I want to do is to point you to a Reuters story from TODAY about homeowners caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare when
Old Mortgages Rise From the Dead, Haunt Homeowners
In that story you will see cases of homeowners with mortgages from major banks, who have paid off their original mortgages through a refinance or a sale only to have the banks resurrect the paid off mortgage years later. You will read how these homeowners are harassed, and even pushed into foreclosure when they didn't owe anyone a dime Read how cases like this are predicted to increase. Read how industry insiders said some of this was done knowing that they were pursuing and ruining the lives of the wrong people. Read how no one can explain where the money went.
Try to keep your lunch down after reading this story. Read the absolutely pathetic excuses of the spokespeople for the banks involved.
Now this is what I have to say. This is disgusting. It is wrong. It is wrong on levels that are equivalent to what one finds in Les Miserables or any other exemplar of injustice you care to cite. It can happen to you or me or anyone. It can happen to any of those people who have been so sanctimonious about only buying houses they could afford or never having missed a payment and how they aren't like the "deadbeats" that the foreclosure crisis is all about.
If you have ever owned a home and sold it or if you have ever re-financed your house, or if you ever hope to purchase a home with a clear title, you need to join this fight.
The linked to story is about a system so broken that is almost beyond fixing. This is the end result of the 1% and the criminal corporate crony Bankers/Wall Streeters setting up a system completely lacking in controls and oversight and even basic competency and then putting that system in the hands of people apparently without a sense of decency, or who, if they had a sense of decency once, had it eroded by their workplace environment. (Think of the Homeless Halloween foreclosure law firm) This is the essence of what Bill Black calls "control fraud" which is a systemic form of institutional fraud.
The lack of accounting for funds received and the conflicting and inflated amounts that are being presented for collection suggest some darker scenarios to me. A system that lacking in controls and oversight makes itself a tempting target for internal mischief. Where did the money go? Do the banks themselves even know?
This story is why the current Administration has to get off its bank apologist duff and start some real investigations and some real prosecutions or the entire housing market and banking system and the veracity of all of our land records and property ownership will go down the tubes sooner rather than later.
Yes, I know the President announced a new Mortgage Crisis investigation Unit. I'm not sure why they needed yet another special unit when there are already entities in place that have the full ability and power to initiate discovery and investigate and prosecute anytime they choose to. This new and improved financial crime fighting unit almost seems like yet another time wasting, slow walking exercise.
If anything, it proves that nothing was really happening under the old investigation which has taken up most of the last year. The one that didn't investigate and wants to settle as expeditiously as possible but which has been placed on hold due to pushback from from a very few courageous AGs.
Of course, I hope this new unit is finally a move to do something more than lip service. There are some good appointments to it, but enough poor ones to make me slightly skeptical. We cannot lull ourselves with the "Relax, he's got this" meme, because to date he and the Justice Department haven't "gotten this". Whether they are finally getting this remains to be seen.