Matt Taibbi on what every American needs to know about the mortgage business.
The situation is different in Texas, because, believe it or not, Texas has very strict regulations on the mortgage industry. That's why housing prices haven't declined here like they have in other states.
The issue is two-fold. First, there are people who made awful mistakes and cannot pay their loans. The far more heinous issue is the massive fraud that goes on in the mortgage and banking industries. The fraud is aided by the government, and bailed out by us.. the tax payers.. to the tune of billions of dollars.
That's how capitalism works in America. The truly wealthy are never at any real risk. If there's a problem - just cook up a "bail out". Sure, the bail out might have kept our entire economic system from crashing around us, but it also justified all the fraud. People got paid.
And in America.. that's what it's all about.
Make sure your mortgage payments are auto-drafted from your bank account, and check each month to make sure it happens. If you pay by check, and the bank "loses" it, they may just throw you the fuck out of your house.
....
Speaking of getting paid.. turns out, John was not injured in any lasting way in the car accident from a few weeks ago. Once you get a really good attorney, the insurance company takes care of business because it's not in their interest to go to court and all that.. so it's all settled.. and honestly, it's fair enough.
All in all.. it's better to not have any injury.. obviously.
2 comments:
It's a fascinating article and deeply disturbing but he gets quite a few of his facts wrong.
The document date "fraud" that he tries to point out at the end with Wells Fargo and Wachovia doesn't hold up. You can go to the national information center and look up Wachovia and get 31 entities that still exist as far as the federal reserve is concerned.
Think about if Walmart went out of business tommorow. Of course there would be asset transfers that happened after that day. You can expect them to conclude everything even in months.
In addition to that he gets the assertion that the USFG gave Wells Fargo 55 billion to buy Wachovia. The government gave the money to all banks and said it would penalize banks for not accepting it. At least 2 banks, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, later sued in order to return the money and Wells Fargo has since repaid it in full.
Uh.. not sure how that is relevant to anything in the Taibbi article.. It's not really incorrect "facts", but rather irrelevant to the point of the story.
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