Michigan Today — Home And Health Care

Save America by Stopping Foreclosure 1.800.826-1929

The following is from Martin Andelman it is a call to
action directed at homeowners and homeowner advocates
regardless of political affiliation. Let it be known
that ForeclosurePreventionInstitute.com has taken a
position on the wall next to Martin Andelman to defend
this great country.

Dave Brigle, “Constitutional Conservative”
ForeclosurePreventionInstitute.com

AMERICA LOST: Treasury’s meetings with bloggers tells
a story that I didn’t want to hear.

Posted 2010-08-30 — ml-implode.com by Martin Andelman
of Mandelman Matters.

I talk to a lot of homeowners from all over the
country every single day, and it’s been like that for
almost two years now. Each day, I’ve try to do whatever
I can to help those struggling to hold on both financially
and emotionally. They reach out to me looking for answers,
and I don’t know what else I could do but help in whatever
way I can.

I hear a lot of anger, a lot of fear, and a lot of resignation
at America lost. I write about injustice, rant about
intolerance, and fight to stop ignorance. I try to speak out
for people that can’t find their voice at the moment. A friend
called me the other day. When I answered he said, “Still
trying to save the world one homeowner at a time?” We both
laughed. Yes, I suppose I am, I thought to myself. It’s what
I can do… write and try to help where I can. I started by
writing a few articles in the fall of 2007, and I took my act
online in December of 2008 when I started blogging on MSNBC’s
Newsvine. In April of 2009, Mandelman Matters was born and
since then I’ve worked seven days a week, and so many hours
a day that I’d rather not say. I’ve written 350 in-depth
articles on the political, social, economic and legal aspects
of the financial and foreclosure crisis since then.

I figure I’ve probably written at least as many articles as
anyone in the country on the foreclosure crisis, HAMP, and
loan modifications… and it’s quite possible that I’ve written
more than anyone else on those subjects. I don’t sell advertising
or make money on my blog, for the last couple of years its been
enough that several thousand homeowners have written to me, saying
that I’ve made a significant positive difference. But, it’s not
enough anymore. And I want those that read my column to know why.

It all started this past August 16th and 18th, when the Treasury
Department invited some bloggers to come hear what Tim Geithner
and other nameless Treasury officials had to say on a range of
topics, including the foreclosure crisis and the Home Affordable
Modification Program, HAMP. The first article I wrote about HAMP
was on the night of President Obama’s speech introducing his Making
Home Affordable plan to save the housing market, which at the time
was already in a free fall. My headline read: “I’m sorry
Mr. President. That’s just not enough.”

I knew right away that HAMP wasn’t going to work as advertised.
There were a lot of reasons why, but the simple truth is I only
needed to hear one phrase to know the program would fail:
responsible homeowners. You see, there’s no such thing as
irresponsible homeowners and responsible homeowners. It wasn’t
irresponsible sub-prime borrowers that caused this crisis; it was
irresponsible Wall Street bankers that did it. That’s not to say
that there weren’t some number of people who bought a home they
couldn’t afford, it’s just to say that those people, a tiny fraction
of the whole, didn’t have anything to do with the crisis we seem
unable to address, let alone solve.

Yet, just about every single week, I end up having to listen to
someone tell me about some 24 year-old with a paper route, who
bought a $12 million home on the water with a stated income loan.
I’m sure there are a few of those, but they don’t have anything
to do with the crisis. No, borrowers didn’t cause the crisis that
the entire world is struggling through today, bankers did that…
Wall Street’s bankers to be specific, but lots of other flavors
of banker had a hand in it as well.

Millions of people have lost their homes already, and we’ve only
just begun to feel the pain that’s sure to come if we stay on our
current course. Why some people don’t see that is beyond me.
But one thing I know for sure, is that the crisis is being allowed
to continue because homeowners have no voice in Washington D.C.
Bankers, on the other hand have thousands of lobbyists and hundreds
of millions of dollars in campaign cash to hand out. So,
last year, according to Special Inspector General of TARP, Neil
Barofsky’s report, we gave the banks $3.7 TRILLION, while spending
something way, way under one percent of that amount on stopping the
foreclosure crisis.The people have no voice because they are ashamed.
They think it’s their fault that they are in a difficult financial
position today, and when someone is at risk of losing their home to
foreclosure, they tell no one. Should they hire an attorney and
somehow save their home from foreclosure, neither they, nor their
lawyer tells anyone. The banks certainly don’t tell anyone anything.
And the crisis goes on, worsening every day. And the media just keeps
writing stories about how economists were surprised at how bad things
have become. But, I can’t help but wonder… are they really surprised?
Or did they know all along how bad things would get? I also can’t
help but wonder why everyone’s so quiet about a crisis that’s
far worse than any in my lifetime. In California, for example,
when gay marriage didn’t receive enough votes in the last election,
there were people marching in the streets. But millions lose homes
to foreclosure, and not a peep. Banks pay out hundreds of billions
in bonuses after being rescued from insolvency by the U.S. taxpayer,
and the most you hear is, something akin to “I don’t think I like
that” coming from a distant source.

I was able to get through all of this until last week when
I learned of what was said at the meetings between various
bloggers and Treasury Department officials. My friend,
Richard Zombeck of Huffington Post and shamethebanks.org
told me about the meetings and sent me a link so I could
see for myself what went on. Then others sent me links
to what others had written about what was said during the
meetings. And that was it for me… I stopped writing… for
about a week, and maybe a little longer. What was the point,
was all I could say to myself.

It made me sad to know what Treasury Department officials had
said about the foreclosure crisis and HAMP… very, very sad.
In fact, I can’t think of another time in history when my
government acted as these guys have acted, or are continuing
to act today. They truly do not care about people at all.
They are so shockingly devoid of compassion or empathy that
they offend me so deeply that I don’t like thinking of this
government as representing my country or I can’t help but feel
that my country is lost. Treasury Department officials said,
in no uncertain terms that they knew HAMP wouldn’t save homeowners
from foreclosure. Here’s what was written in Huffington Post’s
Shahien Nasiripour’s detailed article on the meeting: The
administration knew they’d only reach a fraction of those needing
help, the official claimed, and that millions of homeowners
would ultimately lose their homes to foreclosures that the
administration chose not to prevent. Taxpayer money was on
the line, and the administration couldn’t justify spending
the amount of money it thought would be necessary to save
those homes, the official said. Nevertheless, HAMP remains
the best option — even though it’s reaching fewer borrowers
than forecast. Other programs, the official noted, would have
been either too expensive or unfair. Homeowners who consciously
bought more homes than they could afford shouldn’t be bailed
out.

Here’s what Steve Waldman of Interfluidity.com had to say
about the meetings: Officials pointed out that what may have
been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful
palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP
applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an
outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have
handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of
“extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right.
This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program
was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until
it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was
not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a.
the banks.

Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success
because it helped banks muddle through what might have been
a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate,
in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with
“the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”.
Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they
would have preferred if the program had worked out better
for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns,
and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address
those.

This led to blogger Atrios of Eschatonblog.com to write
the following: Conning homeowners by announcing a government
program designed to help them when in fact it was designed
to help the banksters is, in my world, “cruel.” Felix Salmon,
blogging on Reuters, said the following:

HAMP is now coming into focus as a serious failure and cruel
one at that. The problem is that it’s not helping people stay
in homes, but merely delays foreclosures. This helped banks
weather a foreclosure crush, but raised false hopes among a
substantial number of applicants, hundreds of thousands of
whom were disqualified, as Felix points out, even though
they made their payments on time.

HAMP might well have been a success in the ways that Treasury
enumerates — helping out banks on the solvency front, reducing
the rate of foreclosures, that sort of thing. It was almost
certainly a good idea politically, as well: you don’t hear
much about the plight of homeowners being foreclosed upon,
these days, certainly compared to the huge amount of noise
on the subject around the time that Obama was elected president.
The government is perceived to have Done Something, and the
circus has moved on. But it’s still a tragedy that hundreds
of thousands of people who signed up for loan modifications —
and who made all of their modified loan payments in full
and on time — have had their modifications cancelled. Many
of those people blame the servicers; Treasury, meanwhile,
is more prone to blaming the borrowers themselves, claiming
they’re incapable of verifying their income.

My feeling is that even if income hasn’t been verified,
servicers shouldn’t simply cancel the loan mods if they’re
performing well. And that if that’s what the servicers are
doing, the incentives within HAMP have been designed very
badly. That’s a Treasury failure, and it’s impossible to
credibly spin it as any kind of success. And, incredibly,
they are sticking by HAMP. Only now Treasury is saying
that the benefit is found in spacing out foreclosures, as
opposed to stopping unnecessary foreclosures. Tens of
billions to spread out foreclosures in order to help banks
take losses… on the backs of ordinary people…
American citizens… taxpayers. Because I suppose the
$3.7 TRILLION we gave the banks in 2009 alone wasn’t enough.

Here’s Huffington Post Nasipour once again:
The official touted the ever-growing pipeline of homes
likely to enter foreclosure as a success in the
administration’s fight to stem the rising tide of home
foreclosures. It’s taking longer for homes to enter
foreclosure, and it’s taking longer to evict homeowners
once they enter foreclosure. The so-called “shadow
inventory” of homes — those with severely delinquent mortgages,
in foreclosure or already repossessed that have not yet
been put on the market — has significantly grown since
the administration took office and is estimated to range
from 5 to 7 million homes. Through June, borrowers in
foreclosure have been delinquent for an average of 461
days before being evicted from their homes, according
to Jacksonville, Fla.-based data provider Lender Processing
Services.

That’s a good thing, the official said, because it gives
the market time to absorb these homes gradually — without
leading to a dramatic drop in home prices. Richard Zombeck,
writing for Huffington Post and shamethebanks.org, among
many other things said the following: (And I strongly
suggest you read Richard’s entire article, click his name
and it will take you to it.) When President Obama delivered
his speech in Arizona in February, 2009, nowhere in the
speech did he come close to implying that this plan was
intended to help the banks and servicers get more money
out of homeowners before taking their homes. What he said
was, “This will enable as many as three to four million
homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid
foreclosure.” It wasn’t followed by, “…for a couple of months.”
Richard also included this paragraph, also from Nasipour’s
article, describing it as “one of the more egregious
statements to come out of this discussion”. One of the
reasons why HAMP has been effective ties back to the
foreclosure pipeline. The official said that because
some 1.2 million homeowners entered the program and
immediately benefited from a trial period of lower
monthly payments, not only were their foreclosures
delayed but they also received what was essentially a
tax cut of more than $500 a month — all without cost
to the taxpayer, the official boasted. Even though nearly
half of those borrowers have been booted from the program,
they still benefited from lower monthly payments courtesy
of the Treasury Department with the cost borne by lenders
and investors of those mortgages. Plus, at the very least,
those homeowners got a chance at a permanent modification,
the official said.

And finally, Dean Starkman wrote:

“So, a debate over a complicated matter is sharpened,
for me, anyway. Not to overstate anything: the world
didn’t change because of the meetings. There’s no evidence
the bloggers—via the meeting or their blogs—had any influence
whatever, for instance, on HAMP policy.”

Oh, well good then.

So, before I say anything about all of that, there are a
few facts I pulled from various sources that I want to
lay before you.

1. President Obama appointed Timothy Geithner to be Treasury
Secretary. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
Geithner served under a board of directors headed by JP Morgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Geithner had been partly responsible for
the decision to let Lehman Brothers go under, for the tarp program,
and for American International Group (AIG) paying its creditors
with taxpayer money. As his chief of staff, Geithner chose a
former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

2. President Obama: “The recession was caused by a perfect
storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making that stretched
from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.”

3. On February 10, 2010 Obama said that he didn’t “begrudge”
the $17 million bonus awarded to Dimon and the $9 million to
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. “I know both guys. They are
very savvy businessmen.”

4. A group within the White House that began calling themselves
the “pitchfork gang,” said their attempts to persuade Obama take
a tougher stance on Wall Street were undermined by Geithner and
by National Economic Council head Larry Summers. Geithner and
Summers were apparently worried about upsetting business confidence.

5. In the stimulus’s first year, the administration spent only
$17 billion of the $139 billion allocated for infrastructure
spending.

6. Geithner and Summers repeatedly blocked attempts to get tough
on Wall Street on the grounds that doing so would threaten the
recovery itself by upsetting the bankers.

7. Organizing for America, the administration’s campaign
organization, which is supposed to be focusing on the 2010 elections,
recently devoted its resources to organizing parties across
the country to celebrate Obama’s forty-ninth birthday.

Sorry, but I’m about done with the Oblabla Administration.
Waiter, check please.

Look, I’m not making a political statement. I don’t see the
Republicans doing anything to help the situation either. I fact,
to the contrary, the Republicans have offered nothing constructive
since Obama took office in 2009. They vote as a block as if they
were elected to represent a party as opposed to individual
constituents, and personally, I think if they’re going to vote
like that, I think they should have to wear matching sweaters and
sing their chorus of “Nooooooo” in harmony. Just on one day I’d
like to see Obama come out in favor of cream in coffee, just so I
could watch some knucklehead Republican oppose it on Face the
Nation. “No, I say there should not be cream in coffee.” Oh,
sit back down you intellectual midget. None of that excuses what
the Obama Administration has allowed to happen as related to the
foreclosure crisis. Treasury officials now say they knew and it
was okay with them. In fact, it was a good thing.

Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing
process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as
a whole. No, I’m sorry but no, damn it. I don’t even know what
a palliative is, but it doesn’t matter. Geithner, you elitist
piece of garbage, you do not get to torture American citizens
because you find benefit for the banks in doing so. Who the
hell do you think you are? Did my president know about this?
Because you imply that he did, and if that’s the case then he
should be impeached. No American president would ever condone
what you are describing and if this one did, he is not fit to
lead our country. Mr. Geithner… people have taken their
own lives over what you’ve allowed to happen. Children have
gone to bed night after night scared to death, not knowing why
their parents are so afraid… or so angry. Marriages have ended.
Fathers have sat up at night wondering if their life insurance
policies will pay off after suicide. And all of this and more
continues to this day and yet there is no plan to change a thing.
Because you’re happy that Wells Fargo is suffering too terribly
much. And why? Because Citibank or Bank of America would have
gone under if the foreclosures would have come at a faster pace?

Bullshit.

You think that it’s because of HAMP that it’s taking banks a
long time to foreclose? You’re a moron, Tim. If banks were
going to go under by foreclosing too quickly they would have
slowed the pace themselves. We didn’t need you to invent a fake
loan modification program and lie to the American people about
it in order to slow down the pace of foreclosures. Besides they
could have MODIFIED THE LOANS, Timmy. There was always that
alternative, lest you forget.

Before you showed up with HAMP banks were modifying loans much
more frequently. Is that what you wanted to do, STOP MODIFICATIONS?
So you invented a program that would do just that by promising
to modify 3-4 million loans? Did Obama know of your plan?
Did the President of the United States know that this outcome
would be considered a success? Is that what your cohorts at
Treasury are saying… off the record, of course. Cowards. Mr.
Geithner, you should be incarcerated for the rape of the American
people. You know what caused this crisis and you know damn well
that it wasn’t some guy in Stockton, California not making a
mortgage payment. How do you sleep? Do you even know what
you’ve done to thousands of people’s lives so the banks wouldn’t
have to foreclose too quickly? If that made sense to you, you
need help.

To my readers…
That’s it. I can’t do it the same way I have been for the
last two years. The rules of the game have changed. I suppose
I could give up and walk away, but I won’t do that now no matter
what. This is a whole new ball game and we need to be much more
aggressive, much louder, much more intolerant of the abuse by
financial institutions. We need the consumer attorneys to file
more lawsuits, and we homeowners have to save our money to pay
for them to do so. We can’t sit back and watch 14 million more
homeowners lose their homes to foreclosure, because if that’s
the way it goes, then our country truly will be lost for decades…
perhaps forever. Do you feel what it’s like out there? Not where
Tim Geithnerlives, but where you and I live. Imagine what it
will feellike a year from now, when it’s that much worse. And
then two years from now when it’s worse still. And then worse
still. What will we all say then? What will we tell our children
about the country we have left for them?

Gee, it really was our fault. We all took an irresponsibility
pill in 2005 and went out and bought homes we couldn’t afford
and that’s why your world looks like this? Sorry about that?.
We gave the banks $3.7 TRILLION last year alone. That’s $3.7
TRILLION. And Goldman Sachs alone handed out $120 BILLION in
bonuses last year? We bailed out GMAC three times to the tune
of almost $20 billion? GMAC? Why, were they too big to fail,
too? GM itself went bankrupt, that was okay… but GMAC was too
big to fail? Really? Really?

Is someone going to make an argument as to why it made sense
to hand $3.7 TRILLION to bankers who ran their banks into the
ground while doing essentially NOTHING for millions of homeowners
whose foreclosures only caused their neighbors to sink further
underwater. We need to do things differently.

I know that some people need to get their loans modified, so for
those that do, use the REST Report and push like hell. I see
loans get modified every single day. And there are a lot of
dedicated people out there helping homeowners every day. Oh,
I know… guess who wants you to believe they’re all scammers…
that you don’t need a lawyer… that you should just call your
bank directly. Others may want to strategically default, and
for those folks, let’s see just how long we can keep people in
homes without paying for them. And if you can afford to file
a legitimate lawsuit, for God’s sake file it. And I’ll help
anyone who asks me to in any way I can. I’ll organize more
attorneys so they’re better prepared to represent homeowners.
I’ll help educate more people so they know that it’s not their
fault, so that they can find their voice once again.

But this is going to take more than passion. It’s going to
take money…from the very beginning of my journey into this
crisis, I’ve wanted to produce documentary style programming…
broadcast quality video… footage of homeowners telling their
stories, sharing the horror of their experiences dealing with
banks that don’t care about anything this country has given them.
Interviews with real people that didn’t do anything wrong or
irresponsible in order to find themselves at risk of losing
their homes. And I’ve collected such interview footage over
the last two years… and it’s powerful… like, kick you in the
gut type powerful. I wanted to produce such a documentary and
have it delivered to every member of congress and every member
of the senate… every state governor’s desk and every major media
outlet… I wanted to see it on television and on YouTube… I wanted
it delivered to the White House… and all on the same day. I
called the initiative, A Hundred Thousand Homeowners, and the
idea was to get 100,000 people to each kick in a dollar.
After PayPal, it would produce a budget of $67,000, and with
that money we’d get our message heard.

But it’s taking far too long. The problem is that it doesn’t
spread. Someone sends in their dollar, but that’s where it
stops. They don’t tell anyone else, because they don’t want
anyone else to know of their situation. Two weeks ago, I was
interviewing a homeowner who had struggled for 14 months to
get his loan modified. He finally did in a few short weeks
after sending in a REST Report, so I wanted to hear his story.
I interviewed him on camera for 20 minutes and it was emotional.
He had a tear in his eye through most of the interview.
It was hell for him, and everyone there could feel his pain.
At the end I asked him if he had anyone to talk to through
the experience and he explained that he didn’t. Not the
sort of thing you talk about, he explained. Then I asked him
if his wife had anyone to talk to through the nightmarish
process of getting his loan modified, and he looked down at
the floor and then back at me. He said: “I never told her.”

Through 14 months of being put through hell by his bank,
through 13 SCHEDULED SALE DATES THAT WERE EACH POSTPONED
AT THE LAST MINUTE… and he never told his wife until it was
over and his got his modification. And that said everything
to me.

So, here’s the deal. We need to do more. And I will do
more. It’s all a question of how fast we can move.
Last week I was invited to Washington D.C. to speak at
a rally, and I said I probably couldn’t make it because
I wouldn’t be able to afford it. I’m sure it will go just
fine without me, there are lots of others who can deliver
the message, but the thing is… I really don’t believe that.

I think I’m uniquely positioned and prepared to deliver the
message for homeowners. I think I would make a difference
if I could be there.

I also know that I could produce documentary programming
that would change minds… shatter paradigms… and force
politicians to take action. I’ve been successful in print.
I’ve written 350 articles on this topic… and readers say
they’ve made a difference. This is still our country. It’s
still a democracy. Let’s not fail our children because we
failed to act.

I’ll be putting a new tab on Mandelman Matters in the next
few days. It will be labeled “MY MISSION” and it will
describe in greater detail what I want to do… what I
will do… and it will ask for your support. And if it
comes, then we’ll move quickly, and if it doesn’t, it will
take longer. But I’m going to do it one way or the other.
Because I know now that I have no choice. Treasury’s
officials have made that much all too clear.

I’ve spoken with others around the country and they will
come along… but we have to start somewhere. We have to show
that we can make our voices heard.

If you’re a business owner, consider supporting the effort
by sending in a substantial donation and I’ll make sure your
company is recognized and promoted online to thousands of
people. If you’re an individual homeowner, do what you can.
If you can’t send money, perhaps you can help in other ways.
Organizing meetings of homeowners, sending out emails, posting
links to your Facebook page, calling your representatives and
encouraging others to do the same. There’s a role for
everyone in this fight, and we’ll need all the help we can get.

And if you don’t want to be a part of this drive for American
homeowners… write in and tell me I should quit… that it’s a
waste of time… that we cannot win… that we won’t even be heard.

I won’t listen, of course, but I want to know how you feel one
way or the other. For God’s sake do something… even if it’s
writing me an email telling me I’m nuts. At least I’ll know
you’re alive.

350 articles. A lot to read… let alone to write. I’ve gotten
to know hundreds of lawyers around the country that are
fighting for the rights of homeowners. I’ve spoken with and
helped thousands of homeowners and heard their stories first
hand. I’ve built alliances with others on-line. ML-Implode
will help. Shamethebanks.org will help. Danny Schechter,
the producer/director of the documentary, Plunder, will help.
Steve Dibert of MFI-Miami will help. Short Sale Power Hour
will help. ThinkBigWorkSmall will help. And I know lots of
others that will help too.

Let’s start somewhere. Help me and I’ll fire the first shot.
After all, how do you eat an elephant? Simple. One bite at
a time.

Mandelman out.

Dave Brigle
Managing Member
ForeclosurePreventionInstitute, LLC
271 Viking Dr
Battle Creek, MI  49017
1.800.826.1929 Hot Line
brigle@appraisaloffice.biz
http://ForeclosurePreventionInstitute.com

Save America by Stopping Foreclosure 1.800.826-1929