on the bank’s books at no-longer-realistic prices. If banks dumped all that on the market, it would further depress real estate prices and put more mortgages underwater.How long can this go on? Not forever. The banks keep putting it off hoping the economy will turn around and real estate prices will bounce back. Soon-to-be-former mortgagees can’t live rent-free indefinitely and they know that sooner or later they’ll be evicted - but they ride it as long as they can. They keep heating the place, shoveling the snow and mowing the lawn. The bank allows this to prevent values from sinking even further should the occupants move out and nobody took care of anything.
Consider the uncertainty these circumstances generate. What if the roof leaks? The occupant thinks: “I should fix the roof, but this isn’t my house anymore. I’m a squatter here.” Will he tell the bank or just put a bucket under the leak? Bank and occupant let it ride. They wait to see what happens.
That uncertainty is very similar to what most Americans feel about our country. We know we’ve dug ourselves into a deep, deep hole we may never climb out of, but we’re letting it ride to see what happens. Serious investors won’t make moves until they see what happens in November’s election while the “Hope and Change” guy presides over a country increasingly hoping for change in who occupies the White House.
I began writing this column on Sunday. On Monday, the Daily Caller published a story titled: “Obama: Subprime Pioneer,” and subtitled: “With landmark lawsuit, Barack Obama pushed banks to give subprime loans to Chicago’s African Americans.” It details the crucial role now-President Barack Obama played to accelerate the subprime mortgage crisis while a “community organizer” in Chicago. He was lead attorney in a lawsuit against Citibank on behalf of 186 black clients. Obama claimed Citibank was refusing to lend to his clients because they were black, and not because they were bad credit risks. He won and got his fee. His 186 clients got cash settlements and got their loans too.What has happened since? According to the Daily Caller: “by July 2012, Obama’s 186 clients had
received at least 188 bankruptcy and foreclosure notices.” Only nineteen continue to own homes.That is simply staggering. By his actions in 1994, our community-organizer-in-chief helped engineer the sub-prime disaster and resultant collapse in real estate prices at the root of America’s economic debacle he’s been blaming on Bush for four years now.
Barack Obama used the government court system to force banks to lend to people who should never have gotten loans because they were unqualified to pay them back. Then government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought those shaky loans and guaranteed them. Unscrupulous Wall Street investment banks rolled those government-backed sub-prime mortgages into other financial products to be bought and sold willy-nilly and few of them understood who would be ultimately responsible when the bad mortgages defaulted. It ended up being the taxpayers of course. We bailed out almost all of them and now we’re left with a government-created “Great Recession” as it’s being called now.
How did this story of the our community-organizer-in-chief’s involvement go unreported so long? Well, we should know the answer to that question. The Mainstream Media gave him a pass. Candidate Obama wasn’t vetted - not publicly anyway. They’re not vetting now-President Obama either even though he’s blaming banks for doing exactly what he sued them for not doing! His administration claims the banks wrote “predatory loans.”
Our president claims he “inherited” the massive problem he actually helped create. He would use government to get us out of what he used government to get us into. He's knowingly guaranteeing mortgage loans on homes for more than they're worth! It takes a lot of brass, but that’s what he’s doing. Will he get away with it? We’ll see in November.
The newest Democratic National Convention video claims “Government is the only thing we all belong to.” That’s what is fundamentally wrong with the Democrat Party. We don’t belong to government. Government belongs to us.
15 comments:
You nailed it, Tom, and it's horrifying to think so many people voted for him, cover(ed) for him and think big government is the way to go. Ants all!
Regan, Clinton, deregulation ? I don't know who or what really started it all and you will get a different answer from whomever you ask. Let's stop the blame game and get it fixed.
Tom, I've known that story for years and have tried to get people to believe it, but with absolutely NO MEDIA COVERAGE on it, people just wouldn't believe it. Kudos to the Daily Caller for finally printing it. Is that a local paper over there? I'd love to read the whole article.
Sorry, I just reread your post and noticed the link. I'd nefer heard of that paper before.I might pass this along and a hat tip to you for it. Thanks
Jeez Winston, you blame the Fed for all the problems PERIOD, and then go on listing who else is at fault. You can't have it both ways. Seems maybe you really don't know either.
Anonymous, really? The fed is illegal and unconstitutional. And is the reason for our financial fiasco. It is backed by the banskter cartel ( read creature from Jekyll island) and major banking families. They control essentially everything. Including your president and congress and the major news outlets. Connect the dots genius.
inform yourself. Stop playing blame games. Stop believing in a system that only allows two options. Why do you think men like Alexander Hamilton argued against political factions?
Nevermind Winston, your comments are all assessing blame and your scope is pretty narrow. Have a nice day....
Uh, yeah, assessing blame where it is needed. Narrow scope? Please explain.
Have you read the creature from Jekyll island? If not, inform yourself.
My point here, always has been, is to shine a light on the real problems, the big lies. Things like the fed. Which is uncomstitutional and should be shut down. Do you realize how the fed affects us all? we pay interest on money loaned to us froma private bank!! Hello!!
The two,party systems a distractions and a joke. I am here to expose it. You don't like it? Sorry, that's reality.
Two,parties controlled by the same people is NOT a freedom loving democracy. Sorry that most of you are complacent and uninformed, but rather than listen to the mainstream media, who is owned by the same interests who control the left and right, do your own research.
From truthdig.com columnist and author Chris hedges
"...Our political leaders, Democrat and Republican, are complicit in our demise. Our political system, like that in the declining days of ancient Rome, is one of legalized bribery. Politicians, including Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, serve the demented ends of corporations that will, until the final flicker of life, attempt to profit from our death spiral. Civil disobedience, including the recent decision by Greenpeace activists to chain themselves to a Gazprom supply vessel and obstruct a Russian oil rig, is the only meaningful form of resistance. Voting is useless. But while I support these heroic acts of resistance, I increasingly fear they may have little effect. This does not mean we should not resist. Resistance is a moral imperative. We cannot use the word “hope” if we do not fight back. But the corporations will employ deadly force to protect their drive to extract the last bit of profit from life. We can expect only mounting hostility from the corporate state. Its internal and external security apparatus, as the heedless exploitation and its fatal consequences become more apparent, will seek to silence and crush all dissidents. Corporations care nothing for democracy, the rule of law, human rights or the sanctity of life. They are determined to be the last predator standing. And then they too will be snuffed out. Unrestrained hubris always leads to self-immolation..."
The lawsuit seems to have been about discrimination: applying a different, higher, standard to black people than to others. The lawsuit doesn't seem to have been about banks offering subprime mortgages but about treating different types of people equally.
If govt is the problem why do you keep voting? Makes no sense.
Remember Thoreau, civil disobedience?
What's the alternative? Guns?
I prefer debate and the constitutional process.
Guns? Maybe? As I said civil disobedience is the option. Obviously voting doesnt change anything. You say the constitutional process but that simply can't and won't work anymore. This is a corporate fascist state. Period. If they only give you two options and they own both options, well..........
If you are so concerned with the constitution then how do you feel about the patriot act, ndaa, the fact that there is no due process left and our rights are diminishing? Or the uncostitutional fed where our "tax" money goes. Actually, from what ive read you seem to dislike the constitution. According to the federalist papers many founding fathers warned against political parties for exactly this reason.
And debate? Seriously? The corporately owned candidates on corporately owned tv in a "debate" moderated by a corporate stooge tossing softballs. A debate? Hardly. Absurd theatre, yes.
It's civil disobedience and revolt. That's what we have left. As has been said before on this blog, the definition of insanity is doing something again and again and expecting different results each time. So yeah, keep voting, that really enacts change. Didn't figure you for a hope and change kinda guy.
Hey anonymous, reading Jekyll island yet? Or grazing in the pasture with the rest of the sheep?
Former OMB boss David Stockman told CNBC that Romney’s vision of capitalism is not possible if the Federal Reserve continues to run the economy. Stockman said the only candidate that had it right was Ron Paul.
“He was the only one that had it right about the Fed,” Stockman said. “The Fed is the heart of the problem. We have destroyed the capital markets, the money markets. Interest rates mean nothing. Everything is trading off the Fed. Wall Street isn’t even home. It’s a bunch of computers trading word clouds emitted by this central bank or that.”
Stockman said that with the insane interest rate policies of the Fed, the crushing debt of entitlements and the neocon-driven war machine with a parasitical military-industrial complex in tow will continue to roll on unless something gives.
Facing the music will never happen “if you can keep borrowing free money forever because the Fed and these lunatics who are running it – and I use that word advisedly – are basically telling the whole world untruths about the cost of money, about the cost of risk, about how you allocate capital.”
The Federal Reserve, of course, is not merely a gaggle of lunatics. It is a façade for a cartel of international banksters who know exactly what they are doing – destroying the greatest engine of wealth and prosperity the world has ever known.
prisonplanet.com
Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
Sept 11, 2012
The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors.
In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.
You only have to know two things.
One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.
It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation......
Cont'd at prisonplanet.com
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