Boys Will Be Boys
Some excerpts from a New York Times article today:
Let me explain (again) these "improprieties." First of all, let me point out that, when a mugger steals something from you, his behavior is not generally referred to as an "impropriety." And I presume that I will get pretty universal agreement with the suggestion that, if the government decided to do away with the laws against mugging, a lot more of us would have the privilege of being mugged.
Now, on to the bankers. This is apparently too hard for many to understand, but laws exist to protect us from predatory behavior on the part of those with no conscience. When we just do away with these laws, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going to happen. The system of banking regulations in this country was created to prevent the few from destroying life for all of us. It worked very well, from the last time Republican deregulation was all the rage (the 1920's- remember that?) until the 1980's, when the American people were suckered into electing a crook as president. He did away with our protection from financial criminals- by far the number one cause of our current economic collapse, as it is for the disastrous collapse in our medical care system, the rotting of our mainstream press, the gutting of our industrial base and various other problems which I am sure you can think of.
Deregulation is simply taking criminal behavior and making it legal. How can we be surprised a couple of decades later to wake up and discover that our economy has been taken over by criminals? This is the end product of what the Republican party sold the rubes, and it will go on until people accept the idea that government exists to protect us from predators- not just ones in keffiyas or turbans, but ones in expensive suits too.
"The housing mess got a lot messier last week as JPMorgan Chase halted 56,000 foreclosures amid doubts that it had correctly followed laws on the foreclosure process. The announcement came soon after GMAC Mortgage suspended an undisclosed number of foreclosures to gain time to review its legal procedures. There may be more suspensions to come.
During the bubble, banks and other lenders ignored loan standards and stuffed the mortgage pipeline with toxic loans and related securities. Since the bubble burst, efforts to rework bad loans have been slowed by the lenders’ resistance, and by their incompetence.
Now we learn that foreclosures, the end of the mortgage pipeline, have also been handled with a disregard for rules and standards. There is a pattern here — one that lawmakers and policy makers must change...in a rush to process hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, it turns out that the signers at Chase and GMAC processed 10,000 or more documents a month — “robo-signing” in industry parlance — without personal knowledge of the facts.
The improprieties raise the prospect that some families may have lost their homes in a less-than-legal process, and that some buyers of foreclosed homes may not have clear title to their properties."
Now we learn that foreclosures, the end of the mortgage pipeline, have also been handled with a disregard for rules and standards. There is a pattern here — one that lawmakers and policy makers must change...in a rush to process hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, it turns out that the signers at Chase and GMAC processed 10,000 or more documents a month — “robo-signing” in industry parlance — without personal knowledge of the facts.
The improprieties raise the prospect that some families may have lost their homes in a less-than-legal process, and that some buyers of foreclosed homes may not have clear title to their properties."
Let me explain (again) these "improprieties." First of all, let me point out that, when a mugger steals something from you, his behavior is not generally referred to as an "impropriety." And I presume that I will get pretty universal agreement with the suggestion that, if the government decided to do away with the laws against mugging, a lot more of us would have the privilege of being mugged.
Now, on to the bankers. This is apparently too hard for many to understand, but laws exist to protect us from predatory behavior on the part of those with no conscience. When we just do away with these laws, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going to happen. The system of banking regulations in this country was created to prevent the few from destroying life for all of us. It worked very well, from the last time Republican deregulation was all the rage (the 1920's- remember that?) until the 1980's, when the American people were suckered into electing a crook as president. He did away with our protection from financial criminals- by far the number one cause of our current economic collapse, as it is for the disastrous collapse in our medical care system, the rotting of our mainstream press, the gutting of our industrial base and various other problems which I am sure you can think of.
Deregulation is simply taking criminal behavior and making it legal. How can we be surprised a couple of decades later to wake up and discover that our economy has been taken over by criminals? This is the end product of what the Republican party sold the rubes, and it will go on until people accept the idea that government exists to protect us from predators- not just ones in keffiyas or turbans, but ones in expensive suits too.
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