Prince George's County Foreclosures & Bush's Deregulation Policies

Thanks To Former Pres. George W. Bush's Wall Street Deregulation Which Spurred Predatory Lending Practices, The Most Affluent Black County In America: Prince George, Maryland Is Now Experiencing Record Foreclosures.

Do You See How GOP Lawmakers Are Slowly Trying To Destroy The Black Community's Wealth?

The American Dream Is NOT Dead!

However GOP Leaders Want Black & Hispanic People To Think Its Dead For Them.

VOTE OBAMA IN 2012!



Affluent black county mired in mortgage mess


America’s wealthiest black county is in trouble.

Prince George’s County, Md., has gained prominence in recent years as the most affluent county in America with a majority African-American population. Average income in the county is almost double the national average for black families, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey.

But the county, adjacent to the District of Columbia, has been laid low by the recession and the mortgage meltdown and now holds a more dubious distinction: a rising foreclosure rate that ranks as the worst in Maryland.

More than half of all housing sales in the county so far this year have been properties in foreclosure, a rate that dwarfs other counties in the state, according to MRIS, which provides listing services for real estate agents. This has caused a domino effect of social, economic and financial problems to ripple throughout Prince George’s communities.

“The biggest changes I’ve seen are very visual,” said District Heights resident Yvonne Brown. “If you just drive down my street, there are four empty homes with the grass ten feet tall. It’s heartbreaking.”

Foreclosure sales, which have risen from 34 percent in 2009 to 51 percent so far this year, are just one sign of problems affecting Prince George's.

The county has imposed a hiring freeze, except for new public safety workers, and it recently cut $13 million from the school budget, although the county government's finances are solid enough that all three major rating agencies recently awarded it their top AAA bond rating. A wave of homicides this year has raised concern about safety in the county, and former County Executive Jack Johnson pleaded guilty last month to federal charges stemming from a sweeping corruption investigation.

Experts say there are a variety of reasons why the county ended up in the middle of the mortgage mess.

A decade ago, housing stock in Prince George’s was significantly less expensive on average than in any other suburban county in the D.C. metro area, so it had strong appeal for first-time homebuyers, said Anirban Basu, economic analyst and CEO of Sage Policy Group, a Maryland consulting firm. In general, home prices in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods rose more quickly in the boom and have fallen more sharply in the bust, Federal Reserve Gov. Janet Yellen noted in a speech Thursday.

Prince George's County also was a hotbed for speculative activity among professional and amateur investors during the housing upturn, Basu said. “The demographics of those affected correspond neatly to the demographics of a first-time home buyer: lower and less-stable incomes,” he said.

Brown, 34, is a prime example. As a first-time homebuyer and single black woman, Brown moved to Prince George’s in 2006 from nearby Montgomery County because she couldn’t afford home prices there.

She paid $230,000 for a tiny, 664-square-foot home that she said is “more like a small cottage.” The previous owners had paid $60,000.

“I didn’t go outside of my means and buy an astronomically large home,” she said. “I did something extremely practical.”

Bob Ross, president of the county branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said it was clear that when the housing bubble burst, many newcomers were hit harder than the older, more established families.

“People didn’t fully understand what they were doing when they refinanced or when they took out more mortgages,” he said. “I can’t speak for the NAACP, but I do personally believe that discriminatory lending was going on.”

A 2008 report from the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity highlighted the practice of “reverse redlining,” which occurs when lenders target minorities with costly, subprime loans that they may not need or be able to afford. Analysis of data from 2006 indicates that roughly 54 percent of African-Americans and 47 percent of Latinos received subprime loans, compared with about 17 percent of whites, according to the report.

“If one considers the group that is most impacted (i.e. African-Americans and Hispanics), one can make a credible argument that the lending practices and the aggressiveness of subprime lender greatly contributed to the high rate of foreclosure,” Eric Brown, director of Prince George County’s Housing and Community Development Department said in an email.

Newly elected County Executive Rushern L. Baker III said his administration is doing everything in its power to help keep residents in their homes. County officials have allocated $1.8 million in their 2012 budget to rehabilitate abandoned and foreclosed properties.

Baker said in an email that the county is stressing preventative measures "to get people assistance before it’s too late.”.

Carol Gilbert, assistant secretary for neighborhood revitalization in Maryland’s Housing and Community Development Department, said Prince George's County accounts for 25 percent of the state's foreclosures. "It will get worse before it gets better, especially for Prince George’s County,” she said.

“While a lot of gains were made in home ownership, more so in the last three to five years, the foreclosure crisis really hit the minority community the hardest,” she said. “That’s a very big step backwards for building equity and wealth over time.”

In an effort to slow the foreclosure wave, the county is promoting non-profit housing counseling programs like the Housing Initiative Partnership (HIP), which provides financial literacy resources and helps homeowners understand their options.

Brown has been taking advantage of HIP’s help to try to get a modification on the two mortgages she has on her home. Without their help, she would have probably lost her home, she said.

With one in four people in Prince George’s behind on their mortgage, and only six counselors on HIP’s staff, their phones have been ringing off the hooks for the last three years and their calendars are booked for weeks, said Mary Hunter, director of

There’s just not enough funding to support the counseling that’s needed,” Hunter said.

While Hunter still has clients coming in because of predatory loans, more of her clients now are having trouble due to declining incomes. They aren’t necessarily unemployed, she said, but they may have lost a second job, overtime hours or supplementary income from a spouse. Also, Hunter said fewer people are receiving unemployment benefits now than a year ago.

As a high school English teacher, Brown has had to deal with budget cutbacks and furloughs that affected her paychecks. The after-school tutoring programs that Brown depended on for a supplemental income are gone too.

Now she’s hoping to find help in the state’s Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program. The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development recently received federal funding to offer a limited number of no-interest loans to homeowners who have fallen behind because of loss of income due to unemployment or health issues.

“There’s a huge demand for this program now,” Hunter said. Eligible homeowners can get a zero-interest loan of up to $50,000 for two years to help them with their mortgage. “It can be the only hope people have to save their homes,” she said.

Brown is in the process of gathering her paperwork to apply for the program. Though she has her hands full with a 10-month old child and another on the way, she has been relentless in the fight for her home.

“People don’t understand how much help is out there,” she said. “They’re very depressed and consumed in their situation, and they can’t get past it to apply for a program to get the help they need.”


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Sources: MSNBC, The Grio, Washington Post, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Touts Auto Industry Manufacturing Jobs Success! 2012 Political Victory!

The Success Of Pres. Obama's Investment In The American Auto Industry (Manufacturing Jobs) Are The Type Of Political Successes He Should Be Throwing Back In GOP Leaders' Faces As They Slam His Efforts To Restore An Economy Previously Destroyed By George W. Bush's Deregulated Wall Street Policies.

Great Job Pres. Obama!

VOTE OBAMA IN 2012






In Ohio, Obama defends policies in face of disappointing jobs report

President Obama on Friday strongly defended his policies, especially the federal bailout of the auto industry, and pledged to fight to improve the economy, which still faces challenges to recover from a grueling recession that he inherited.

Speaking at a Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, the president indirectly noted the poor jobs report that was released earlier in the day.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.1% in May, But Even More Striking The Net Increase In Jobs Was Just 54,000 A Relatively Lackluster Number.

"There are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery. We're going to pass through some rough terrain, that even a Wrangler would have a hard time with," Obama told the workers, citing the Chrysler Corp.'s off-road SUV.

The audience shouted back "No!" and Obama added with a grin: "Wrangler can go over anything, huh?"

Though he didn't directly mention the poor jobs report, it was clearly on the president's mind as he praised the government bailout of the auto industry as necessary to help some workers keep their jobs and to aid businesses that depended on workers' spending money in their communities. He carefully noted that Chrysler had paid back its loans from his administration earlier than expected.

"I don't want to pretend like everything's solved. We've still got a long way to go, not just in this industry, but in our economy," Obama said, mentioning "all of our friends, all of our neighbors who are still feeling the sting of recession. There's nobody here who doesn't know somebody who is looking for work and hasn't found something yet.

"This economy took a big hit. You know, it's just like if you had a bad illness," Obama said of the recession. "If you got hit by a truck, it's going to take a while for you to mend. That's what's happened to the economy, it's taking a while to mend.

"There are still some headwinds coming at us," Obama said, citing rising gasoline prices, political instability in the Mideast and the economic disruption from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan as among the difficulties that have hurt the economic recovery.

The economy is expected to be the key battleground in the 2012 elections, and Republicans lost no time in citing the new jobs report as an indication of what they called the failure of the Obama administration.

"Today, three years into his term, we have more news that unemployment has ticked up again," Republican challenger Mitt Romney said at a town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire. "We have 16 million people out of work or who just stopped looking for work, millions more are in jobs that are well beneath their capacities. We have home values continuing to decline three years later. Three years later, we have a record number of foreclosures; three years later, higher gasoline prices, higher food prices. People are feeling more squeezed."

Romney is considered one of the leaders for the GOP presidential nomination, according to most polls. But the rest of the Republican field also chimed in.

"Today's underwhelming job numbers report demonstrates President Obama's failure to address the tough challenges we face as a nation," stated Tim Pawlenty. "We need a leader to stand up and make the difficult choices essential to spur economic growth and create new jobs."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in a prepared statement said, "Once again weak job creation and an increase in unemployment to 9.1% is further evidence that the administration's policies are failing and the Obama recession could become much worse. America cannot wait, we must take immediate steps to put America back on the path of economic growth and job creation."

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is considering whether to enter the GOP sweepstakes for the presidential nomination, argued that he had created jobs in his state. "As governor of Utah -- while our country faded into recession -- we created an environment that brought jobs to the state without resorting to out-of-control spending and debt," Huntsman said in a statement.


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Sources: AP, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Preet Bharara: Wall Street's Biggest Enemy! Obama Appointee

Under George W. Bush's Administration Insider Trading & Securities Fraud Peaked (i.e., Bernie Madoff Among Others).

Due To The Republican Party's Bitter Revulsion Of Regulation & In Exchange For Fat Campaign Checks, GOP Lawmakers Turned A Blind Eye & Deaf Ear To Corporate/ Financial Crimes.

Then Comes The Nov. 2008 Election Which Ushers In Pres. Obama!

He Comes In Smiling Like A Subservient Lamb, Fooling Everyone!

This Smiling, Shrewd, "Subservient" Lamb Delivers A Powerful Blow To Wall Street By Appointing U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara To The Manhattan Office.

Mr. Bharara Is Now Wall Street's Biggest ENEMY!

Ha Ha Ha!

CAUTION:

I Strongly Advise Mr. Bharara To Watch His Back!

Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer Once Went After Wall Street's Crooks And Look What Happened To Him.

Let Me Be Clear Despite My Disagreements With Pres. Obama's Administration In The Past On Some Issues, I Am Without A Doubt, Boldly Endorsing Pres. Barack Obama For Re-election In 2012!

Its NOT Unusual For A Politician's Constituents To Disagree With Them On Certain Issues Because Human Beings Are Individuals.

However At The End of The Day Its About Who's STILL Standing By Their Side.

I Stand By Pres. Obama's Side!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

U.S. Attorney Sends a Message to Wall Street

Every few days during the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group’s co-founder, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, would quietly enter the courtroom and take a seat in the last row of the gallery.

From that unassuming vantage point, Mr. Bharara watched his colleagues try to persuade a jury to convict the former hedge fund titan of securities fraud and conspiracy.

The consistent presence of Mr. Bharara at the largest insider trading case in a generation — and the office’s resounding victory on Wednesday — signaled that the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan was back as the sheriff of Wall Street.

Over the last decade, the New York attorney general, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, the Manhattan district attorney and even the Justice Department in Washington angled for their share of financial fraud cases, an area traditionally dominated by the Southern District. For example, Eliot Spitzer grabbed headlines when he was New York attorney general by focusing on malfeasance at investment banks.

But Mr. Bharara has not-so-quietly reaffirmed his office’s leading role in pursuing corporate crime with this landmark insider trading case, which relied on aggressive prosecutorial methods and unprecedented tactics. For the first time, federal authorities used wiretaps to listen in on stock traders swapping illegal tips.

“What this case has done,” said Neil M. Barofsky, a former Southern District prosecutor who recently served as the special inspector general for the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, “goes well beyond simply putting a billionaire hedge fund manager behind bars.”

“The case will impact an entire industry,” Mr. Barofsky said. He said that Mr. Bharara “did more than just oversee and support the prosecution — he made sure that the target audience, traders on Wall Street, fully understood the extraordinary lengths that his office will go to discover these crimes, and that justice will be served.”

It has been 21 months since Mr. Bharara, 42, was appointed United States attorney by President Obama.

In that short tenure, his staff has ventured far beyond Wall Street, prosecuting some of the nation’s — and the world’s — most prominent defendants. Among them: Faisal Shahzad in the Times Square bomb plot; agents in a Russian spy ring; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be tried in the civilian system; Viktor Bout, a Russian accused of being an arms trafficker; a Somali man charged with piracy; and four men charged in a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx.

Not every case has gone smoothly. In Mr. Ghailani’s trial, the jury acquitted him of more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy and convicting him of a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. Nonetheless, Mr. Ghailani received a life sentence.

Some academics and newspaper columnists have also criticized Mr. Bharara for not filing criminal charges against senior executives at the center of the financial crisis. Last week, when his office filed a civil mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, he said there was not enough evidence to justify a criminal complaint.

Mr. Bharara was an infant in 1970 when he came to the United States from India with his parents. He grew up in Eatontown, N.J., and earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia Law School.

After several years in private practice, including a stint at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in New York, Mr. Bharara became a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, handling organized crime, narcotics and securities fraud cases. In 2005, he became chief counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, leading a Congressional inquiry into the firings of United States attorneys.

Some lawyers have wondered aloud whether Mr. Bharara may have political aspirations like his predecessors, including former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who filled the post in the 1980s. As with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Bharara is a charismatic figure who is comfortable in front of cameras, can talk tough and has a knack for the witty sound bite. At a news conference announcing Mr. Rajaratnam’s arrest, Mr. Bharara riffed off a famous line from the movie “Wall Street.”

“Greed, sometimes, is not good,” he said.

Unlike Mr. Giuliani, whose political ambitions seemed barely hidden while he led the prosecutor’s office, Mr. Bharara has told friends he has no interest in elected office.

“Everything about Preet’s record suggests that he’s a federal prosecutor for all the right reasons,” said Randy Mastro, a lawyer at Gibson Dunn and a former top deputy under Mayor Giuliani. “The best prosecutors are often those who don’t have political ambitions.”

Mr. Mastro, who overlapped for a time with Mr. Bharara at Gibson Dunn, added, “But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be drafted into running.”

Ellen Davis, Mr. Bharara’s spokeswoman, said in a statement on Thursday: “Preet loves his job and has no desire to run for public office now or ever.”

Mr. Bharara has not commented publicly on the Rajaratnam verdict, other than a short statement in a news release. But in a series of speeches, he has explained his aggressive approach to corporate crime.

“When sophisticated business people begin to adopt the methods of common criminals, we have no choice but to treat them as such,” Mr. Bharara said weeks after revealing the use of wiretaps in building a case against Mr. Rajaratnam. “To use tough tactics in these circumstances is not being heavy-handed; it is being even-handed.”

He has taken that approach in other areas of financial crime.

His office secured convictions in two high-profile criminal cases against bank executives accused of stealing proprietary computer code related to high-frequency trading businesses, including a case against a former programmer at Goldman Sachs. More recently, Mr. Bharara’s prosecutors charged the operators of three popular online poker sites with fraud and money laundering.

And Mr. Bharara continues to pursue insider trading cases. Over the last 18 months, his office has charged 47 individuals with insider trading crimes, 36 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted. At a recent news conference, he indicated there was more to come.

“I wish I could say we were just about finished, but sadly we are not.”




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Sources: MSNBC, NY Times, Russia Today, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Bernanke: TIME's 2009 Person Of The Year...Ron Paul Reacts

Rep. Paul: Fed chief 'can do no good'. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas – author of “End the Fed” – reacts to TIME's announcement of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as its 2009 Person of the Year.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ben Bernanke is TIME’s 2009 Person of the Year


Remember September 2008? The month when the entire U.S. financial system almost collapsed? Ever since that pivotal moment, one person has been in the crosshairs, making decision after decision that has impacted nearly every American alive today.

That person is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Because of his monumental influence on the world’s most important economy, Bernanke has been named TIME magazine’s 2009 Person of the Year.

TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel called the Federal Reserve “the most powerful, least understood government force shaping our lives” as he revealed his magazine’s choice live on TODAY Wednesday morning.

“He was the great scholar of the Depression who saw another depression coming, and did everything he could to stop it,” Stengel said of Bernanke. “He's a controversial figure. He’s a Republican appointed by a Democratic president. It’s a really interesting combination of factors.”

How about Steve Jobs? Barack Obama?
The decision to name Bernanke Person of the Year followed weeks of debate and discussion among TIME editors and staff members. Here are others TIME considered for the distinction:

* TIME’s No. 2 runner-up after Bernanke was Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Stengel told TODAY’s Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira that McChrystal came “very close” to usurping Bernanke’s Person of the Year cover: “He really was the prime mover behind the change in Afghanistan strategy.”

* No. 3: The Chinese worker — an acknowledgement of an increasingly influential group of people in one of the world’s most powerful economies.

* No. 4: Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Speaker of the House.

* No. 5: Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist.

* Other contenders included Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple Inc., and President Barack Obama, who was named Person of the Year in 2008. “Obama could be Person of the Year every year, but not this year,” Stengel commented.

In the end, it was Bernanke’s sway over a global financial crisis that touched millions — if not billions — of lives that led to TIME’s decision. “He is influencing how the economy operates,” Stengel explained.

(Interestingly, more than 16,000 TODAYshow.com readers voted on their picks for Person of the Year and made decidedly different decisions. Readers’ top choice was Steve Jobs, who garnered 44 percent of the vote; the second pick was President Obama, who got 20 percent. Bernanke received backing from 3.2 percent of readers who participated.)

Very, very close to a Depression

The Person of the Year designation comes at a time when Bernanke, 56, is reeling from criticism on all sides and defending his record at the Federal Reserve — not to mention his very job. Earlier this month, he had to appear at a Senate hearing about his nomination to a second four-year term. A Senate committee will vote on his nomination on Thursday, one day before TIME’s Person of the Year edition hits newsstands.

When President Obama announced his intention to nominate Bernanke to a second term back in August, he credited the central bank chairman with preventing the nation’s crippling recession from turning into a second Great Depression.

“Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom, with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic free fall,” Obama said at the time.

Bernanke’s confirmation appears to be secure, but it’s being debated as mistrust of the Federal Reserve approaches an all-time high. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas — author of a best-selling book called “End the Fed” — is part of a movement on Capitol Hill to rein in the central bank and subject its monetary policy to congressional audits. (Bernanke, who has long argued for the Fed to be more open and transparent, fears such audits could mire the Fed’s setting of interest rates in politics.)

The Fed chairman also has taken plenty of lumps because one of his key steps to stem the financial crisis — using taxpayer money to bail out distressed banks — is wildly unpopular with the general public. The perception is that Bernanke chose to lend a hand to fat cats on Wall Street while ordinary workers had to keep enduring one body blow after another.

Bernanke addresses that issue at length in TIME magazine. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Bernanke also knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic. There’s a vast difference between 10 percent and 25 percent unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. He wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street.

He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall. ‘We came very, very close to a depression ... The markets were in anaphylactic shock,’ he told TIME during one of three extended interviews. ‘I’m not happy with where we are, but it’s a lot better than where we could be. ... Of course, there were things we could have done better, but this was a perfect storm.’ ”

I’m frustrated too

In addition to rescuing private companies that were failing, Bernanke slashed a key lending rate to nearly zero, printed new dollars to keep the economy moving, and took other steps to prevent credit markets from drying up completely.

It all amounted to improvising and trying new things quickly — something Bernanke knew a timid and passive Fed had failed to do during the Depression of the 1930s. He actually spent his early career as an economist studying the Depression’s origins, and his writings on the subject have brought him considerable respect in his field.

For years, Bernanke has been known as quiet and thoughtful, brainy and bright. After graduating from high school as valedictorian with a near-perfect SAT score — 1,590 out of 1,600 — he kept racking up academic accolades: an undergraduate degree in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard; a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; professorships at Stanford, New York University, MIT and Princeton. He served as chairman of Princeton’s Economics Department from 1996 to 2002.

In fact, his career had been so solidly centered in academia that some were stunned when then-President George W. Bush tapped him to replace Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman in 2006. (Bernanke did serve as a Fed governor from 2002 to 2005.)

But in the final analysis, the professor helped guide the country out of recession and toward a tenuous recovery. He knows much pain remains for millions of American workers. The unemployment rate is in the double digits, credit is tighter than it should be, incomes are stagnant and home foreclosures continue to rise.

“I understand why people are frustrated. I’m frustrated too,” Bernanke told TIME. “I’m not one of those people who look at this as some kind of video game. I come from Main Street, from a small town that’s really depressed. This is all very real to me.”


Sources: TIME, MSNBC, Morning Joe Show

Pres. Obama Regulation Of All Homeowner Associations & Developers Is A Must! Please Keep Your Promise

A Letter To President Obama To Please Protect America's Homeowners

January 20, 2009

Please Honor Your Promises to Us

By American Homeowners Resource Center

Today, you took the oath of office as President of the United States, and swore to uphold its Constitution.

We, the Homeowners of America, endorsed and voted for you in overwhelming numbers because you promised to take care of the people, you promised to end the war, you promised to make the U.S. a country of principle in foreign affairs, and you promised that it would not be politics as usual in Washington.

We recognize that being a candidate for the presidency and being President are not the same thing. We saw that change in you on election night on November 4, 2008. You were no longer asking us to give you the power. You now had the power. It was a sobering moment for you and us.

Over the past 10 weeks since your election, we have seen you change from being the fiery speaker, to the circumspect politician who appointed his cabinet. Most of the appointees were from the politics-as-usual school. We have seen you back down from your campaign pledge to end the tax-breaks for the rich because you did not want to ruffle the feathers of the Republicans. Apparently, that means more to you than the plight of millions of Americans who are without jobs and homes.

We have heard you say that George Bush is a good man. Yet he has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, lost over 4000 U.S. troops,and produced tens of thousands of cripples among U.S. service personnel. How can that be a good man? You are now committing the nation to a deeper war in Afghanistan. Will that be another Vietnam? How many more billions will we pay on wars that - in your words - are "dumb"?

Hundreds of millions are being spent on your inauguration. If you were hungry and homeless and without health insurance, what would you think about that?

The hopes which you raised in your campaign can evaporate as quickly. When your nominess for Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stated that your administration would marry principle with pragmatism, it sent a warning shot across the bow of many homeowners. Is every principle subject to being bent to the whims of pragmatism? Does that mean that you would sometimes torture? There are some principles that are above pragmatism. We hope that you remember this.

We must all look to the future, but looking to the past can provide a lot of insight for the future. He who does not know history, is condemned to relive its mistakes. Corruption is rampant among lawyers and judges in this country. Will you have the Justice Department crack down on that? Corruption is rampant in every nook and cranny of Wall Street and corporate America. Will you have the Justice Department crack down on that? If we only look to the future, we are prisoners of the past.

We also hope that you will help the millions of homeowners who are struggling with falling home prices and trying to pay their mortgages in the midst of unemployment and recession. Giving money to banks has clearly not worked. Why not try helping homeowners? They are the ones who are drowning.

The homeowners of America, especially the 55 milliion who live in homeowner associations, have suffered many abuses in preceding years.They have been targets of foresclosure scams by lawyers, aided by judges who do not practice justice and politicians who live off the lawyers' largesse.

We recognize that you face daunting challenges ahead, and we wish you well. We hope that you will honor your pledges in your campaign, so that more pain is not inflicted on the people of America.


Homeowner Associations start foreclosures to collect dues

IRVING, Texas — Thousands of Americans who have generally kept up with their mortgages are still in danger of losing their homes because they made a fateful trade-off in this shaky economy: They let their homeowner association dues slide.

Many homeowners are learning to their surprise that condo and neighborhood associations that oversee security patrols, mow lawns, plant flowers and clean the community swimming pool might have the right to foreclose when dues aren't paid. That right is often written into the purchase agreement signed by the homeowner.

"We have compassion for those folks," says Andrew Schlegel, executive vice president for Merit Property Management, which manages more than 140,000 California homes in community associations. "At the same time, we feel for the rest of the homeowners who are paying their dues."

Most people end up saving their homes. HOA boards often work with down-on-their-luck neighbors to come up with some sort of compromise. That's what happened with Lacey Pilat, who lost her job catering lavish corporate parties and nearly lost her two-story house in this Dallas suburb.

The management company for the Beacon Hill homeowner association sent Pilat a foreclosure notice in April after several attempts to collect her $450 annual dues, which paid for the mowing of front lawns. The amount she owed snowballed to $1,800 after penalties and fees. The company eventually agreed to let Pilat and her husband, Steve, pay the debt over time.

Gauging the number of foreclosures nationwide by HOAs is difficult. But in Texas, foreclosure attempts initiated by HOAs in 19 counties are up 30% from two years ago, according to Dallas-based Foreclosure Listing Services. In the San Antonio area alone, foreclosure actions by HOAs jumped to 170 in April from 21 in April 2008, RexReport.com says.

In Florida, attorney Bob Tankel, who represents hundreds of homeowner and condo associations, says he has increased his staff from three to 16 in the past 18 months to handle a mounting caseload of 3,500 open collections. About one-fifth of those cases have reached foreclosure, he says.

In California, Schlegel says more than 6% of the homes that his company manages are in some stage of delinquency on membership dues, up from around 1% in previous years.

More than 59 million people live in more than 300,000 association-governed communities nationwide, according to the Community Associations Institute, the nation's largest group for homeowners and condo boards.

If the house is foreclosed on, it is sold, and the HOA takes what it is owed from the proceeds. Proceeds also go to the bank to pay off the mortgage.



Homeowner Associations forcing homeowners into Foreclosures

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Homeowners associations' reserve the right by law to forcible foreclose on property if residents fall behind on their dues.

Associations in Texas, Florida and California are beginning to exercise the foreclosures. Not one case of a homeowners' association forced foreclosure is on-record in Nashville.

No homeowner NewsChannel5 spoke with was aware of the loophole.

"First of all, that's news to me," said Bellevue homeowner Rob Crosby. "It's very unfair - if it's true that homeowners' associations can foreclose on someone being late, or getting behind on monthly, regime fees. That's crazy."

Forcible foreclosure is a last resort, and Nashville attorney Lee Corbett called the act an extreme solution.

"It's extremely unusual," said Corbett. "No matter how far behind they are, the amount is relatively small compared to the value of the property the homeowner owns."

Corbett said there are other ways an association can recover its dues by filing a lawsuit.

Three things are necessary for a property management company to force foreclosure: a written policy, approval from the association's board of directors and the pursuit must be fiscally worthy of the association's efforts.

The sale of the property, in other words, should allow the property management to recoup its past-due fees plus the money spent on such a large endeavor.

59 million Americans are said to be living in neighborhoods governed by some type of association.


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Sources: Stop HOA Foreclosures, American Homeowners Resource Centers, Whitehouse.gov, USA Today, Newschannel.15, Flickr , Google Maps

Obama Administration To Establish Consumer Financial Protection Agency

Politico----

President Barack Obama on Wednesday will call for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency as part of his long-awaited plan for overhauling the nation’s market regulatory structure in response to last year’s meltdown, administration officials tell POLITICO.

The promise to “re-regulate” the wounded Financial system after the go-go years is one of the centerpieces of the president’s agenda, in a year when he’s taking on many of the nation’s most complex problems all at once. Officials call the overhaul by far the biggest since the 1930s.

The new independent agency — which Obama will begin talking up in a series of interviews on Tuesday afternoon — will look after consumers on matters like credit cards, with “a very clear line of accountability around products that they deem abusive of consumers, or misleading,” a senior administration official said.

The consumer agency is one of the proposals in a Treasury Department “white paper” of 85-plus pages that outlines what the White House calls a “comprehensive plan for new rules of the road for the financial industry.”

The plan, to be unveiled by Obama Wednesday, does not ban specific financial products, and officials decided to “harmonize rules” among existing regulators rather than orchestrates a widespread elimination or consolidation of agencies, as they had considered at the outset. The plan eliminates the Office of Thrift Supervision, the weakest of the regulators.

The Federal Reserve will get more power, but there will be no new “super-regulator” like Britain’s Financial Services Authority.

Under a process led by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the White House, administration officials started with a more theoretical approach that one participant called “a pure, design-it-from-scratch system.”

Over months of meetings, the administration team moved toward a proposal that officials say is more practical and limited — and more likely to pass Congress and work effectively.

“We thought we would fight the wars of necessity, not of choice,” the official said.

“The big idea is to fix the problems that originated this crisis — to really go after what was at the core of this problem, which was gaps in regulations, and an approach that was purely focused on different kind of institutions, without anyone looking at the system as a whole.”

Officials discussed banning certain kinds of derivatives, but decided that would be ineffective. “The people in the financial system are, and will continue to be, pretty innovative,” the official said. “They’ll find other ways to accomplish the same things. Even though it might be politically popular, it’s sort of a fool’s errand. You’re better off focusing on the whole structure and the whole system, harmonizing the rules and reducing arbitrage."

Some commentators will argue the plan goes easy on Wall Street. But the financial industry is likely to complain enough to mute such criticisms.

Many of the plans require congressional approval, but some can be accomplished by the administration through executive authority.

The consumer agency will have the ability to set rules and conduct investigations. Administration officials expect that lawmakers will want to have a hand in defining the agency’s mandate, so some flexibility has been left in the plans.

“The idea is to consolidate a lot of these regulators that dabble in the consumer, but it’s sort of a second-tier issue,” the official said.

Administration officials expect the idea will appeal to the left, although it may make conservatives nervous.

Officials considered giving the functions to the Federal Trade Commission. “But they don’t really have banking experience, so we thought it was cleaner to start something afresh,” the official said.

In addition to the creation of the consumer agency, four key elements of the plan are:

-Regulate asset- and mortgage-backed securities. Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers wrote in The Washington Post on Monday that their plan will “impose robust reporting requirements on the issuers of asset-backed securities; reduce investors' and regulators' reliance on credit-rating agencies; and, perhaps most significant, require the originator, sponsor or broker of a securitization to retain a financial interest in its performance.”

— Give more power to the Federal Reserve as the primary regulator of big, interconnected firms. The Fed will be able to trigger a “wind-down” of a problem firm. This “workout authority” is a loss for Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who wanted to take the lead in this area. Instead, she will be one of the regulators. “The view of this team was that if you’re going to have a lead on a complex, big institution, then it ought to be the Fed,” the official said.

-Rename the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets — sometimes referred to as the “Plunge Protection Team,” for its role in financial emergencies — as a council that will advise the Fed, and continue to advise the president and the Treasury. The group will continue to be run out of Treasury. “The idea is to beef that up, make it stronger, give it statutory authority and make it a formal adviser to the systemic risk regulator,” the official said.

— Retain the 50-state regulation system for insurance, rather than create a national regulator. Create a federal Office of Insurance Information (OII) within Treasury, so insurers will have someone to call in a crisis. The idea was introduced by Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.).

Some in the White House worry that the urgency for the overhaul has dissipated as the economy has begun showing signs of recovery, and now that Capitol Hill is bogged down with health care and energy legislation. But top officials say it would have been a mistake to rush a shoddy plan up to Congress. And while these officials worry about lawmakers’ workload, they expect to get their framework through after the usual changes of the legislative process.

Administration officials are optimistic that the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) will embrace as many as 90 percent of the ideas. “We’ve taken the time to consult, and the consultative process has surfaced a lot of the things that we think typically would have tripped this stuff up,” an official said.

The Senate will be tougher, and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Banking Committee, is overloaded because of reelection worries back home and his role as fill-in chairman of the health committee while Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) is away for health reasons.

But administration officials think that once the House moves the legislation, Dodd might be persuaded to follow. And Dodd might realize that because of his political vulnerability, he has an incentive to push the bill.

Sources: Politico, TIME, Washington Times

Congress Allows Release Of E-mails Revealing Ken Lewis' Conversation With Fed Reserve On Merrill Lynch Deal

(Congresswoman Maxine Waters questions Bank CEOs who recieved Taxpayer Bail Out money.)



CNN Money----

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis heads to Capitol Hill on Thursday, and he's likely to be grilled by lawmakers about the government's role in ensuring that the bank complete its controversial merger with Merrill Lynch.

According to e-mails released Wednesday that pull back the curtain on heated negotiations, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had suggested to another Fed official that "management is gone," if BofA managers tried to flee the deal and later on needed further government assistance.

The revelations come thanks to congressional subpoenas demanding that the Fed disclose e-mails related to Bank of America's purchase of Merrill. CNNMoney.com acquired copies of some of the e-mails circulated among House Republicans late Wednesday.

Lewis is the sole witness of a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing Thursday about the BofA-Merrill deal titled "Bank of America and Merrill Lynch: How Did a Private Deal Turn into a Federal Bailout?"

He is expected to be asked specifically about whether the Federal Reserve and other government officials pressured Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) into completing the merger even after BofA realized how badly Merrill Lynch's fourth-quarter losses would be.

The BofA-Merrill Lynch deal was valued at $50 billion when it was announced in mid-September -- the same day that Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. But the deal's worth dropped to $19 billion after Bank of America's shares plunged in following months.

Regulators eventually agreed to give BofA $20 billion in new capital and $118 billion in asset guarantees to cover possible losses tied to the transaction.

Lewis told investigators in the New York Attorney General's office earlier this year that he felt his job was on the line if he didn't go through with the deal. Once Lewis learned last December of Merrill Lynch's deterioration, he told then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that BofA was considering backing out of the deal, according to his testimony to investigators.

Paulson said that Lewis and the BofA board would be replaced if they sought to end the merger, which Paulson viewed as integral to the health of the U.S. financial system. Paulson told New York investigators that he threatened Lewis' job at the behest of Fed chief Ben Bernanke.

According to a Dec. 21 e-mail released Wednesday, Bernanke called BofA's threat to pull out of the deal a "bargaining chip," saying "we do not see it as a very likely scenario."

In another e-mail, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said that Bernanke considered Bank of America's threat to pull out "irrelevant" and "not credible."

Lacker added that Bernanke "also intends to make clear that if they play that card and they need assistance, management is gone," Lacker wrote. BofA is based in Charlotte, N.C., which is in Lacker's district.

The series of e-mails and other documents released Wednesday also called into question the notion that Merrill Lynch's last hope laid with the BofA deal. It appeared that the Fed was willing to provide support to Merrill in order to avoid another collapse like Lehman Brothers.

In one document that listed contingency plans for Merrill if BofA decided to abandon the merger, the Fed said that there were "emergency liquidity provision actions that could be taken to provide some time for the sale/disposition of [Merrill Lynch] businesses and assets."

A Federal Reserve spokeswoman declined to comment on the e-mails.

Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that while he wouldn't comment on internal documents he hasn't seen, he pointed out the unusually tense and crisis-mode environment that overshadowed the negotiations.

"Stepping back, though, it is important to remember the circumstances in which these discussions were taking place: a crisis in financial markets and in the economy generally," Di Rita said. "Serious people were working hard to make decisions to stabilize and improve the situation. In hindsight, it's interesting to look at all of that, but we're looking forward."


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Sources: CNN Money, TPMtv, Wikipedia, Youtube, Zimbio, Flickr, Google Maps

Did Wells Fargo Steer Black Homebuyers To Subprime Loans?

Cleveland.com (US News)----


BALTIMORE -- As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank "rode the stagecoach from hell" for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

These loans, Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services.

Wells Fargo, Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation's home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as "mud people" and to subprime lending as "ghetto loans."

"We just went right after them," said Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank's top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. "Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans."

Jacobson's account and that of the other loan officer who gave an affidavit, Tony Paschal, both of whom have left Wells Fargo, provide the first detailed accusations of deliberate racial steering into subprime lending by one of the nation's top banks.

The toll taken by such policies, Baltimore officials argue, is terrible. Data released by the city as part of the suit last week show that more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on Wells Fargo loans from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods.

Judge Benson E. Legg of U.S. District Court had asked the city to file the additional paperwork and has not decided whether the lawsuit can go forward.

Wells Fargo officials have declined detailed interviews since Baltimore filed suit in January 2008. In an e-mail statement on Friday, a spokesman said that only 1 percent of the city's 33,000 foreclosures have come on Wells Fargo mortgages.

(Maxine Waters grills Bailed Out Bank Ceos.)




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Sources: Cleveland.com, CNN, NAACP, TPMtv, Flickr, Youtube, Google Maps