We have been told over and over again during the last few weeks that the vast majority of foreclosures were done correctly. The White House and the various cabinet departments have echoed this claim.
This is all very odd. Since, the foreclosure documents were in hundreds of thousands of cases not even looked at, how would the banks or the Obama Administration know how many were done correctly?
They can’t. It’s impossible for them to have such knowledge.
Why would they say so? I suppose it’s a matter of faith, a belief that these huge institutions are run by competent, moral people. Faith is not a good substitute for factual data.
Well, new information is coming in. I have predicted that this kind of data would be coming in and here is the first.
From the New York Daily News –
Thousands of foreclosures across the city are in question because paperwork used to justify the seizure of homes is riddled with flaws, a Daily News probe has found.
Banks have suspended some 4,450 foreclosures in all five boroughs because of paperwork problems like missing and inaccurate documents, dubious signatures and banks trying to foreclose on mortgages they don’t even own.
So, 4,450 botched mortgage foreclosures have been found in five boroughs. That hardly squares with the idea that virtually all foreclosures were done correctly.
Here’s what one of the judges said, (again from the article) – Schack told The News he expects to see more paperwork snafus. “It’s like an onion we keep peeling,” he said. “It seems to be layers and layers of problems.”
Do you believe that the vast majority of foreclosures were done correctly?
I expect much more data to come out and it will not be to the foreclosure industry’s benefit. Nor will the Obama administration escape blame for its ridiculous unsupported claims about the crisis.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
In my personal opinion, the number of botched foreclosures is not the issue. The issue is that it has happened beyond the scope of being a rare isolated incident.
In one of my sophomore level engineering classes, called Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, our final exam was to select the proper materials and geometries for each member of a standard, run of the mill, truss bridge. Each member was to be designed with a given safety factor in mind to protect against cyclic fatigue of the truss members.
I was about 3/4th of the way finished with my exam when one of my classmates got up, and turned in his exam. The professor had the proper design right in front of him. He quickly compared my classmates design with the proper design, and then told my classmate that he received an F on the exam. When my classmate challenged this, my professor pointed to one of the truss members and said “Your bridge will fail, you get an F.”
My classmate raised his voice in protest. He said,”Professor, I messed up on TWO truss members! TWO out of 24! I shouldn’t get an F for that!”
By this time, the whole class had stopped working on their exams and were all staring at the student and the professor. I will never forget what the professor told my classmate. He looked at the boy and said, “Tell that to the people who were on your bridge when it failed.”
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