Tag: crisis

Terry Jones Needs to be Committed (via Off the Top o’ My Head)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I don’t know if Terry Jones is insane or not. I don’t know if he should be committed for a long period of time. However, I do know that his conduct merits temporary custody and a mental exam by a professional. There certainly seems to me enough evidence of deviate behavior to merit such custody.

Even if he were found sane, the fact that he was examined would convey to the Muslim world how strange we find his behavior.

People in other nations find our willingness to allow virtually anyone to have their own church to be bizarre and a good number believe Christianity is a top-down organization with some kind of control. Churches in the United States cover the spectrum from the sublime to the bizarre. People in nations with more unified religions do not get this.

I’ve never been anywhere but the United States and sometimes, I find it bizarre. “That’s a church!,” I’ll think to myself while watching people handle snakes or preach that the bible is a self help handbook on how to get rich. How much more do the adherents of Islam find behavior here odd?

Let’s do something about Terry Jones.

James Pilant

Please read the post from Off the Top o’ My Head. He is more eloquent than I.

Terry Jones is coming to Dearborn, Michigan to celebrate Adolph Hitler’s Birthday on April 22, 2011, but his mental instability is indicated by the fact that he is two days off. Hitler was born on April 20, 1869. Jones plans to demonstrate against Islam and is hoping for a large turnout of like-minded religious nutcases. Just as Timothy McVeigh hoped to incite racial conflict and blew up the Murrah Federal Building as a means to that end, Jones w … Read More

via Off the Top o My Head

A View On The Mortgage Fiasco From A Georgia Professor

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, White Collar Crime

What’s the academic view point on this disaster you might ask. Well, one sign is this professor’s comments from the University of Georgia. It’s a brief comment and there are no commercials. Enjoy –

James Pilant

“Foreclosure Fiasco”

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, White Collar Crime

I borrowed my title from an article series on CBS Moneywatch. I can’t improve on it. It covers eloquently and briefly the situation.

Here’s the lead paragraphs from the article –

After three years of terrible news about the housing market, you’d think it couldn’t get much worse. But over the past week, a whole new can of awful has opened up. It turns out that the banks who lent money with reckless abandon during the real estate bubble were just as incompetent on the way down as they had been on the way up. Big lenders and mortgage servicers have been forced to acknowledge that, as they rushed to foreclose on hundreds of thousands of properties, they didn’t always check to make sure that they actually held the mortgages.

In one case, a Florida man who had paid cash for house was foreclosed upon for defaulting on a loan he never took out. In other cases, mortgage documents have been forged. So-called “robo-signers” have been churning out affidavits without checking to see if they are true. In response, foreclosures are all but frozen in 23 states, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a federal investigation, and attorneys general around the country are seeking to halt foreclosures. One major title insurer has announced it won’t insure homes foreclosed upon by J.P. Morgan Chase. That may sound like a technicality, but if the trend spreads, it could send the housing market into a tailspin.

CBS provides a slide show to give you a quick overview of the crisis. I recommend it.

Do not read the comments on the CBS web site! Trust me. Life is too short for that kind of reading.

The CBS report is a seven parter. If you are interested in how this came about and what is likely to happen, it is the best thing at the moment. I’m sure as time goes by, we’re going to get some better stuff because we’ll have more information, but CBS was first and it’s a good job.

James Pilant

Foreclosure Moratorium – Let’s Not Do Anything Rash?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business

Well, it’s begun. Editorialists, columnists, bloggers, all explaining why we must not have a moratorium. They further explain that most foreclosures were done correctly. Most of these homeowners had defaulted on their loans.

Now, poor stupid me, can’t help but wonder where you get your statistics on who should have been removed from the their home and was it justified. Those numbers aren’t public and since the mortgage companies didn’t look at these foreclosure records, they don’t know either. No one knows. But we are repeatedly assured the vast majority of home foreclosures were done properly.

I want to see some proof. I want some numbers. Taking the word of the mortgage companies on this issue doesn’t strike me as a particularly smart move.

We have been lied to, manipulated and played. I don’t like it.

Mortgage companies only had to assert to the courts that they had reviewed the necessary document. They did not have to proof knowledge in court because it was assumed that they knew the basic fast of the case. The lawyers for these firms affirmed that this was the case. They were lying. We don’t know if they owned the property. We don’t know if their numbers bear any passing resemblance to reality.

But the thing I’m curious about is that old Watergate question. Do you remember? Howard Baker asked it during the Watergate hearings. “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Okay, I want to know. “What did the CEO’s and directors of the mortgage companies know and when did the know it?”

You can add. “Why didn’t they stop it.”

You see, the mortgage companies conduct is not legal. It is reckless behavior and unconscionable. You can get sued for this and put in jail for criminal acts associated with it. (Taking people’s homes when you don’t own them sounds remarkably like grand larceny, doesn’t it?)

Let’s get some justice!

James Pilant

Ohio Attorney General Sues GMAC Mortgage Division – Texas Attorney General Halts Foreclosures!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Corporate Social Responsibility, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business, White Collar Crime1 Comment

It has begun, there will be lawsuits filed across the country to punish the foreclosure industry for their violations of state laws. Can they stop these crimes? What is the Attorney General in our state going to do?

The Ohio Attorney General is filing suit and the Massachusetts Attorney General is considering doing the same.

From Huffington Post –

Attorney General Richard Cordray said Wednesday the alleged fraud could involve hundreds of foreclosures in the state. The lawsuit claims the company’s employees signed and filed false affidavits to mislead courts. Cordray called the alleged fraud the “tip of an iceberg of industrywide abuse of the foreclosure process.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office is halting foreclosures across the state – From CBS7 – West Texas –

The Texas Attorney General has called for a halt on all home foreclosures, this includes all sales of property that were previously foreclosed upon and all evictions of people living in previously foreclosed properties.

State Attorney General, Greg Abbott, has sent a letter to thirty loan service companies freezing foreclosures in the state as they begin an investigation into foreclosure practices in the state.

“Evicting someone out of their home is very serious, and it needs to be done in the proper manner,” said Western National Bank Financial Advisor Mickey Cargile.

Will there be any justice?

Stay with my blog, I’m not letting this subject go until we get to the end of it.

James Pilant