Program for Struggling Homeowners Just a Ploy to Enrich Big Banks

[sharingwisdom]

https://www.alternet.org/economy/147...ch_big_banks//
Treasury Makes Shocking Admission: Program for Struggling Homeowners Just a Ploy to Enrich Big Banks
The Treasury Dept.'s mortgage relief program isn't just failing, it's actively funneling money from homeowners to bankers, and Treasury likes it that way.
excerpt

The Treasury Department's plan to help struggling homeowners has been failing miserably for months. The program is poorly designed, has been poorly implemented and only a tiny percentage of borrowers eligible for help have actually received any meaningful assistance. The initiative lowers monthly payments for borrowers, but fails to reduce their overall debt burden, often increasing that burden, funneling money to banks that borrowers could have saved by simply renting a different home. But according to recent startling admissions from top Treasury officials, the mortgage plan was actually not really about helping borrowers at all. Instead, it was simply one element of a broader effort to pump money into big banks and shield them from losses on bad loans. That's right: Treasury openly admitted that its only serious program purporting to help ordinary citizens was actually a cynical move to help Wall Street megabanks.


Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has long made it clear his financial repair plan was based on allowing large banks to "earn" their way back to health. By creating conditions where banks could make easy profits, Getithner and top officials at the Federal Reserve hoped to limit the amount of money taxpayers would have to directly inject into the banks. This was never the best strategy for fixing the financial sector, but it wasn't outright predation, either. But now the Treasury Department is making explicit that it was—and remains—willing to let those so-called "earnings" come directly at the expense of people hit hardest by the recession: struggling borrowers trying to stay in their homes.

[Thad]

I don't know how to find the statistics but it would an eye opener to see what percentage of the homes of America are owned by the banks,

[someguy]

I worked for the census this go around and visited hundreds if not thousands of homes around this county and I'll tell you that there are a lot of goddamn bank owned homes! It was bizarre to see so many abandoned homes with eviction notices still stapled to the front door, or just to see all the 'vacant units' just gathering dust everywhere you go.

[Thad]

So America began with free land and now its this. Jobs gone, homes gone, the moneys gone

France had this situation once didn't it? The world divided between two classes, peasants and the aristocracy?

["Mad" Miles]

Thad,

I agree with your point about peasants vs. aristocracy.

But "free land"? I think someone was here first. And they didn't give up the land they loved easily, it took some real effort. And soon after the land was expropriated by the loving Christians, speculators soon started making significant profits selling it. So, "free" the land never was.