In America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it

[Wildcat 10]

There is an interesting article in Rolling Stone this week. It is about the fraud at the heart of the Financial crisis. The huge Ponzi scheme set up in Wall Street that caused the global recession when it all came tumbling down. The guilty got bail outs with public money. The victims in the US, those losing their homes portrayed as being guilty.

 

Cooper's case perfectly summarizes what the foreclosure crisis is all about. Her original loan was made by Wachovia, a bank that blew itself up in 2008 speculating in the mortgage market. It was then transferred to Wells Fargo, a megabank that was handed some $50 billion in public assistance to help it acquire the corpse of Wachovia. And who else benefited from that $50 billion in bailout money? Billionaire Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway fund, which happens to be a major shareholder in Wells Fargo. It was Buffett's vice chairman, Charles Munger, who recently told America that it should "thank God" that the government bailed out banks like the one he invests in, while people who have fallen on hard times — that is, homeowners like Shawnetta Cooper — should "suck it in and cope."

 

Look: It's undeniable that many of the people facing foreclosure bear some responsibility for the crisis. Some borrowed beyond their means. Some even borrowed knowing they would never be able to pay off their debt, either hoping to flip their houses right away or taking on mortgages with low initial teaser rates without bothering to think of the future. The culture of take-for-yourself-now, let-someone-else-pay-later wasn't completely restricted to Wall Street. It penetrated all the way down to the individual consumer, who in some cases was a knowing accomplice in the bubble mess.

 

But many of these homeowners are just ordinary Joes who had no idea what they were getting into. Some were pushed into dangerous loans when they qualified for safe ones. Others were told not to worry about future jumps in interest rates because they could just refinance down the road, or discovered that the value of their homes had been overinflated by brokers looking to pad their commissions. And that's not even accounting for the fact that most of this credit wouldn't have been available in the first place without the Ponzi-like bubble scheme cooked up by Wall Street, about which the average home*owner knew nothing — hell, even the average U.S. senator didn't know about it.

 

At worst, these ordinary homeowners were stupid or uninformed — while the banks that lent them the money are guilty of committing a baldfaced crime on a grand scale. These banks robbed investors and conned homeowners, blew themselves up chasing the fraud, then begged the taxpayers to bail them out. And bail them out we did: We ponied up billions to help Wells Fargo buy Wachovia, paid Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, and watched as the Fed opened up special facilities to buy up the assets in defective mortgage trusts at inflated prices. And after all that effort by the state to buy back these phony assets so the thieves could all stay in business and keep their bonuses, what did the banks do? They put their foot on the foreclosure gas pedal and stepped up the effort to kick people out of their homes as fast as possible, before the world caught on to how these loans were made in the first place.

 

Why don't the banks want us to see the paperwork on all these mortgages? Because the documents represent a death sentence for them. According to the rules of the mortgage trusts, a lender like Bank of America, which controls all the Countrywide loans, is required by law to buy back from investors every faulty loan the crooks at Countrywide ever issued. Think about what that would do to Bank of America's bottom line the next time you wonder why they're trying so hard to rush these loans into someone else's hands.

 

When you meet people who are losing their homes in this foreclosure crisis, they almost all have the same look of deep shame and anguish. Nowhere else on the planet is it such a crime to be down on your luck, even if you were put there by some of the world's richest banks, which continue to rake in record profits purely because they got a big fat handout from the government. That's why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won't pay their ****ing bills. And that's why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232611

 

This system stinks like a pile of dog poo.

[js2012 10]

You love to bash the Amreicans and the west in general dont y ou?

[Wildcat 10]

You love to bash the Amreicans and the west in general dont y ou?

 

You seem to have completely missed my point

 

Read the article.

 

You will see I am not bashing americans, I am highlighting the plight of those being bashed by a fraud perpetrated by mortgage lenders and a political system that encourages and defends their crimes.

[js2012 10]

You seem to have completely missed my point

 

 

The point is, you love to bash americans

[Wildcat 10]

The point is, you love to bash americans

 

Since I am doing the opposite, your observation only reflects on your judgement.

[js2012 10]

Since I am doing the opposite, your observation only reflects on your judgement.

 

And it is my judgement that you like to bash amreicans.

This is mearly a smoke screen to make you look all Amreica friendly so you can come on here at a later date and bash the americans again.

Mr Predictabilityamundo!

[skinz 10]

The point is, you love to bash americans

 

No. The point is you've completely missed the point. Read the opening post. Try not to focus to much on wildcat, you'll only make yourself ill.

[wednesday1 10]

And it is my judgement that you like to bash amreicans.

This is mearly a smoke screen to make you look all Amreica friendly so you can come on here at a later date and bash the americans again.

Mr Predictabilityamundo!

 

No he isn't he's bashing the corrupt system which has dragged the worlds economy down over the last 3 years including our own. He's sypathetic to the ordinary Yanks who have been taken for mugs by the corporate con men.

[js2012 10]

No. The point is you've completely missed the point. Read the opening post. Try not to focus to much on wildcat, you'll only make yourself ill.

 

:hihi::hihi:

[Alien 10]

Work very hard, save, spend, work hard, get completely f$*+$d by the pigs in suits. Feel guilty, work very hard, save, spend, work even harder, get com.........Boy! do we lap it up and pay them for the inconvenience.

 

Personally? I have no sympathy for the blind stupidity of the people.

[Wildcat 10]

Work very hard, save, spend, work hard, get completely f$*+$d by the pigs in suits. Feel guilty, work very hard, save, spend, work even harder, get com.........Boy! do we lap it up and pay them for the inconvenience.

 

Personally? I have no sympathy for the blind stupidity of the people.

 

The problem is their gullibility brings us all down.

[Alien 10]

The problem is their gullibility brings us all down.

 

 

I know what you're saying but "gullibility" is just another term for greed. I totally agree with your link but the people are just as greedy at the bottom as those at the top. They both feed off each other like cannibalistic parasites. One just has the ways and means of doing it in a bigger way...but the "bigger way" won't stop unless we all stop feeding from the very small trough.