In the wake of the rather marvelous diary concerning big banks' incentives to foreclose from a couple of days back, I thought this was a little appropriate:
Guy Bulldozes Own Foreclosed Home
(Sorry, it's CNN - you'll have to put up with a commercial to watch the video.)
Wasteful? Yes. Ultimately pointless? Probably. But nonetheless, it got me thinking.
The short version of the story is this: A guy's businesses get tax liens slapped on them by the IRS - but not his house, on which he has never missed a payment. Meanwhile, his bank decides the house is "cross collateral" and forecloses. Guy's response is to rent a bulldozer and level the place, transforming a $330,000 house into a pile of rubble.
Now, I don't know the legalities or the particulars, and I would guess that the homeowner just bought himself a passel of further financial and legal trouble. I rather suspect, though, that things were already bad enough that piling on a bit more really wouldn't hurt that much. Meanwhile, denying his bank the pleasure of yanking his home away from him accomplished a couple of worthwhile things that I can see:
- He got to retain some measure of authority over his own life, despite the efforts of the financial gargantua;
- He denied the motherfuckers at the bank whatever they would've gotten at the resale - ain't NOBODY paying for that house now. Fixer-upper? You betcha.
I for one applaud. Most vociferously.
In a nation where literally tens of millions of people are being forced from their homes thanks to the depraved actions of the banker scum, any attempt to throw sand in the gears of the control apparatus is a sign of hope. I'm not imaginative enough to envision just what the tens of millions of homeowner-victims of the banker parasites could do, collectively or individually, to fight back...but I can fervently wish that they do so, with whatever tools at their disposal. And I can dream that somehow, some day, the collective action of the economically oppressed brings the shitsucking pigs of the financier class to their knees, and reduces the likes of Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America to rubble.
EDITED TO ADD: It is pointed out in the comments that the lender in this case was "a small community bank" and not one of the behemoths. Point taken, but nonetheless this "community" bank elected to pursue a foreclosure arguing that the house was "cross collateral," despite not being attached by the IRS. In other words, they did it because they could, not because they had to. To my thinking, that makes them every bit as foul as the big banks.