This is not a fucking liberal movement you fucking retards. I am not a tree hugging hippy. I am Pro Military, Pro Gun, and for smaller government. This is about The constitution being sold out, the american people being sold out, and Banks making a profit off of it. If our police and military are protecting us and our rights, im in full support, but they are not. they are protecting the interests of the banks. the 1%. these people are committing treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
Not all of the wingers get it, mind you. Several on our side of the fence spoke up ... and got put down.
I've had at least five reminders in my mailbox this morning to call Chris Koster, who is in DC today in conference with other AGs and Elizabeth Warren about a settlement with the big banks. Here's the heart of one of them:
Call Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster right now at 573-751-3321 and demand nothing less than a strong settlement against the big banks. Tell your Attorney General, "My Name is [SAY NAME.] I am a resident of Missouri. The Attorney General must come out in support a settlement that provides justice for millions of homeowners and holds the big banks accountable for their crimes. Nothing less is acceptable."
Let your Attorney General know it's time to choose a side - the homeowners they've sworn to protect or the big banks that broke the law and bankrupted the economy.
In case you haven't had five reminders--or even if you have--I thought I'd sneak another one in on you. The lady I spoke to answered promptly without a hint of being harried. We need to keep her busier than that.
There's a good reason why Attorney General Koster has not taken any action against serial mortgage abuser Bank of America. He is waiting for a report. One of his lieutenants is in charge of getting interviews from everyone who has listed a complaint on the AG site. Currently that is 152 Missouri homeowners. When I mentioned all this to Mary Boehm more than two weeks ago, she chuckled. "Right. Well, they haven't gotten to us yet." But within a couple of days, bingo, she got a call from the AG's office. The investigator wasn't calling to set up an interview, but he did offer concrete information. Here's how Mary described it in an e-mail:
An investigator from the AG's office called me two weeks ago. He was very nice and said he was calling to let me know that the AG was investigating all the banks and their possible fraudulent behavior, but that it was a very time-consuming process. He said he would be calling us back to get our statement soon. He also said that the AG was investigating this crisis along two lines:
1. The banks telling people to make modified payments while they were "processing" modifications and then suddenly trying to foreclose on them.
2. The banks refusing to give customers their loan documentation proving who holds the note (most likely because no one knows where the notes are).
He told us that we were one of the few complainants who were in both situations. He also said we might be called as witnesses. Lucky us!
When I called and asked Mary if the "lucky us!" was sincere, she laughed and told me it was and it wasn't. Yes, she and Mike would relish a chance to turn the tables on their tormentors. On the other hand, it's one more way to assure that the nightmare drags on.
And yet, even on the mortgage modification front, the Boehms are finally getting some traction. Here's more of her e-mail:
A cockeyed optimist might look at the foreclosure problems Mike and Mary Boehm are facing, at the mortgage modification that BoA is offering them, and say, "Look. All the pressure is working!" Indeed, one of the BoA people explained to Mike that a dozen different people--including Russ Carnahan's office and Chris Koster's office--have complained about the treatment the Boehms have received. So, since the family is a wee hair short of meeting the MHA standard for modifying a mortgage, the bank is prepared to offer an in-house mortgage modification. Isn't that wonderful news?
Well, no. Not when you see the terms of the new deal.
Bad for America is offering to lower the monthly payments by $200--and extend the loan from a thirty year contract to a forty year contract. But the interest rate is still more than five percent. If Bad for America weren't ruining the Boehms' credit rating by saying that they haven't been making their mortgage payments, the family could negotiate a better deal than that at another bank.
And the bank could fix their credit. It knows that for well over a year, the Boehms made the payments that a homeowner getting a modified loan would be making--made every one of them on time, because that's the amount the bank told them to pay. The family has refused to pay all kinds of bogus "fees" that BoA has tried to impose on them--a typical money-grubbing scheme of these upstanding businessmen. But rather than just declare that the Boehms have met their fiscal obligations with BoA and let them negotiate a fair loan at a local bank, Slim the Slimeball Bank of America is offering them this "deal"--just something to report to Carnahan and Koster to make it look as if they give a fig about a congressman's or an AG's complaint.
Slim the Slimeball sells you a used car with a transmission that has about five minutes left on it. When you're a mile and a half down the street, you hear a thunk and the car quits on you. Slim is all innocence when you confront him, but, having flirted with his secretary, you manage to obtain documentation from her that Slim knew how bad the car was. You threaten a lawsuit and Slim offers to reimburse you for the $3,000 you spent. Thirty bucks. That's right. One dollar for every hundred you gave him.
Slim needs to apply to Bank of America for an executive position. He obviously knows how the financial game is played. BofA, for example, just transacted a deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay them approximately one cent on every dollar that the bank's mortgage sales to Fannie and Freddie are likely to cost those government entities over the next few years. The backstory on this is that the big banks, including Bad for America, put together packages of loans and sold them to private investors (who often insured them in case the loans went bad) as well as to Fannie and Freddie. Many of those were risky loans that eventually turned toxic. F and F, who don't actually lend money but who were set up to buy loans from private lenders, were forced to buy more of these risky packages:
Brian Moynihan, BofA CEO
In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale....
And now, Bad for America is facing lawsuits that would force it to repurchase these bad loans (repurchases are called put-backs) that it sold to F and F as well as to private investors--think: give you back your $3,000 bucks for the crappy car. Instead of repurchasing loans it never should have had the gall to sell, Bad for America has offered Fannie and Freddie this "deal". It is going to pay F and F a. whole. penny for every dollar these bad loans cost F and F. Wow.
A diarist at Kos says that there's been lots of hoopla lately (since Citizens United) about corporate personhood. He's got a metaphor for the way these corporate "persons" just screwed the taxpayers.
And, right about now, if Bank of America was a person, they'd be propped up on a pillow, naked in bed, smoking a cigarette, sipping a glass of wine, smiling as they looked into your eyes while tritely asking: "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"
"This looks to me like a gift from Tim Geithner... there's politics all over this."
And since this is a signal to the other big banks to put their liabilities behind them, the stock market rocketed on Monday.
So, whew, say the bankers. Another big bailout. And this one we won't even have to pay back. The taxpayers will just eat it. That will allow us to stay in business, profiting off of pretending to modify mortgages. I saw the profiting-off-of-loan-modifications part of their business in action with the latest news on the Mike and Mary Boehm front.
Looks like this guess in my original posting about the Boehms was right on:
Who knows but what Bad for America strung the Boehms along for more than a year just to get that additional money out of them before finally cashing in its foreclosure chip.
Graham, who lives in Big Bear City, Calif., applied for a loan modification under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program, which is supposed to give eligible borrowers a "permanent" five-year modification if they make reduced payments during a three-month trial period.
Graham said his trial dragged on for 18 months. He said he made every payment until Bank of America told him in May that he didn't qualify for HAMP, and that he'd lose his home unless he paid about $7,000 to make up the difference between his normal monthly payments and the reduced payments he made during the trial period.
"Each month when I did talk to them I was informed it's still under review."
B of A is already facing a racketeering lawsuit, but that's for using perjured affidavits on foreclosure proceedings. It seems like Holder would have a slam/dunk case if he would also bring suit for the kind of thievery Bank of America has foisted on the Boehms and thousands like them.
And Attorney General Chris Koster could beat Holder to it if he'd bring suit here in Missouri.
KMOV-TV had a fine piece on the Tuesday evening 5:00 news about a Troy woman who is suing Bank of America for its pattern of failing to grant qualified recipients modified mortgages and charging them fees while it keeps them hanging. The woman hopes to make it a class action suit. So KMOV sent a reporter, Marc Cox, to interview in her kitchen someone who might be interested in joining that lawsuit, Mary Boehm. Cox let Boehm talk about the pattern of deception she and her husband are all too familiar with. Then he pointedly mentioned that the bank refused even a phone interview, adding that one of its suits [my terminology, not his] gave some lame excuse about its treatment of the Boehms by saying 'we're going to make a ruling on that case sometime fairly soon.' Cox observed that they've had 423 days to make a decision that should have taken only 45 days.
Correction: I was working from memory of the broadcast when I reported that Cox said the bank would rule on the case soon. Now that the video is up at KMOV, I see that the bank spokeshole sent Cox an e-mail, not commenting at all on the federal lawsuit and saying that the Boehms--after being in limbo for 13 months--still may not qualify for a modification. Cox points out that the bank gives no explanation why that would be the case.
The photos below are from last week's action outside Bank of America in Clayton: one sign, a group of activists, and one activist in the making.
Bank of America is a master of the "string them along/stonewall them" technique that we're seeing skillfully applied to Mike and Mary Boehm. The Boehms are so frustrated that they are beginning to wonder if the bank's managers have read Catch-22 and instructed middle managers to follow Sergeant Towser's example in that book.
In the World War II saga, Major Major was determined to avoid any contact with people plaguing him for favors--or indeed with anybody at all. So he summoned his aide:
"From now on," he said, "I don't want anyone to come in to see me while I'm here. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Towser. "Does that include me?"
"Yes."
"I see. Will that be all?"
"Yes."
"What shall I say to the people who come to see you while you're here?"
"Tell them I'm in, and ask them to wait."
"Yes, sir. For how long?"
"Until I've left."
"And then what shall I do with them."
"I don't care."
"May I send them in to see you after you've left?"
"Yes."
"But you won't be here then, will you?"
"No."
"Will that be all."
"Yes."
"Yes, sir."
(p.102)
And Sergeant Towser had no problem following those orders and leaving befuddled, frustrated supplicants standing in the major's empty office, wondering if a cruel practical joke was being played on them. The Boehms can identify with their bewilderment.
When I spoke to Mary last Wednesday, she reported that someone from the Bank of America had left a phone message Monday night saying that the bank would be negotiating another mortgage with them. Then he failed to return phone calls. I spoke to Mary today, and she said that he finally did get back to them Wednesday evening and gave them the name and phone number of a negotiator, Elizabeth Gomez, who returned their calls on Thursday.
But Ms. Gomez claimed that there was no record in their file of an intent to foreclose. Odd, considering that the Boehm's possessed a letter from Bad for America listing December 26th as the date that foreclosure proceedings would begin. Gomez was puzzled, furthermore, to find no paperwork in their file saying that they owed late fees--which is also odd, considering how the bank has been badgering the Boehms for those fees. Sergeant Towser Gomez promised to check on those issues and call them the next morning, December 24th. Would they mind, she asked, being bothered on Christmas eve, about this matter? (Never let it be said that paper shufflers at B of A have no sense of humor.) After Mike and Mary assured her, nay, urged her to call on Friday, Gomez said she would phone them at 11:00 sharp, which is 9:00 in her time zone, opening time.
11:00 Friday came and went. Nothing.
It's more than five days since the promised call, and the Boehms are standing in Major Major's empty office.
Meanwhile Mike and Mary are pursuing every avenue they can think of to persuade Chris Koster to pressure the bank to modify their mortgage and even to bring suit against Bank of America, as Arizona and Nevada have, for its foreclosure practices. They are contacting their elected officials to plead their case with the Attorney General.
I put in my two cents this afternoon, talking to Chris and Nancy in Koster's office. They've had no reply from Bank of America to their letter of inquiry about the Boehms' situation. I asked if Koster will consider bringing suit. Nancy says she "will check." I didn't exactly expect to hear positive news on that front yet. I'm prepared to be persistent.
So are the Boehms. Mary is determinedly upbeat. Hey, she even offered to describe the decor in Major Major's office for me. If anybody can pin down that elusive son of a gun, it will be the Boehms.
Bank of America is looking into negotiating another mortgage with Mike and Mary Boehm. Well, so their representative said in a phone message. Monday night. But he hasn't returned any of the three messages the Boehm's have left for him since then. So far, that phone message and reports given to the Post-Dispatch and KMOV-tv that the Boehms are in no imminent danger of foreclosure are, at the very least, unverified.
We hope these claims are more than just an attempt from B of A to shunt aside nuisance publicity until the media spotlight ricochets to some other story. The Boehms would like to think that the assurances have some substance, but the family was not reassured on that score by today's mail. Mike and Mary had printed a request for 13 items pertaining to the loan off of Attorney General Koster's site and sent it to Bad for America. Today the family received a letter from the bank that included three of those pieces of documentation but that said: "Please note that all other requests are declined as they seek documentation that goes beyond that which is available."
Translated loosely, that means, 'We'll give you what we damn well find convenient.' Not the spirit of cooperation the Boehms are looking for. Yes, I realize that this is probably something the bank's bureaucracy churned out before the action on Monday, but here's the thing. The letter went out. The phone message was left on the machine. But nobody at the bank seems to be engaged in settling this problem. It will take continued pressure from activists to move Bank of America to let the Boehms off the hook.
Meanwhile, I've spoken to two women in Attorney General Koster's office. This entire brouhaha was news to the first one, Chris. But someone named Nancy called me back a couple of hours later to say that the office has called Bank of America about the Boehms and has not yet received a return call. Good on them for that prompt action. I asked Nancy if the AG's office has legal authority to press a case against B of A for disobeying the federal mandate to modify mortgages for qualified applicants. She'll check. And I asked whether Chris Koster will consider taking such action on behalf of the many complainants against B of A. She'll check.
Koster's office needs to hear from you. 1-573-751-3321
The bank been reportedly identified as a target by WikiLeaks -- it reportedly maintains a war room to defend against the leak -- it's the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit, one of many high profile lawsuits involving its foreclosure practices.
Now, the bank has been accused of breaking into a woman's home and taking her possessions, including her late husband's ashes.
That incident is part of a pattern of home break-ins reported by other homeowners, according to a New York Times article. The piece describes a typical Bank of America subterfuge that the Boehms will recognize:
"Every day, smaller wrongs happen to people trying to save their homes: being charged the wrong amount of money, being wrongly denied a loan modification, being asked to hand over documents four or five times," said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.
Sounds like what I described happening to the Boehms:
They spent hours upon hours on the phone trying to straighten out glitch after snafu after hitch caused by the bank's carelessness. "You faxed us this information already? Really? Then do it again. You've faxed it twice? Oh. Try faxing it to this other number."
It's gotten so that it's easier to have faith in Santa than to believe that Bank of America can be trusted.
Mike and Mary Boehm did everything right. Well, except for Mike getting fired in June 2009. But I'm assuming that was a byproduct of the Great (Republican-caused) Recession. Anyway, the couple had trouble meeting their house payments and applied to the Bank of America for a loan modification. They were told it would take about 45 days. That was 409 days ago. It sure as hell didn't take Bank of America that long to get a federal bailout for billions of bucks. And that bailout stipulated that banks which received the funds were to work to modify mortgage payments so that fewer people would face foreclosure.
The Boehm family
So the Boehms applied. And they did everything right--and many things two or three times over. Although the modification had not received final approval, the process was started, and the Boehm's made every modified payment on time. They spent hours upon hours on the phone trying to straighten out glitch after snafu after hitch caused by the bank's carelessness. "You faxed us this information already? Really? Then do it again. You've faxed it twice? Oh. Try faxing it to this other number." After all that effort on Mike and Mary's part, the Bank of America has decided to foreclose. Proceedings will start the day after Christmas.
Monday, a group of Mike and Mary's friends and activists mobilized by M.O.R.E. (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) staged a protest in front of the Clayton office of the bank in St. Louis County. Ninety people showed up and most of them stayed the better part of two hours in the cold. The hope was that a strong showing would move the bankers to relent and allow a loan modification. Not only did BoA not do so, it got the Clayton Police to arrest six activists who had the gall to go up four steps onto bank property. The six were led away in handcuffs, issued two summonses apiece (for trespassing and refusing to obey a lawful order) and then released in less than two hours. Kat Logan Smith, the Executive Director of Coalition for the Environment and Hannah Allison, who organized today's protest for M.O.R.E., were among the six.
Hannah Allison (in foreground) and Kat Logan Smith (ahead of her) are led away in cuffs
Kat Logan Smith (wearing her Bank of America exec devil's horns) displays her summonses
The video below opens with a few seconds of chants at the rally but consists mainly of an interview the Boehms gave me at the Clayton Police Station while they waited for the arrestees to be released.
"Bank of America, Bad for America!" chanted the crowd gathered in the shadow of the impregnable, forbidding Bank of America tower in Kansas City on Tuesday. A coalition of progressive groups brought a couple of hundred demonstrators to KC on Tuesday. The plan there, as in other cities on Tuesday, was to soften up "Bad for America" for Wednesday's massive demonstration at the annual stockholders' meeting in Charlotte, N.C. The Bad for America slogan was for openers. The rally goers had lots more:
"Bailout. No thanks.
Bust up. Big Banks."
"Predatory lender.
Criminal offender."
"Big banks, you suck.
You'll do anything for a buck."
"Who got the money, money?
Who got the money, money?
You got the money, money.
We got the bill."
Okay, it's doggerel. But does a pack of greedy dogs deserve anything better?
Too bad yesterday that we didn't have a fly (with a video camera) on the local executive's wall, because it must have chafed the suit and tie that he had to tolerate the de classe crowd on the public sidewalk in front of his domain. (As a group, we had to stay off their property. I ventured onto the plaza to take pictures and was politely instructed by a cop to move back to the sidewalk.) Anyway, a video of the exec's remarks about us would probably have electrified a crowd that was already galvanized. Mr. Bank Exec had to play it gracious, though. When the hoi polloi wanted into the bank to deliver a letter with its demands, he ordered that the group's representatives be allowed in with no fuss. Otherwise, we'd have just hung around on the sidewalk chanting and showing our signs to the passing traffic.
Robin Acree of GRO was gutsy and funny leading the rally. She called out the CEO of B of A, Brian Moynihan, for heading an operation responsible for more foreclosures than anybody else. She pointed to a picture parody of Don Early, head of the payday loan company QC Holdings. In Missouri, those bloodsuckers charge an average of 431 percent annually on loans.
And guess who the third largest shareholder in QC Holdings might be. Its name begins with Bank and ends with America.
Go on. Tell me you know somebody who isn't pissed at the big banks. Even many of the tea partyers hate them. It doesn't matter which side of the spectrum people are on; they'd like to see those bloodsuckers at Wells Fargo and Bank of America hung naked by their toenails over a bonfire.
Unfortunately, the financial environment that bred the current crisis was also bipartisan. Oh sure, we could blame Republicans Phil Gramm, Texas, and Jim Leach, Iowa, for introducing in 1999 the bill that repealed the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, an act which kept speculation tamped down. But those two Republicans only led the charge. In their wake was a 90-8 vote in the Senate, a 362-57 vote in the House, and a signature--as if it were needed--by Bill Clinton.
Not until January of 2010, a year and a half after the global economy wobbled on the edge of a chasm, only to be pulled back from the brink by almost a trillion bucks loaned to the very villains who caused the wipe-out, did Obama, with Paul Volcker at his side, propose reinstating many of the Glass-Steagall regulations. What took you so long?! And anyway, it's not as if a proposal strong enough to do the job will survive the butchering, compromising, and selling out that will go on during markup. If such a miracle did occur, Congress would freeze in a bi-partisan iceberg (real Dems vs. Rs and Blue Dogs) when it came time to vote on actual reform.
Part of the reason adequate reform isn't likely to pass is the banks themselves. They used taxpayer money from the bailouts to lobby against reform--and, they know how to spread the moolah to the right campaign coffers. Meanwhile, in 2009 the top five banks made their highest profits ever. And they paid bonuses amounting to $140 billion--about the amount of money it would take to cover the shortfalls in fifty states from the Great Recession that the banks caused.
Damn straight we're pissed.
The banks "have their boot on the neck of the American Dream." It's time to take it to the streets. At least that's part of the strategy that National People's Action has mapped out for pressuring the banks to stop ripping people off and start lending to small businesses and investing in communities. Last October, NPA led a coalition of groups that turned out thousands of protesters at the annual American Bankers Association convention in Chicago. They called it Showdown in Chicago, and now every time a TV station wants to illustrate the anger of the populace at the banks, they dredge some video of those protests out of the archives.
It's time to give MSNBC and CNN new footage. NPA plans to double down, triple down, quadruple down on the protests. There will be regional demonstrations in late April through mid-May. The plan is to focus on the two worst offenders and to turn the clubby atmosphere of their annual stockholders' meetings into circuses. All the members of last October's coalition--SEIU, for example, and the AFL/CIO--are itching to get going. Each march will involve at least a thousand, maybe far more--a flood of loud, angry and yet articulate protesters.
The NPA strategy is two pronged.
First, progressives can accomplish a lot by focusing their energy on regulators rather than on legislators: Ben Bernanke at the Fed, Sheila Bair at the FDIC, and John C. Dugan at the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency). In Mexico, MO, Jordan Estevao, an NPA organizer, recently explained the strategy to activists at GRO, one of the members of the Showdown in Chicago coalition.
He asked how many of us had been to Bernanke's house to discuss the banking problem. Lotsa laughter. But, referring to the protests against Bernanke's nomination, Estevao said that "because we 'went to his house,' he's now ... afraid of us." NPA is scheduled to meet with Bernanke on March 9th to discuss the actions they feel the Fed needs to be taking. For example, NPA will urge Bernanke to see that the Community Reinvestment Act is enforced.
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A cockeyed optimist might look at the foreclosure problems Mike and Mary Boehm are facing, at the mortgage modification that BoA is offering them, and say, "Look. All the pressure is working!" Indeed, one of the BoA people explained to Mike that a dozen different people--including Russ Carnahan's office and Chris Koster's office--have complained about the treatment the Boehms have received. So, since the family is a wee hair short of meeting the MHA standard for modifying a mortgage, the bank is prepared to offer an in-house mortgage modification. Isn't that wonderful news?
Previously:
And Sergeant Towser had no problem following those orders and leaving befuddled, frustrated supplicants standing in the major's empty office, wondering if a cruel practical joke was being played on them. The Boehms can identify with their bewilderment.
But Ms. Gomez claimed that there was no record in their file of an intent to foreclose. Odd, considering that the Boehm's possessed a letter from Bad for America listing December 26th as the date that foreclosure proceedings would begin. Gomez was puzzled, furthermore, to find no paperwork in their file saying that they owed late fees--which is also odd, considering how the bank has been badgering the Boehms for those fees. 
Bank of America is looking into negotiating another mortgage with Mike and Mary Boehm. Well, so their representative said in a phone message. Monday night. But he hasn't returned any of the three messages the Boehm's have left for him since then. So far, that phone message and reports given to the Post-Dispatch and KMOV-tv that the Boehms are in no imminent danger of foreclosure are, at the very least, unverified.
"Bank of America, Bad for America!" chanted the crowd gathered in the shadow of the impregnable, forbidding Bank of America tower in Kansas City on Tuesday. A coalition of progressive groups brought a couple of hundred demonstrators to KC on Tuesday. The plan there, as in other cities on Tuesday, was to soften up "Bad for America" for Wednesday's massive demonstration at the annual stockholders' meeting in Charlotte, N.C. The Bad for America slogan was for openers. The rally goers had lots more:
