Oct 10 2010

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart: Foreclosure Crisis

Rube Goldberg, himself, could not have designed a more convoluted method to, in fact, fuck us. . . . .

Thank you, President Obama. You know it’s crazy when getting back to square one feels like a victory

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Foreclosure Crisis
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

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    • on 10/10/2010 at 22:25
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    And bull chips for David Axelrod who appeared this morning on “Face the Nation”.

    Axelrod signals White House opposition to foreclosure moratorium

    “I’m not sure about a national moratorium because there are, in fact, valid foreclosures that probably should go forward and where the documentation and paperwork is proper,” said Axelrod.

    “We are working closely with these institutions to make sure that they expedite the process of going back and reconstructing these and throwing out those that don’t work,”

    And of course, Republican Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia appearing on Fox News Sunday was absolutely opposed to any moratorium at all.

    “If you impose a moratorium on foreclosures, what you’re telling people and institutions that lend money is they do not have the protection to take the risk they need to, to extend credit so people can get a mortgage,” Cantor said. “You’re going to shut down the housing industry if that’s the case.”

    Asked about a solution, Cantor replied: “People have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step.”

    So, what’s the rush to foreclose?

    The Administration would also have you think that they are not in the least to blame for this but as Marcy Wheeler points out

    The massive foreclosure fraud that is about to seize up the economy again wasn’t the Administration’s fault, these anonymous sources want you to know, because they couldn’t do anything about it when they first got warning of it. Oh, and the servicers aren’t engaged in fraud, these anonymous sources want you to know, they’re just overwhelmed (never mind that if they’re overwhelmed, it’s partly because they refuse to hire enough people to do foreclosures right, presumably because that would hurt profitability).

    Key to this story of the Administration’s helplessness is the claim that the only tool they had to get servicers to modify loans was the servicers’ good will. Basically, they’re saying that they had to let the servicers (who are also some of the biggest banks) engage in what amounts to fraud, because it was the only way they had to get servicers to participate in HAMP.

    Setting aside the fact that a relative handful of people have actually gotten modifications under HAMP (which suggests the Administration was willing to overlook the problems they knew existed in the foreclosure process in exchange for helping just a few people), the claim that allowing those problems to remain was the only way to get banks to participate in HAMP is simply not true.

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