This arrogant! – (from Money Talks News) –
How many people didn’t get an attorney and thought they were safe because they made all their payments?
James Pilant
Category: business ethics
Why False Affidavits Matter
I found this video today. It’s short and precise. I recommend you watch it. It explains (generally speaking) the affidavit’s importance in law.
Good Stuff!
Stay tuned. I spend hours a day reading about the foreclosure mess from major news sources, internet sites, legals sources and the foreign press.
I’ll keep you up to date.
James Pilant
Just For Fun – Aqua!
Aqua had a major hit some years ago with a novelty song called “Barbie Girl.” Less said the better.
Occasionally (okay, that’s a lie, regularly) I prowl the internet looking for music. One of my most favorite pieces of music is the Association’s intro music to the film, Goodbye Columbus. It’s almost impossible to find but I keep at it.
Anyway, I find Aqua’s novelty song and find a large number of other songs they have done. They are pretty good.
I think I’ve gotten so outraged over the many things that seem so unfair to me, that for a moment I’ve lost perspective. There are nice days. There are people trying to do the right thing. There is hope. But sometimes when confronted with walls and walls of information showing the pain of people in this country and the indifference of Washington and the sense of the entitlement of the financial elites, it’s hard to see the light.
Let’s listen to a little Aqua and relax for a minute (or in this case, 3:23).
or (3:32).
As always, I very much appreciate your kindness in reading my stuff.
James Alan Pilant
Woman Fired For Having Bad Credit
When the results of the credit report came in several days later, Meaux says she was promptly fired and escorted off the premises.
The last few days have seen a number of articles written about the effects of credit checks on employment. When unemployment last a few weeks, the financial drain can seriously damage a credit rating. When the kind of unemployment we have now is the norm, people are often unemployed for months or years. That is devastating to a credit rating.
So, allowing businesses to use credit ratings as a screening technique rules out the unemployed as potential hires.
Wasn’t that a great idea! What don’t we look at their DNA and see if they might have long term problems? Why don’t we go look at their kids grades? Isn’t that a sign of how good a person is? What about relatives? political beliefs? voting habits?
Why do we as a people allow credit ratings (run by three major companies) to determine so much about our lives?
Tell me something. Is it worse to have a criminal record or a bad credit rating?
You can get a criminal record expunged.
It’s time to stop the practice of background credit checks for employment.
(And for that matter, allowing employers to require you provide your medical records, is another thing that should disappear.)
James Pilant
Sheldon Whitehouse Weighs In On The Foreclosure Crisis
There is deep concern in Washington over the damage the foreclosure crisis might do to banks and the “recovery” in the marbled halls of our elected representatives, their expensive lobbyists and the beltway media.
They worry about the banks. I don’t waste a moment on them. The poor banks. God, I’d hate to get up in the morning and be as friendless, attorneyless and helpless as a major financial institution.
Here what I would like to hear more of. From the Huffington Post –
I have heard from constituents being ignored and abused in the foreclosure process: documents repeatedly lost, inconsistent advice, hours trapped on the phone, and common sense turned on its head to reject fair modifications in favor of foreclosure. I have heard from mayors about the terrible collateral cost to communities from foreclosure. I have watched the big loan servicers drag their feet in the Obama Administration’s well-intentioned mortgage modification program. And most recently, we have all learned that these companies have been playing fast and loose in their foreclosure process, carrying out foreclosures in the cheapest manner possible, often outsourcing the process to a “foreclosure mill” document processing company.
Trapped in administrative purgatory, real families suffer when the big banks and their servicers force foreclosures. Children pack up their rooms; parents struggle to find a temporary roof. We owe these families a fair chance to stay in their homes, and a humane, logical and orderly foreclosure process if all else fails.
That’s what I want to hear.
James Alan Pilant
Due Process
When someone takes your house, you have a right to be heard. Okay, not really. You’re just supposed to.
The courts have held to a presumption that the banks acted responsibly when they sought a foreclosure. This is because for decades the banks had acted as reliable, responsible members of the community. Only 23 states require a judicial proceeding to take someone’s home.
Unfortunately in those states, the hearing was the merest formality, because once again, there was a presumption in favor on the banks. The banks did not have to produce the documents and prove their case, they only had to provide an affidavit that they had looked at the documents and the facts were as stated.
The banks are no longer stable, reliable members of the community. I’m sure some still are. Nevertheless, piracy is more a correct synonym for modern financial practices than the word, banking.
No one who has watched the financial casino betting of the last decade can have the kind of trust in banks that used to be the norm.
It’s time to change the rules.
If you steal a car or shoplift a $4.95 toy from a store, you are entitled to due process. You have to be arraigned and told what the charges are. The state is required to produce evidence to convict in open court. The defendant is able to produce evidence of his own and call his own witnesses.
But a bank can take a half million dollar home based on the affidavit of former supermarket checker with no knowledge of the mortgage process at all (who didn’t look at the documents anyway). The bank does not have to provide supporting documents, and many judges are uninterested in hearing the problems of “dead beat” homeowner.
Now I recognize the difference between a criminal and a civil matter. However, that a criminal has far more rights than a law abiding homeowner should be a matter of concern.
It is time for banks to bring the documents to court. It is time for a full hearing of the homeowners claims.
No more “sworn” affidavits. Since the foreclosure industry has lied in these affidavits hundreds of thousands of times, I find them valueless.
Now, you might say, “James, just because these people lied on their affidavits doesn’t mean that we should change the system. After all most people who swear out an affidavit are telling the truth.”
I would say, “Okay, if you want to keep affidavits, you have to make them believable.”
You would respond, “How would we do that?”
“You jail or fine those who have filed false affidavits. Only then will the system have the necessary integrity.”
That’s what I want. Penalties for those that deliberate lie to the court for the financial gain of their employer and I want penalties for the banks that engaged in these practices.
Can you tell me that these companies had hundreds of thousands of these affidavits signed over two years and didn’t notice it? What definition of the word, affidavit, is a mystery to the attorneys of the banking industry?
As ridiculous as it may sound, I want justice.
James Pilant
Foreclosure Freeze (via Lesslie Giacobbi’s Blog)
Few writers have mentioned the dangers of the title insurers deciding to sit this dispute out. She does. I’d pay attention if I were you, particularly if you are thinking of buying a house.
James Pilant
Katherine Porter to Senate: No Non-Judicial Sales While System Is In Doubt (via Livinglies’s Weblog)
I found this site about foreclosures. It has case law and a great deal of useful information for those in foreclosure. I recommend you give it a look.
On the other hand, if you are an attorney, it’s a good place to start your hunt for the case law on this issue. And I promise you the case law is developing very rapidly in this area.
James Pilant
Reality Takes A Hike!!
From MSNBC Business – Real Estate –
On Wednesday, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Treasury Department’s homeownership preservation office, told a financial bailout watchdog panel that there was no evidence of risk to the financial system from the documents scandal — or from efforts by mortgage investors to force banks to buy back problem loans.
Okay, let’s take a deep breath.
Now, where do we start? The amount of self delusion necessary if she actually believed this is staggering. If she doesn’t believe it, she must believe that we are grotesquely stupid and amenable to the most childish stupidity.
Put me in her position and ask my opinion. It will run like this –
“Oh, my God, oh, my God, in six months we are going to have to pay out several hundred billion dollars to shore up the banking industry, the housing crisis will be extended by three to four years and there’s going to be a legal battle over bank buybacks of improper securities that should last roughly a decade.”
Oh, and I will probably add, “Thank the Lord, I’m admitting how serious the situation is, because I’d sure look like a fool if I told everyone there was no problem! After that, I wouldn’t have any credibility at all.”
It’s hard to add to this. I could throw numbers running down the page for quite a distance about the huge amounts of money and the incredible number of mortgages affected by the crisis. But you can read, if you’ve paying any attention, you already know the numbers are huge.
So, I’ll let what I say stand without throwing the numbers at you. After all, I’ve probably got 15 to 20 posts where I talk about the numbers in detail.
I tell you guys. I just don’t get it. I graduated from Oklahoma’s Northeastern State University, got my law degree at the University of Tulsa College of Law. This woman has a BA, sociology and urban planning, and MBA, University of Maryland. Why is her thinking so different from mine?
Well, she’s got something I haven’t got, twenty years in the banking industry, most of it at Bank of America.
That would be the same bank that resumed foreclosures after deciding it didn’t have a problem? It would.
I guess I might not see a problem there either, if I only just had her “experience.”
James Pilant
More Evidence That Foreclosures Were Done Incorrectly – 55,000 Times!
Remember everybody including the White House says there is no systematic problem with the mortgage industry. Wells Fargo is apparently not cooperating with the narrative
Wells Fargo admitted Wednesday it made mistakes in the paperwork for thousands of foreclosure cases and promised to fix them.
The San Francisco-based bank said it plans to refile documents in 55,000 of the cases by mid-November. The company said not all those cases included errors but didn’t say how many thousands did.
Wells Fargo described the mistakes as technical and said it has no plans to halt the foreclosure process, though filing new paperwork will cause some delays.
“We don’t believe that there are instances in which the foreclosures would not have occurred otherwise,” said Teri Schrettenbrunner, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman. The documents are being refiled in the 23 states where a judge’s approval is needed to complete a foreclosure.
I guess there isn’t any real problem. Oh! and they think so too – (from further down in the article) –
On a conference call with investors this month, Stumpf said the bank is “confident that our practices, procedures and documentation” are accurate.
Well, that’s reassuring. Except for those, well, 55,000 mistakes, they’re accurate.
I teach. By their standards, not only did all my students pass with A’s, they passed and got full credit for all the classes meeting nearby. They may have passed courses in other dimensions and forms of reality.
I hate to tell them this, but 55,000 mistakes is a lot of mistakes! Further, it doesn’t make claims that A) “We don’t believe that there are instances in which the foreclosures would not have occurred otherwise,” and B) “the bank is confident that our practices, procedures and documentation are accurate,” sound very convincing.
It’s kind of like a married man being caught with another woman. He didn’t really cheat except for those 55,000 times. Both he and Wells Fargo want you to know that it isn’t that big a deal.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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