Maybe They’re Right…

I haven’t had much to say about the widening foreclosure scandal, mostly because there hasn’t been much I can add to the stories you’ve probably already seen in the media. You can pick up the AP story by way of Yahoo News if you’re not familiar with the situation, but the basic story is that various large mortgage lenders have been attempting to grab up every piece of real estate that is, or could possible be considered, in default through various foreclosures. Normally, these are complex legal activities that require the services of a paralegal, supervised by an attorney, but according to the stories that have been coming out of the Florida test cases, several of the major banks have been assigning anyone they can find to process these foreclosures, regardless of whether it is legally or financially appropriate to do so…


This may account for the cases that have been popping up in the media over the last few months, such as the story about the man BofA foreclosed on even though he didn’t have a mortgage (with them, or anyone else). There was also the case of the folks whose vacation home was foreclosed on who also didn’t have a mortgage with anybody, or dozens of similar reports from all over the United States. There have been cases of banks sending people to seize houses, sell off furniture and appliances, turn off the power (leaving huge amounts of frozen food to spoil), and even (in one case) break into a home where somebody was living in the middle of the night and try to throw the owner out into the street…


I don’t mean to pick on Bank of America, although they’ve been getting a large share of the news stories about this – and their PR has been unusually bad, in that they keep trying to blame the victims, especially in the case of the unqualified mortgage functionaries (called “robo-signers” in the media). Certainly, all of the other large mortgage lenders seem to have followed suit, and if you wanted to comb through the news aggregation cite archives, you could find dozens of similar stories. What really concerns me is that you will find these stories right next to the ones about bank officials receiving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, termination packages, and retirement benefits. Which may be legal, in the case of those companies which have paid off their TARP loans, but certainly isn’t right in any sense I understand…


For years now, social activists have been claiming that our society is no longer a republic (it was never really a democracy in the original sense) but rather a plutocracy, run by the very rich for their own benefit. Given the recent developments in the banking, real estate and health care industries (to the extent that there’s any difference between them anymore), it’s starting to look more and more like we’re being governed by a kleptocracy (a system in which the crooks at the top take everything they can grab). I’m not one to start railing about “robber barons” and right-wing conspiracies and all of the rich and/or successful people in this country being criminal oppressors of the poor and/or downtrodden; I never have been. But there are times these days when I read this sort of news and see the lives being destroyed, the dreams being trampled, and the good people who have done nothing wrong suffering to enable a handful of genuine plutocrats to make another billion dollars of personal fortune, and I just have to wonder…