So the way it worked was this:

Wall Street found a way to make money by bundling mortgages into investment vehicles.

When the supply of good mortgages began to dwindle, they pressured the mortgage originators (mostly the private ones like CitiWide, Wells Fargo, etc.) to make increasingly risky loans in order to fulfill the huge demand. The mortgage originators 'cooked' appraisals, falsified loan apps, etc. in order to generate 'inventory'.

Recognizing the risk, Wall Street started bundling good mortgages with bad (a piece of this one, a piece of that one) in order to keep the investments attractive to investors.

As the quality of morgages started to seriously decline (sub-prime surge) they started betting against them (credit default swaps).

When they finally pushed the whole thing to the breaking point and the economy tanked, we were foreced to bail them out and make good their losses.

Meanwhile we've lost our businesses, our jobs, the values of our homes (our homes altogether for many), our investments (if we had them) and our credit scores. While they have reaped obscene multi-billion dollar profits.

Banks pulled-back people's credit lines (despite having promised and been instructed by Washington to start lending) further strangling people's ability to survive.

Although Washington launched mortgage modification initiatives to help people keep their homes, the banks did everything in their power to NOT coopoerate with the programs while making it look as though they were (in order to get federal dollars). Banks claimed paperwork not received, repeatedly required hundreds of pages of financial information, played musical chairs with account managers, had phone wait times measured in epochs, etc. (Google BOA modifications in FL and see the news articles that come up in that state alone).

Rather than work with people, they sold their overdue credit cards and loans to investment groups for pennies on the dollar setting predtaory collections companies loose on their victims.

Then the foreclosure initiative began. People unable to pay their mortgages BECAUSE of the actions of these people were put out of their homes (after helping to bail out the very banks that were doing this) with a process that was fraudulent and likely criminal. They even outsourced the paper processing overseas in some cases.

People, struggling to pay their bills, thanks to an economy tanked by Wall Street, fall behind on their property taxes and now Wall Street itself wraps those into an investment product and further screw their original victims.


Is that a reasonable synposis?


This is absolutely NO different than BP's Gulf Oil disaster except on a much, much larger scale: a group of companies motivated entirely by greed play fast and loose with the regulations with complete disregard for We the People and totally without Federal oversight (which was in-place in both cases but not executed) get reckless and destroy people's homes, businesses, incomes, jobs, livelihoods, etc. Except in the case of the Gulf, the perpetrators were held financially responsible (at least to some degree). Imagine what would have happened if Washington had told the good people of the Gulf that they had to bail-out BP cause it was too big to fail?

I urge everyone to get your money out of the big banks and start doing business with your small local banks and credit unions. It may not be much but if 30-40M people did it all at once they'd sit up and take notice.

or alternatively...


Save the World... Eat a Banker

In my state of florida people are considering to elect as governor a big banker from bank of america alex sink.. You would have to be nuts crazy to vote a big banker into office

This is all part of their plan. This is an "asset grab" by the banks.

Their MBS and CDO products are going upside down (and don't forget this is many pension accounts) - this is a way to gobble up the rest of America.

People are bankrupt, their savings are gone, their retirements are gone, they have no money to borrow....hence it's the last thing left.

How is this news? My ahole neighbor has been doing this for years. Stealing property from dim wits who are not aware of the law. He started by buying a $4000 tax lien, eventually foreclosed on that house. Sold it for $50,000, used that money to buy more tax liens. He now owns 20-25 rent houses all from that $4000 investment. And here's the thing: you can't convince him that he has done anything immoral. So it's no suprise to me that big money groups are doing this also.

It is a sad day for our country indeed. If only some wise soul in our past could have warned us how all this would go down; it might have been avoidable....

Oh, wait, thats right...Someone DID warn us.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

~Thomas Jefferson
(emphasis added)

Originally posted by kosmicjack
It really is shocking.

So how do the big Wall Street banks get involved? Well, it goes something like this....

1) The big Wall Street banks set up or invest in shell companies that will disguise who they really are.

2) These shell companies run around and buy up all of the tax liens that they can get their hands on.

3) Predatory levels of interest (in some states as high as 18 percent), fees and penalties rapidly pile up on these unpaid tax liens. The affected homeowners quickly end up owing much, much more than what the original tax bills were for.

4) If the collecting firm has to hire a lawyer, then that gets charged to the homeowner as well. The bloated legal fees for some of these lawyers can end up being the biggest expense of all.

5) If the tax liens do not get paid, the collecting firms move in to foreclose as quickly as legally possible.

many times it's not the banks ... the tax auctions on the courthouse steps can be the outcome when the
County Tax Assessor concludes that a property is to be valued at 10X its marketable worth.

that scenario happens pretty often when one holds a strategic piece of property...
the appeals process of re-evaluating the property takes time, which probably won't be resolved
before the Tax Sale date arrives.
I appealed 3 times on a Murrells Inlet property i bought for $15k plus interest over 3 years...
the tax man said the property was now worth $114k...i disagreed...as i was bounded on all
4 sides by a 10 acre farm, a local boatbuilder, a junk-yard, a fish-market..not too desirable!

but, as the process unwound, the tax sale occured, but i had 18months (plus interest)
before the successful tax lien holder could take possession of my property.

(footnote; the land assessment prevailed, i now owed taxes that progressed thru the years
from $40yr-$160yr-$400yr-$2,000yr over 8 years... along with a special tax assessment
of $1,500. for storm-water, municiple sewer service...

the tax sales are so twisted, one really has to know a realestate pro thats savvy with
the system...lucky me


so, the unconventional financing of a property is really only a secondary cause
for tax sales... the predatory lenders probably open a division of their firms
to operate on a profitable basis by bidding these Tax Sales properties -
there's plenty of independents / speculaters / owners of real-estate offices
that do their fair share of being vultures !

These people will do anything to steal rather than get thie hands dirty won't they