Obama Administration Continues to Protect Banks, Ignores Consumers

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

It seems that I can never get free of this subject. Obama never met  banker he didn’t like and whose interest he didn’t place ahead of everyone else. One of the things that average Americans resent is the lack of prosecution of these rogue banks. Just what did the banks do that makes me so angry? They lied directly in court claiming ownership of properties they did not own. The filed false affidavits lying about their ownership. They defrauded many customers by lying about the terms of the mortgage agreement. The lured investors into securities backed my mortgages that they knew would fail as investments and then bid against those investments with derivatives to make ever more money. To add one further insult, these heartless financial wizards foreclosed on serving veterans’ homes contrary to federal law.

Now get this. These arrogant people created their own system of ownership. Under the law of each State enshrined in American law, ownership of real property is proven by a careful record’s trail kept in most states in each county court house. To evade fees and speed the process, the mortgage machine created a computer system called MERS. They would make a single transaction using the county system then they traded the properties much like the homes in the monopoly board game. Instead of careful record keeping, we have a system where in many cases, no one knows who owns the property. In case you missed it, by using their own private system of property ownership, they never paid a dime of taxes on the transfers defrauding the states out of millions of dollars of taxes.

For more than 200 years, owning property has been the goal of Americans. To be a landowner was a mark of prestige, of achievement and security. But keeping property lines straight, land fraud and busted titles have bedeviled citizens. To curb these abuses laws were established to make as certain as possible land ownership, to protect the right to property. The right to own property is not sacred but it is as close to sacred as laws can make it.

These men, these arrogant men created their own separate legal system ignoring the laws of the government and the rights of citizens. They then used it to evade taxes and speculate like Riverboat gamblers playing with chips.

The law provides penalties so that justice may be served. Those who fail to obey the law are punished. Those are hardly radical thoughts. They are the basis of a system that treat both the small and the great equally. The administration is pushing an agreement which will free the mortgage banks from responsibility for their crimes.

What kind of nation do we live in where a petty shoplifter faces jail time and fines and bankers are freely given immunity without any assurance that I find credible that they will behave better in the future. I mean after engaging in a crime spree that makes organized crime look like a child stealing candy, they walk free. Doesn’t that give then the impression that they are above the law. It gives me that impression.

Can’t we have justice? What did I do? What did my fellow citizens do? Are we some of lesser creation that we must watch in awe and envy while those who evade over and over not just the law but evade their responsibilities of citizens to pay taxes and to act for the common good?

What kind of country are we becoming?

James Pilant

The Obama Administration’s ‘New’ Bank Fraud Deal: Still Unfair, Still Unjust, Still Unbalanced

The Obama White House continues to push for a settlement that would let bankers avoid being punished – or even investigated – for a wave of mortgage-related crimes that includes perjury, tax evasion, and several types of fraud.

Despite the President’s new-found populism – rhetorically, anyway – officials in his Administration continue to push an unfair deal designed to conceal the financial Crime of the Century.

The Financial Times reported on new details of the proposed settlement, whose stated purpose is to punish banks and reduce the amount of money owed by underwater homeowners. But it’s increasingly clear that the deal wouldn’t help homeowners very much and wouldn’t punish bankers at all.

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