You wouldn't give a ten year old a chainsaw or a loaded gun to play with even if they said that they could handle it. Because you're the responsible adult here you're supposed to know better. You don't have to give the kid the chainsaw or a gun just because they ask for it. Consumers aren't children but a banker or a mortgage broker is better trained in the field than the public and should know better than to make bad loans. These banks didn't have to make these loans they did so because they wanted to, and because the profited from them. Then when
it all goes wrong the bankers and pundits say, "that kid swore to me he
was a lumberjack!"
This crisis was created solely by greedy, irresponsible and reckless bankers and to hold anyone else culpable is nothing but a God damned lie!
I read a story yesterday about a family that had been evicted from their home who broke the locks and moved back in even though the house had already been resold by the bank.
you speak with someone who has no record of ever receiving the documents that you sent them. They say compassionately that the bank wants to try and work with you and after an hour or so they assure everything will be just dandy!
Then later the same night, a process server brings you a legal package from the bank. This one is full of threatening legal tones and talks about the banks "rights!" Your rights? Well, it doesn't say much about your rights, if you want to know about you're rights you better call your attorney! You don't have an attorney? You're unemployed and struggling to make your house
payments and you don't have an attorney representing you? You're
screwed!
The banks strategy is to unnerve you, to give you hope and then to snatch it away. To scare you and disorient you, to play good cop, bad cop and to batter you like a cat with a mouse. To wear you down until finally you throw up your hands and say, "you know what? F*ck this, we're out of here!" Only after you are out of the house do you slowly begin to understand that that's what they wanted all along was to get you out of the house as quickly and as quietly as possible.
Ask yourself, why would the bank want to work with you? How is that possibly in their best interest? They are trying to make the best of a bad situation and if they modify your loan they'll lose potential revenue and the federal government will only give them $1,500 for their
trouble. What's $1.500 in the grand scheme of things, one, two or three payments? But if they throw you out, then, they can deduct that loan amount from their tax bill as a loss and they can take the deed to the troubled asset resources program and get new money in exchange for the deed to your house.
Money that the bank can use the very next day to invest in Chinese Real Estate or to invest on Wall Street. Then when the FDIC has accumulated enough houses in your area they will hold
an auction and the bank can buy your house back for forty cents on the dollar, with zero percent interest and with no down payment and with a clean title. Then if the bank still can't sell your house after two years the FDIC will give the bank a rebate on part of the purchase
price. This is known as the condom and casket strategy, making money coming and going.
Is some light beginning to shine in? Are you beginning to understand why the banks want to push families out of homes they can't sell, just as fast as they can? Of course the banks
have to modify some loans just to make it look like they are really trying. But it's not their fault if they don't get your paper work or you don't have an attorney or the phone company turns off your phone for non-payment.
I was motivated to write this story because as I read about the family moving back into their foreclosed home the comments surprised and shocked me, especially coming from a progressive
web site
"The previous owners could have done this at several points in this process, but they didn't. They waited until the house was all nice and ready for the new owners, and then they moved back in. Kind of fishy I think. I'm on the side of the totally innocent new owners,"
"Yeah, you got a point. Waiting until the house was re-sold before pulling this sh*t was extremely unfair to the new buyers."
"However, if the head of a family foolishly or intentionally signs a loan contract to make payments that he or she cannot pay, and takes, and spends the loan money, and then, for whatever reason, they cannot make the payments, that person is in default and the property assigned as collateral does rightfully belong to the bank that loaned them the money."
If you've never been through the sausage factory then you just don't know anything about how they make sausage do you?
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