Wednesday, March 9, 2011

FORECLOSURES - Obama & His Bankster Donors Assault on America

FEW POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAVE TAKEN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS THAN OBAMA!


THEN HE SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH THE BANKSTERS’ SERVANTS, LIKE TIM GEITHNER, CHRIS DODD, BARNEY FRANK, AND HIS BIG DONOR, BUSH WAR PROFITEER, DIANNE FEINSTEIN!

OBAMA IS THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, AND THIS ONLY THING THIS MAN DOES WELL IS DRESS UP TO PLAY A LATTER DAY RONNIE REAGAN, “POPULIST” MAN OF “CHANGE”.

OBAMA IS A FRAUD!





Posted on Tue, Mar. 08, 2011

House Republicans: Failing mortgage-aid programs should go

Barbara Barrett
McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: March 08, 2011 06:00:37 PM

WASHINGTON — A handful of foreclosure prevention measures run by the Obama administration are so ineffectual, inefficient and complicated that, according to Republicans in the House of Representatives, the programs should be killed outright.

The House is scheduled to vote this week on getting rid of a refinance program for Federal Housing Administration loans and another program, scheduled to begin next month, that would help homeowners with delinquent payments.

The House Financial Services Committee is expected to vote Wednesday morning on ending two other measures: One of them is a massive effort that was designed to adjust up to 4 million mortgages but so far has tackled just half a million successfully. The other is the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which steers money to communities hit hard by foreclosures.

The Treasury Department and many Democrats argue, though, that the programs — though flawed — are fixable, and consumer advocates say the measures offer the last, best hope for many struggling families.

"It's all we have," said Hazel Mack-Hilliard, the director of the mortgage foreclosure project with Legal Aid of North Carolina. "To have nothing and just say let the lenders do it, that's worse than nothing."

The bills' chances of becoming law are slight, because Democrats control the Senate and the Obama administration supports the programs. But Republicans say their effort will shine a light on inefficient programs that they say aren't working and, in the worst cases, do more harm than good.

Altogether, killing the programs could save the federal government a few billion dollars. But the real problem, said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., is that families sometimes are hurt more than they're helped. McHenry will read from constituents' stories at Wednesday's committee meeting, telling of how homeowners were strung out on the hope of receiving mortgage modifications only to be told eventually that they didn't qualify.

In the meantime, he said, they've exhausted their savings, killed their credit and lost places to live.

"It's just heartbreaking stuff," McHenry said. He's sponsored the HAMP Termination Act, which aims to kill the Home Affordable Modification Program.

Through that program, the government pays banks and other servicers to adjust mortgages voluntarily. But of nearly $30 billion allocated to HAMP, only $1 billion has been spent.

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the modification programs through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, told Congress last week that "HAMP has been beset by problems from the outset and, despite frequent retooling, continues to fall woefully short of meeting its original expectations."

He blamed the Treasury Department for refusing to adopt "meaningful goals and benchmarks" for the program, but he stopped short of saying the Home Affordable Modification Program should be shuttered altogether.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress in separate testimony last week that he wants to keep the program.

The mortgage crisis isn't going away. Despite other signs of economic recovery, foreclosure filings across the country continue at a record pace. RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosures around the U.S., predicts that filings will increase another 20 percent this year, topping 3 million, according to Barofsky's testimony.

Republicans' efforts to kill the assistance programs come as mortgage servicers are under congressional investigation for what Democrats describe as foreclosure fraud, robo-signing and other abuses.

At a hearing Tuesday in his home city of Baltimore, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, described the foreclosure crisis as a "wrecking ball" through the nation's communities.

Cummings said he was seeking documents from 10 mortgage-servicing companies: Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., CitiMortgage Inc., Ally Bank/Residential Capital LLC, U.S. Bank Home Mortgage, SunTrust Bank, PHH Mortgage, PNC Mortgage/National City and MetLife Home Loans.

A report last month from the Congressional Research Service said servicers often had financial incentives to move ahead with foreclosures rather than modify mortgages, even when it wasn't in the best interests of the investors in the mortgages.

On Wednesday, the House is scheduled to begin debate on two measures: to kill the FHA Refinance Program and the Emergency Mortgage Relief Program.

The first, designed to refinance homes purchased under FHA loans, has resulted in the refinancings of just 22 homes as of the end of December, according to the Congressional Research Service. The second, meant to help homeowners who face delinquent payments, is scheduled to begin next month.

Votes in the full House are expected by the end of the week.

The other two bills — the HAMP Termination Act and the National Stabilization Program Termination Act — are expected to pass committee votes Wednesday. They could come to the House floor within a month.

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The economic crisis was an 'inside job'

By Kathleen Parker

Wednesday, October 13, 2010; A19

If you haven't been humming tunes from "Les Misérables," you haven't seen "Inside Job," the new documentary about how our economic crisis evolved.

The most forgiving American will want to seize a pitchfork and march on Wall Street. Or Harvard Square. Or in front of the White House. There are so many despicable parties, it's hard to pick a favorite. Is it time to reconsider the Axis of Evil?

The film, written and directed by Charles Ferguson (and narrated by Matt Damon), will be opening in select cities this week. Although much of the story is familiar, Ferguson manages to weave together decades of bits and pieces into a dramatic narrative that plays like a whodunit. Names have faces, and storytelling combined with graphic illustrations helps explain the complex series of events that led to the global meltdown. Here are a few takeaways:

One, trying to assign blame to either Democrats or Republicans is pointless. Everyone is culpable. From the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan deregulated banks, through the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, each administration has endorsed -- and each Congress has helped tweak -- laws and rules that made systemic abuses and the meltdown not only possible but, looking back, inevitable.

Two, many investment bankers knew the mortgage loans they were packaging and selling were junk. They knew because their own analysts told them so. Tens of thousands of loans failed to meet basic underwriting standards, according to recent testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan group created to examine the causes of the meltdown. Not only that, Wall Street insiders were betting against their own customers and institutions.

Throughout the system, from the lending institutions to federal regulators to congressional overseers, those charged with protecting consumers averted their eyes.

Three, the cozy relationship between Wall Street and Ivy League academia, wherein economists push policies that benefit them financially, is eye-opening. In some cases, business professors and economists at America's top schools were shown to have conflicts of interest as they advanced policies for which they had been paid directly or that otherwise benefited them.

In other instances, we see that the same people who created policies that ultimately led to these abuses are still -- or were until recently -- running the show. Notably missing from the film, declining to be interviewed, are Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin.

This is not to say that what benefits Wall Street necessarily hurts average Americans or that all bankers are corrupt, but the system clearly enabled the abuses that have led to current circumstances. The attitude seemed to be that everyone was doing it.

When the big banks failed, of course, taxpayers were left holding the bag. Even though there was wide consensus that the bailouts were necessary to get credit moving again, there is simply no justification for the bonuses and golden parachutes that went to the very people who drove their institutions -- and us -- off a cliff. Reward for failure was the best gig in town.

Although most of what the movie highlights is familiar, there's something jarring about seeing the culprits up close in all their taxpayer-subsidized, suntanned splendor -- their multiple estates and private jets juxtaposed against shuttered homes and unemployed Americans living in tents. Obscene is the word that comes to mind.

I'm not one to advance class warfare, and most Americans still want to preserve a market system that leaves open the possibility that they, too, can work hard and achieve wealth. But it's clear from "Inside Job" that the game has been rigged so that only a few were in positions to get rich at the expense of the middle class, not just here but globally.

The movie isn't perfect. One wonders what was left on the editing floor. Some of those interviewed, who dodged questions or gave unacceptable answers, also looked stupid. None of these guys is stupid.

And, at the end, Ferguson couldn't resist making an editorial comment as the camera panned the Statue of Liberty. "Some things are worth fighting for."

We get it. The film is so well done and presented so factually that no Hollywood prodding was needed. Anyone who sees this movie will be furious. Thus, the only remaining question is why some of these people aren't being prosecuted for fraud or at least shirking fiduciary duty.

It would seem as never before that the White House should hire a special prosecutor. Ferguson's movie, which the president and his economic team had best watch -- and soon -- could use a sequel: "The Perp Walk."



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“Wells Fargo, for instance, which has leeched $25 billion in bailout money, bought an inadvertently hilarious full-page ad in The Times to whine about the junkets to Las Vegas and elsewhere it was forced to cancel because of public outrage.” --- Maureen Dowd, NYTimes



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Obama’s phony banking “reform”

27 April 2010

Debate on the Senate version of the Obama administration’s bank regulatory overhaul is expected to begin shortly. The House of Representatives passed its banking bill last December.

Neither bill does anything to curb the power of the banks or limit their parasitic and socially destructive activities. What the media is calling the “most sweeping overhaul” of the banking system since the Great Depression in reality sanctions the ever greater monopolization of the financial system by a handful of Wall Street giants, imposes no limits on executive pay, and allows the banks and hedge funds to continue gambling on exotic and largely unregulated securities such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.

The so-called bank “reform” is an exercise in mass deception—an attempt to placate popular hostility to the banks and provide the government with political cover while it continues to do the bidding of Wall Street.

The bills have been drawn up in the closest consultation with bankers and bank lobbyists. This collusion has been widely reported in the press and presented as a perfectly normal and acceptable fact of political life. The front-page lead article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal describes the intensive lobbying being carried out by billionaire investor Warren Buffet to alter the Senate bill’s provisions on derivatives.

Buffet, an Obama supporter, wants to exempt existing derivatives deals from collateral requirements in the current language of the bill—a change that would save him billions on his $63 billion derivatives portfolio. Both senators from his home state of Nebraska, one Democrat and one Republican, are championing his cause.

This is just one example of the web of corruption and bribery that extends from Wall Street to the White House and Capitol Hill. The banks have thus far spent $455 million lobbying Congress on the overhaul and handed out $34 million in 2010 election campaign donations, most of it to Democrats.

The circle of corruption includes the ratings companies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which blessed toxic subprime mortgage-backed securities with triple-A ratings in return for fees from the banks they were rating, and government regulators who move seamlessly from regulatory offices to lucrative posts at the banks they were supposedly overseeing.

The colossuses of Wall Street amass their huge profits by means of fraud and swindling. Over the past few weeks systematic accounting fraud at Lehman Brothers has been exposed and the Securities and Exchange Commission has indicted Goldman Sachs for defrauding its clients in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crash. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Obama’s so-called reform will do nothing to hold accountable the criminals at the head of the banks and hedge funds or break up the financial behemoths that exert a stranglehold on the economy. Instead, it will set up a mechanism to institutionalize government rescue operations of big financial firms to protect the interests of bank executives, shareholders and creditors, ultimately at public expense.

The lawless and reckless actions of Wall Street CEOs have had devastating consequences for tens of millions of people in the US and around the world. The wreckage left in the wake of the financial tsunami of 2008 is registered in millions of lost jobs, home foreclosures, utility shutoffs, and rising hunger, disease and poverty.

With the help of trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, the bankers are making more money today than ever, even as schools are closed, libraries disappear and museums and opera houses are shuttered. There is, the people are told, “no money” for jobs or basic social services.

There is plenty of money. The problem is that it is concentrated in the hands of a financial aristocracy. The immense concentration of wealth among these individuals is not only morally repugnant, it is a menace to society. It is the result of the plundering of the social wealth to feed criminal appetites, at the direct cost of the productive forces.

During the rise of American capitalism as an industrial power, the vast fortunes of the corporate elite, while achieved through ruthless exploitation of the working class, were associated with the expansion of industry and the production of useful products. That is not the case with today’s financial elite. Its wealth is amassed on the basis of financial manipulation and outright fraud, linked to the destruction of the social infrastructure and industry.

The Socialist Equality Party advocates a policy that proceeds from the needs of the people and society as a whole, not the personal fortunes of the bankers and big investors. We call for:

• The criminal prosecution of bankers and speculators whose illegal actions contributed to the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They must be held legally accountable and given appropriate sentences to prevent a recurrence of such practices.

• The expropriation of the wealth of the top bankers, hedge fund managers, traders and speculators. This would immediately free up several trillion dollars, money that could go to a public works program to provide jobs and rebuild the social infrastructure—schools, housing, clinics, libraries, cultural facilities, the energy system. This money could also be used to help provide relief to the victims of the economic crisis—to maintain full wages for those laid off, put a stop to foreclosures and utility shutoffs, provide full medical coverage.

• The nationalization of the banks and major financial institutions and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. This is a prerequisite for the rational and planned development of the economy and the allocation of resources to rebuild the social infrastructure, end poverty, raise living standards and overcome social inequality.

Only such a socialist program can break the grip of the financial aristocracy and liberate the productive forces for the benefit of society as a whole. It can be achieved only through the independent political mobilization of the working class against Obama, the two parties and big business, and the capitalist system that they defend.

Barry Grey

WSWS.org

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