If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
There are doors in this deal -- doors that lead to a better deal for homeowners and a chance at restoring justice. Progressives need to recognize that these doors exist, and then demand that our elected officials use them.
The robo-signing settlement is the latest -- and potentially the largest -- piece in the U.S. housing policy puzzle. Even though it's partly punishment for banks' wrongdoing, it is also another answer by the government to the question of how it can help the housing market.
Indeed, by the time Franklin Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, it is estimated that approximately 50 percent of all urban mortgages in the United States were delinquent or in foreclosure and that an average of 1,000 homes per day were being lost.
We need a solution at the scale of the problem, so that families can get back on their feet, the economy can get working, and people can reach for their American dreams again instead of watching them drown.
We need to look at our banking and housing system and engage in a ruthless yet compassionate evaluation of whether it is working to solve our national needs. Serious thinkers in both parties recognize that it isn't.
It is important to bear in mind why exactly today's settlement must be viewed as a first step rather than a resolution of the struggle for accountability in the foreclosure crisis.
These are what we call a city's "best-kept secret" neighborhoods. They're not secrets to most local house hunters, but outsiders looking to move in typically overlook them.
The banks engaged in a years' long pattern of what can only be described as fraudulent if not criminal conduct that would put anyone else in prison for years if not decades, yet banks get to buy off the cops with some money to help just a few of the victims they created.
This settlement is yet another demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn't you and me. It's bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
We'll win some but we'll lose some, and some of the time we will do both at the same time. That is the story of the robo-signing settlement that has finally become a done deal after many long months of struggle over it.
For about 16 months, we have been hearing that the settlement talks with the big banks are just about to close, but they never do, and it's clear that the major holdup now is bankers crying themselves a river, weeping, moaning, and gnashing their teeth.
Large-scale principal reduction is a win-win for homeowners and the economy. It would stabilize housing values and prevent foreclosures, while putting cash in the wallets of struggling families.
Not in everything, but definitely in this, the founders were right. The financial industry got too powerful, and they assumed and operated as if they were above the law. And the rest of us paid a huge price, and are paying it still.
Saying millions of families should wait until the "market clears" is the modern equivalent of "let them eat cake." Clearing the market is an economist's term for letting the tidal wave of foreclosures continue.
The terms for the settlement of the robo-mortgage scandal and the states participating in the settlement are expected to be resolved soon. Unfortunat...
