Your allegations of intentional misdeeds, fabricated documents and forgeries have new life now that the SEC is hot on the trail of the wrongdoers in a very public way. As the news sinks in more and more Judges, lawyers and experts and forensic analysts will see their role more as a commitment to justice than just helping out a homeowner in distress.
It just didn’t make sense that anyone would loan money in a deal where they knew there would be no payback. My allegations rang hollow to many people, who felt that despite the many distractions and defects contained in the paperwork behind the foreclosure glut, it was the borrowers who made the financial crisis happen. Now we see more and more people taking another look.
For those of us who serve the judicial branch of government, it is no longer a dance to delay the inevitable. It is, as it has always been, a confrontation with giant corporations whose reach into the corridors of powers enabled them to suck the life out of an ailing economy.
No society has ever persisted without a vibrant growing middle class. It will be a very long time before we succeed in reversing the damage wreaked by Goldman Sachs and other investment banking houses who acted without any sense of conscience, morality or even compliance with laws that society passed to enable their existence. But now, we have a chance. Let’s not waste this opportunity. Don’t let the pretender lenders get control of the narrative again.
The reality is that many, perhaps most loans were created according to specifications set by Wall Street, not by industry underwriting standards. The reality is that people were hired to lie and cheat and deceive homeowners into investing their homes into this salacious scheme. The reality is that the appraisals were false, and were given greater credibility by the reasonable borrower assumption that no lender would lend money on a bad deal where the property value was intentionally overstated, and that lenders would and did strive to comply with the requirements of the Truth in Lending Law, where the responsibility for appraisal verification, income verification, quality, viability, and affordability are BY LAW the responsibility of the Lender. Little did these hapless homeowners know, TILA was a joke to these players.
So now reality sets in. securities that were rated investment grade were junk and are worth far less than their sale price. Homes that were rated as high value were really still the same value as the market had shown before the flood of money and bird dogs looking for signatures on documents, even if the signatures were forged and even if the borrower was dead.
The finance system depends upon confidence. Confidence is based upon belief in the market values and practices in the marketplace. There is only one correction that is viable now. It is the simple recognition that neither the securities nor the properties they were based upon, had any new “value added.” It is the simple recognition that we had to accept when the NASDAQ that flew near 5,000 is really worth only 2,000, long after the boom and bust of that era. Any attempt to saddle the homeowners, the taxpayers or the investors with anything other than the reality of fair market value will undermine our financial system, and ultimately our future and the future of generations to come.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: affordability, appraisal verification, belief, confidence, fabricated documents, fair market value, forgeries, Goldman Sachs, income verification, industry underwriting standards, intentional misdeeds, NASDAQ, pretender lenders, TILA, Truth in Lending Law, underwriting standards | 11 Comments »