Government pockets $5.5B to betray homeowners
February 10, 2012. Washington. Without homeowners knowing it, the states and federal government have been negotiating with the nation’s largest banks over their criminal practice of foreclosing on American homeowners who were not in default, or even late on payments.Losing everything, including their homes, for no reason other than corporate laziness and fraud, at least 750,000 American families were needlessly foreclosed on. Their state and federal governments represented the victims without their consent, resulting in yesterday’s announced settlement of an insulting $2,000 per family.
After the announcement, President Obama and 49 of the 50 state Attorneys General, celebrated the news. Eric Holder and the Justice Dept, along with the FED and HUD, were celebrating as well. Together, they pocketed $5.5 billion dollars of the settlement alleged to be the remedy for homeowners for the massive and widespread bank fraud that took place throughout the US after the housing collapse from 2008 through last year.
Reuters quoted President Obama proclaiming, “We have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to the hardest hit homeowners in some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake."
Squeezing ever more profits from their workforce, America’s biggest banks chose to foreclose on Americans en masse, rather than just on the homes that were eligible for foreclosure. The banks, like many other American industries in recent history, claim they were simply too large to insure they were following the law on each and every individual customer. In this case however, innocent people lost their homes and were thrown out on the street at the point of a Sheriff’s gun – at least 750,000 American families to be exact.
The banks and their employees devised creative methods to throw families out of their homes in large batches and then resell the houses. They're accused of practices such as “robo-signing” – having a computer sign foreclosure documents instead of a human. They are also accused of processing hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents without ever reading them, much less checking to make sure they were accurate and legitimate.
In total, five major banks will pay a total of $25 billion dollars to homeowners, state governments and the federal government. In exchange, the government agreed to never file civil charges against the banks to recoup the homeowners’ losses in the future. The states reserved the right to seek criminal damages and individual homeowners are still free to hire their own attorneys and sue for damages in civil court. Considering it's been four years since the banking fraud was uncovered and not one single person has been put in prison, it’s highly unlikely anyone will at this point. Similarly, individual victims and their neighborhood attorneys stand little chance against corporate powerhouses like JP Morgan and Bank of America, especially when so many judges across America are financially rewarded by major corporations.
Read the article, ‘TIME Challenges Legitimacy of America’s Judicial Branch’ to see what these victims are up against.
According to Associated Press, the 25$ billion dollar settlement is the largest since the states secured a $206 billion dollar settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998. The five banks who agreed to avoid civil charges and the amount of money they’ll pay over the next three years are:
Bank of America - $8.6 billion
Wells Fargo - $4.3 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $4.2 billion
Citigroup - $1.8 billion
Ally Financial - $200 million
After the announcement, President Obama and 49 of the 50 state Attorneys General, celebrated the news. Eric Holder and the Justice Dept, along with the FED and HUD, were celebrating as well. Together, they pocketed $5.5 billion dollars of the settlement alleged to be the remedy for homeowners for the massive and widespread bank fraud that took place throughout the US after the housing collapse from 2008 through last year.
Reuters quoted President Obama proclaiming, “We have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to the hardest hit homeowners in some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake."
Squeezing ever more profits from their workforce, America’s biggest banks chose to foreclose on Americans en masse, rather than just on the homes that were eligible for foreclosure. The banks, like many other American industries in recent history, claim they were simply too large to insure they were following the law on each and every individual customer. In this case however, innocent people lost their homes and were thrown out on the street at the point of a Sheriff’s gun – at least 750,000 American families to be exact.
The banks and their employees devised creative methods to throw families out of their homes in large batches and then resell the houses. They're accused of practices such as “robo-signing” – having a computer sign foreclosure documents instead of a human. They are also accused of processing hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents without ever reading them, much less checking to make sure they were accurate and legitimate.
In total, five major banks will pay a total of $25 billion dollars to homeowners, state governments and the federal government. In exchange, the government agreed to never file civil charges against the banks to recoup the homeowners’ losses in the future. The states reserved the right to seek criminal damages and individual homeowners are still free to hire their own attorneys and sue for damages in civil court. Considering it's been four years since the banking fraud was uncovered and not one single person has been put in prison, it’s highly unlikely anyone will at this point. Similarly, individual victims and their neighborhood attorneys stand little chance against corporate powerhouses like JP Morgan and Bank of America, especially when so many judges across America are financially rewarded by major corporations.
Read the article, ‘TIME Challenges Legitimacy of America’s Judicial Branch’ to see what these victims are up against.
According to Associated Press, the 25$ billion dollar settlement is the largest since the states secured a $206 billion dollar settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998. The five banks who agreed to avoid civil charges and the amount of money they’ll pay over the next three years are:
Bank of America - $8.6 billion
Wells Fargo - $4.3 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $4.2 billion
Citigroup - $1.8 billion
Ally Financial - $200 million
No comments:
Post a Comment