pkarnig’s posthaven

After being bailed out and sticking the American tax payers with bad mortgage loans, lenders like JP Morgan Chase and Bank Of America are now admitting that they might have foreclosed on some homes by accident because of not reading fine print correctly. Last night on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart lambasted the big banks for ignoring the fine print that they themselves came up with.

"Wait, what? The banks weren't reading the fine print? You're the people who came up with the f**king fine print in the first place!" Stewart said in shock.

Very Funny!! Stewart rightly lambasts the banks and everyone for allowing ourselves to be put in this position. We have to get our financial system back on track so that the middle class can start to grow again. We have enough billionaires thank you.

"We have a chance to completely reform this entire area," she said. "If we get it right, there is a smaller regulatory burden on the lenders themselves. I'm looking for sustainability."

The consumer advocate, whose message thus far has received positive reviews from lenders and initial opponents in Congress, said she looks forward to working with industry. But she's not changing who she is.

"Look, I was pretty straightforward when I went in there," Warren said of her evening with the Roundtable. "I made it very clear: I am who I am, and that's not going to change. I will do everything I can to build an agency that is strong and independent and acts on behalf of middle class, hardworking families. That is my job, and that is not going to change.

"Now, what I also said is, 'I invite you to think about ways that we can work together and create products for your customers, these same middle-class families, that they can have confidence in and that they can have some confidence in you.'"

We need real change in the way our financial systems work. Warren will help protect consumers and the middle class in this time of uncertainty. Banks need to return to what they used to do: Lend money to regular people so that the middle class can grow and prosper again.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, moved the legislation through the Senate without debate on Sept. 27.

"Senator Leahy understands the President's decision not to sign the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, and he supports that decision," said a Leahy spokeswoman in a statement. "When Congress passed the legislation, no concerns or objections had been expressed. Now that concerns have been raised, Congress should reexamine whether this bill might have an unintended impact on foreclosures in the future. We certainly do not believe that is what Representative Aderholt and the other cosponsors of the legislation intended."

This is great news, but notice what Senator Leahy who introduced this legislation comments here. It sounds a lot like bullshit for: "this bill was designed to help the banks foreclose on people that are having financial problems with their bad mortgages."

Challenging foreclosures could become more difficult for homeowners if the president signs a bill that passed through the Senate last week. The little-noticed bill comes at a time when the validity of foreclosure proceedings across the nation has been called into question.

The House passed the bill in April, and its brisk journey through the Senate has drawn scant attention, Reuters reports. If signed into law, it would require courts to accept certain documents that have been notarized out of state, streamlining foreclosure proceedings and stripping homeowners of one legal method of challenging a foreclosure. The legislation would come just as a foreclosure validity crisis is mounting: GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have admitted to not properly reviewing some of their foreclosure documents.

People need to be made aware of what is happening. People need to let their representatives in congress know that they want full disclosure about what banks are doing and how that may effect their rights under the law. This can have big financial repercussions for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

This will all lead to a new financial meltdown.  The major banks, all those "too big to fail" institutions who were saved by TARP and who were allowed to merge and swallow failing banks such as Wachovia, will teeter and fall.  This means no new mortgage payments coming in (why keep paying your loan if the bank has no standing to foreclose?), no repossessions of properties for resale canceling all that cash flow, lawsuits left and right from those defrauded and the new owners forced onto the streets, penalties from angry judges seeking to impose penalties and on and on...  This could make the last meltdown seem pale by comparison.  It is all the result of Wall Street greed and the buying off of Congressmen, Senators and state legislators who refused to take appropriate action.

Every time you hear terms like "smaller government," less regulation, deregulation and "keep the government off my back" you're hearing code words for the policies which caused all this mess.  If you go out next month and vote for them anyway you get what you deserve.

This is another interesting post about the financial mess we are in and how we got here. The key to remember is: Don't vote for the guys promising smaller government and deregulation as the answer. We need real regulation to help get us back on track not less!