Foreclosure Fiasco Gets A Shrug From Wall Street

The New York Observer:

n order to understand Wall Street's shrug during this foreclosure crisis, which as many as 40 attorneys general are expected to announce an investigation into this week, the key is to appreciate just how deeply connected the gesture is to Wall Street's view of who's to blame for the financial crisis.

The feeling, the idea at the bottom of all the others, is that even if Wall Street aggravated the crisis by bundling and betting on mortgage-backed securities that turned out not to live up to high ratings, it was not a matter of, as Citi chairman Richard D. Parsons told The Observer this summer, "bad people trying to do bad things."

Read the whole story: The New York Observer

Comments

[SchrodingersKatz]

03:11 PM on 11/08/2010

When will Americans wake up to the fact that bankers both here and abroad are the real terrorists?

[Alaskangel]

02:58 AM on 10/19/2010

These are the same money making companies that turned down a majority of home loan modifications meant to help those that have lost jobs/income because of a crappy situation and mass lay-offs. People who took loans in good faith had no way of seeing into the future were they lost jobs and incomes and are not at fault for an economy that is out of everyone's controll.The lenders were/are more worried about the bottom line then they are about helping the very people they screwed the first time. How many of these loans were given because of false documents? How many loan officers scewed the numbers to get their clients into homes so that they could line their own pockets? How many home owners were blinded because the realitor and the loan officer both wanted their share of the commission? To blame every foreclosed home owner is just away to turn the guilt onto someone else and not take responsibility for ones own bad actions and greed.

[vippy]

07:44 PM on 10/18/2010

That is not their only bad deed. The banks also rented huge tankers off-shore after they got the bailout money from the government and stored the oil waiting for a higher price. Gas right now should see at 99 cents because we have more stored everywhere and demand is way down.
Yet the banks took our money and turned it against us, again. The financial bill Obama signed is a slap in our face, it gives okay to the banks to do whatever they desire, making money any which way. So this morning I read where gas went down 4 cents due to oil decline on weaker fuel demand outlook and as soon as the banks said they made mega bucks, the price of oil rose immediately though the demand can't go up because no one has any money. We are at 1989 levels of consumption and since then we grew a lot in population.

[vippy]

07:37 PM on 10/18/2010

They were all in agreement with this fraud, the banks and the government. They can't say they did not see it coming. Where is the oversight, oh, forgot, Bush killed all those agencies, no oversight, no safety regulations. And this current administration did not want to make waves and kept everything as it was. Bad management, because any good manager would assess the situation and then put out the fires where it was most needed, prioritize! But as I always said, we have incompetents in government and no wonder social security is broken. But do tell me this, where do they find the money for the 4 wars, Iraq, Aghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

[LorettaSingbiel]

02:27 PM on 10/18/2010

"Look, I think it's just human nature. People want to have a bogeyman," Ralph Cioffi, the former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager, who was found not guilty of fraud, said in a recent Observer profile about anger at banks and bankers. "People don't want to take responsibility for their own actions."

Speak for yourself A$$HOLE!!!

[karen1p]

01:13 PM on 10/18/2010

I hope all homeowners out there know this paperwork fraud goes well beyond foreclosures. We are uncovering corrupt docs in NON-defaulted property,

[karen1p]

01:10 PM on 10/18/2010

We are very close in exposing proof that the banksters were setting up shell corporations BEFORE the crash......implicating them in this disaster.......and when we do there better be prison terms.

[karen1p]

01:07 PM on 10/18/2010

Homeowners had to follow the rules to obtain the loans.
Banks won't follow the rules OR LAW to foreclose.

Jail these M*****F*****ers.

[Cougar29]

04:54 AM on 10/18/2010

Dick Parsons ruinef Time Warner as he is trying to ruin Citi. An sub-educated man who believes he is smart and worthy.

[vippy]

07:38 PM on 10/18/2010

Citi was bad when they took over the bank in Mexico. You know what they had their sights set on then.

[rory talbot]

05:54 PM on 10/16/2010

Why wouldn't Wall Street blame homeowners? Obama/Geithner blame them!

He refused to support mortgage bankruptcy cram down (which would allow hardworking Americans to play by the same set of rules as rich people); he refused to place any strings on the trillion dollar bank bailouts; he refused to help the 6 1/2 MILLION FAMILIES WHO WERE THROWN OUT ON THE STREETS ON HIS WATCH!

Enthusiasm CANYON!

[LATRE]

10:50 PM on 10/16/2010

Bush is the one who gave the banks the bailouts, and my home was saved on Obama watchs.

[GenosseJoe]

10:20 AM on 10/17/2010

yes, Bush did the stupid thing. But since that time Obama repeated it many times over, clearly demonstrating that he is incapable of learning from his own mistakes.

Look, he is contemplating another waste of our money right now.

[GenosseJoe]

10:17 AM on 10/17/2010

Why?

If I will borrow $10,000 from you and then refuse to give it back, would you blame me mostly for violating the terms of our contracts?

Or would you blame yourself for being so rude in wanting YOUR money back?

[macchugsid]

04:45 PM on 10/17/2010

I would expect you to perform due diligence to be sure that they could afford to pay you back. If they are incapable of paying it from the get go, shame on you when they don't. You are the one responsible for checking out your borrower.

We all know now that these mortgage companies were at fault for giving people loans that should not have had them. And they did it to feed the appetite of the Goldmans of the world to sell phony CDOs.

Now, admittedly there are some people that are gaming the system. I do not believe that is true in the majority of cases. A large number of these people went in to these loans with 2 income households and are now unemployed because of no fault of their own. Can you blame them for wanting to find some way to not end up homeless?

The way I see it is that if the government could help out the banks then they should be just as willing to help out the homeowner. It would be in the country's best interest as a whole.

[karen1p]

01:08 PM on 10/18/2010

So, you are abdicating the banks reckless abuse of property rights and LAW???

W....T.....F....is wrong with you???

[guveqzero]

01:51 PM on 10/16/2010

Wall Street complains about everything that doesn't put money in their pocket. It's their job. Why does anybody listen to them? Greed does not need encouragement.

[Birdman372537]

09:00 AM on 10/16/2010

When a banker blames the customer for taking out a loan that the customer knew he wouldn't be able to pay back, I have only one question. Why didn't the BANKER know that the customer couldn't pay the loan back? Normally, this transaction would be kept between an inept banker and a customer who gambled and lost.
However, with the Bush tax cuts of 2002, there was a lot of money around just looking for trouble. Wall Street banks were only too happy to oblige with an entire menu of CDOs and derivatives. The investors couldn't even understand these exotic financial instruments so they just assumed, naturally, that they were safe and legitimate. The salesman said so. The ratings agencies got their piece of the pie and greased the wheels by passing out AAA ratings to, essentially, piles of horse manure. The boys at the FTC and the SEC, with Bush's blessing, were busy watching porn on the office computers and couldn't be bothered with anything so mundane as regulation or enforcement so the whole compost pile just slowly cooked. The baking was finished in 2008 and the cake came out of the oven. As could probably be expected, it didn't taste so good.
Now the GOP/Tea Party wants to follow up with a sequel entitled "Nostalgia, Bush Redux". Will it turn out better this time? For a fair and balanced analysis just tune into Fox Noose at eleven. It's Limbaugh approved.

[LorettaSingbiel]

02:39 PM on 10/18/2010

VERY WELL SAID!!!

[PatrickforO]

03:41 AM on 10/16/2010

While there is an element of truth in the implication that the mortgage finance crisis is the fault of greedy homeowners who were using their homes as ATM machines, there is more truth in the fact the lack of adequate regulation allowed so many high risk loans to be made, bundled, sold and resold over and over in a sort of twisted Ponzi scheme. I'm sorry, Mr and Ms Wall St. Capitalist - I just cannot buy completely into your 'caveat emptor' (buyer beware) philosophy. This is why we need regulatory reform in so many industries. Unrestrained, you capitalists tend to engage in many activities of dubious morality.

[Patriot86]

08:18 PM on 10/16/2010

Wrong...the greedy irresponsible homeowners...the few....were gone two years ago..what we have here are the jobless or unemployed homeowners..banks fault for crashing the economy.

[Ohsnap]

01:42 AM on 10/16/2010

Yes, blame the homeowners. Because obviously the homeowners were the ones who approved the loans, paid themselves tens of thousands of dollars to go out and by a home. They are also the ones who gambled on securities to try to turn a profit.

[bobwalters]

01:09 AM on 10/16/2010

Of course the Wall Street mafiosi would "shrug" and deny any culpability/liability in the mess, despite having largely engineered it from the beginning. They (perhaps rightly) believe they enjoy absolute impunity to ravage and pillage the economy in any way they see fit, and if hapless, unsuspecting borrowers are scammed, ripped off, damaged or even destroyed, it's their own fault -- it certainly couldn't possibly be the fault of the plutocrats and their minions. Those "victims" just should have been born to the investor/rentier class, and then would not have been taken in by the scammers.

It's God's will that the Congregation of the Elect (the Wall Street thieves and banksters, and their hangers-on) should reap all the benefits and spoils from those in the Congregation of the Damned (everyone else) -- good, old-fashioned Calvinism giving a veneer of divine respectability to the brutal practices of the feudal lairds of the fiefs. It is in this sense that Lloyd Blankfein insisted that the alpha-thieves at Goldman Sucks were "doing God's work."