What part of that quote tells you its a wrong address and not a wrongful foreclosure? And the main case in the abc news link is BOTH a wrongful foreclosure and wrongful eviction case:
“Bank of America actually had planned to foreclose on a property about 10 houses away but mistakenly went after the Cordosos’ home instead, deMello said.”
And these are just three cases I found in a few seconds. Next time, before replying to me, do your own research.
Its a nice narrative to claim that basically everyone involved in the mortgage bubble was to blame, but its just not true. Yes you are right that people were responding to incentives, but to pretend that all incentives are the same is like pretending its the same thing to not inform the cashier they undercharged you for a purchase and to massively defraud investors to the tune of trillions of dollars by conning them into buying fraudulent and sure-to-default loans. What you are ignoring is that the large banks were the crucial lynchpin to the whole con. They knowingly bought and originated dodgy loans and knowingly packaged them into securities and sold them on to pensions, foreign banks, etc. Yes, property assessors, mortgage agents and the ratings agencies all had a part in the scam. And even a few property purchasers realized the scam and got in on it, though those numbers have been grossly inflated. But the key to the whole boom, the one part without which it could not have happened, and not coincidentally the one part that profited coming AND going from the scam, was the large banks. Cui bono.
Also, no one is claiming that every mortgage foreclosure for the past twenty years was a stolen home. But pretty much every securitized loan has no chain of title documentation. And on top of that, many hundreds of thousands of homes, if not millions, were wrongfully foreclosed on because of incentives. Home mortgage servicers have no interest in modifying loans, they earn more by foreclosing (their fiduciaries, the investors in mortgage pools also get screwed by foreclosing instead of modding). And Bank of America, to name just one massive criminal organization, foreclosed on almost every home that was in the mortgage mod process.
Its not easy to put a dollar amount on the number of wrongful foreclosures, fraudulent foreclosures, etc. that have been completed. Its also reasonable to claim that most of the foreclosures of the past 5 years wouldn’t have happened if not for the banks creating a housing bubble, doubling real estate prices and causing millions to lose their jobs in the collapse. To me, the people who lost their houses due to the bust are victims, and their houses were stolen as well.
The point is that Cory’s headline is actually the first one I’ve seen that didn’t downplay the amount of damage that has been, and continues to be, done by the massively criminal conspiracy that is our banking system.
So the solution to the financial crisis is to hope bankers have stronger morals? What’s that, the Romney plan?
No, that’s your plan, since you just invented it. I don’t think it has much chance of success as long as our government is actively rewarding unethical behavior - which amounts to the same thing as punishing ethical behavior.
And remember paying off banksters for behaving badly has been a totally bipartisan effort - Obama took time out of campaigning to help out, in fact, as did McCain.
I hear that in Iceland they ignored “too big to fail” nonsense, let the banks collapse and put the people responsible in jail.
Not if the hoop specifically resolves the problem at hand. If the problem is that a large, poorly maintained database has errors in it then making people go back to the original documents as a step in verifying the right foreclose will let people notice that the database has the wrong address. Instead forging documents that have the address that is in the database will not.
I agree that the banks need an incentive to not screw people, I think a regulation that says that wrongful foreclosures will be penalized with a fine of 1000 times the value of the mortgage would very quickly drop the error rate to less than 1 in 1000 - a lot less than that.
But at the same time, we can’t talk about forging documents and using them in court like it isn’t a big deal. It’s actually a bigger deal than stealing someone’s house (where I live, may vary from place to place). Everyone who forged a document, everyone who knowingly used a forged document, and everyone who worked at the bank who knew this was going on should be arrested as part of a criminal conspiracy and they should all be put in prison for several years. Ordinarily I am very cautious about blaming people who were just trying to keep their jobs, but forging documents goes far into the realm of, “you really should have known.”
Now if there I am confused and documents weren’t actually forged then that’s one thing, but even if all creditors agree who should be able to foreclose, making false documents to expedite the process instead of admitting to the court you don’t have the proper documents is an offence you need to spend time behind bars for.
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