Another big bank, JP Morgan Chase, which has recently been targeted with protests by NACA members was not taking part. Instead, they were cynically competing with NACA by running their own home ownership event at a nearby hotel to demonstrate how responsible they are. They sent a truck with a big sign promoting their offering to drive around the Congress Center and taunt NACA which found it amusing since their event was miniscule in comparison.
NACA's issue is getting some national attention too, from of all quarters, The FBI, which is reportedly planning a national crackdown on mortgage fraud this week. The Financial Times reported, "Hundreds of people are expected to be arrested in the sweep, which will start as early as next week, The FT said, citing two people with knowledge of the operation. An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment to the newspaper.
Charges are expected to be leveled over offenses ranging from pushing borrowers to lie about their income on mortgage applications to providing homeowners with false information about foreclosure rescue programs, the newspaper said."
The British newspaper is ahead of the US press in stating that "it was mortgage fraud that led to the expansion of the housing bubble and eventually accounted for its catastrophic burst, as loans were handed out to borrowers with unsubstantiated incomes and low credit ratings."
These home owners waiting patiently for help from a not for profit group, not their own government. The basement of the Georgia conference center is packed with victims of the financial crisis while the people who caused it operate freely.
They are the mortgage industry backed by their friends in the big banks who lent the money, and the Wall Street firms that securitized and resold the mortgages at inflated values. Also to blame are the insurance firms that protected the lenders against defaults in an enterprise they knew was fraudulent.
Unfortunately the FBI is not going after this triad but only the lowest level violators. There should be a RICO prosecution of the big guns in this avaricious cartel, not just the small fry and street soldiers. If there ever was a organized criminal enterprise this is it.
At least there is this force fighting for justice. Arguably it is bigger than the Tea Party and its populism is just as angry even as its been overlooked on the left. Can this anger be organized politically? There are those in NACA who are thinking about mobilizing their many members to press politicians to act and play a more political role.
If they go in that direction they will be confronting the corportate goliaths who are very angry them selves about all this anger and quite condescending. Listen to GE's CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt: "People need to tone down the rhetoric around financial services and stop the populism and be adults."
Excuse me, Mr. GE: The people here are adults with every right to be pissed off.
This is part of the story I tell in my film PLUNDER The Crime of Our Time (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.) Unfortunately, it's not just documenting a distant past but a still ongoing tragedy. All you have to do is look in the faces and listen to the stories of the homeowners still experiencing heartless foreclosures and you realize that the Administration, judicial, corporate and media response has been pitiful.
Kudos to NACA for leading the fight and offering practical services, and to those media outlets who are finally waking up and telling the story even though most, including CNN, don't yet see it as a crime story. Perhaps if there were A-List celebrities there, it might have been carried as a telethon.
News Dissector Danny Schechter directed the DVD, Plunder The Crime of Our Time and wrote a companion book (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
