The Foreclosure Fraud Iceberg
U.S. Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan is playing Julie the Cruise Director on the Titanic, telling everyone ‘Don’t worry, there’s no icebergs in these waters. Really, if you see any floating ice in front of us, it’s not the visible tenth of a catastrophe to come.’ Unfortunately ice is visible, it is an iceberg, and the leading edge of the submerged ice is already ripping into our democracy and our economy, leaving deep damage.
The happy talk to distract attention from the iceberg comes from two camps and has two synergistic messages.
Secretary Donovan is trying convince the American public that the what the Obama administration is doing is all that can be done to address our housing and foreclosure crisis. That’s farcically false. Other people are pushing the related message that fraud and forgery by foreclosing bankers isn’t important; the only thing that matters is whether homeowners are in default. Both groups want you to believe that the foreclosure fraud “settlement” is a good and just. Except the “settlement” isn’t. The “settlement” is just the latest in a long line of decisions not to enforce the law and further reinforces the idea that gold-collar criminals are above the law. (I put “settlement” in quotes because we’re now double digit days past the February 9 announcement, and still, there’s no deal submitted to a court for approval. And that means there’s no deal.)
So let’s take a good look at the foreclosure fraud iceberg.
Be sure to check out the rest here…
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They are stalling for time so that they can get certain bills and amendments to other bills pass that would be in their favour…they are working on other strategies as we speak. Allow no distractions from the iceberg…
It will be interesting to see what the banksters do with all of the shadow inventory. I suspect they’ll slowly filter them through the system and hope sales pick up.
I’m sitting with “guns” drawn on ours – as the file is wrought with origination fraud. I’m hoping there are millions of other homeowners in pre-foreclosure who are gathering info via Qualified Written Requests and research. I’m wondering who will want to pull the “trigger” first – them or us.
With all of the shadow inventory – which will surely continue to rise – at some point the “pain level” has to hit a maximum. Add to that – all of the people heading into foreclosure due to the current state of our economy.
It may take a half a century – if we begin fixing the recordation problems right now – to finally repair all of the potential, underlying cloudy title problems that will occur because of the banks’ unwillingness to play by the rules. I wonder if title insurance will be available property purchases in the future; or, how much it will cost. Once again, it will be the consumer who will have to pay.
I hate to say it, but, the surest way to prevent the nightmare that is to come, is to grant free and clear title to everyone who has a securitized mortgage loan! But, that won’t happen.