FDIC Chairwoman: Mortgage Industry ‘Didn’t Think Borrowers Were Worth Helping’

[EFerrari]

FDIC Chairwoman: Mortgage Industry ‘Didn’t Think Borrowers Were Worth Helping’

by Lois Beckett
ProPublica, July 13, 2011, 9:50 a.m.

Outgoing Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairwoman Sheila C. Bair's revealing exit interview by the New York Times' Joe Nocera <1> has generated plenty of buzz. But while the interview provided a comprehensive look at Bair's role from 2006 to 2011, what caught our attention was her characterization of the foreclosure crisis.

Bair said that the mortgage's industry's reluctance to provide mortgage modifications stems in part from the industry's "disdain for borrowers <2>."

"I think some of it was that they didn't think borrowers were worth helping," she said.

While Bair said that President Barack Obama's "heart is in the right place," she criticized his economic team for taking controversial steps to aid banks while, in Nocera's words, being "utterly unwilling to take any political heat to help homeowners."

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/fdic-chairwoman-mortgage-industry-didnt-think-borrowers-were-worth-helping?utm_source=socmed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_content=tweet3&utm_campaign=blog

[The Magistrate]

1. Very True, Ma'am

A much better way to have 'bailed out' banks would have been to loan people money to make their mortgage payments....

[EFerrari]

2. They should have written down the loans or at very least

seen to it that the loan servicers didn't collect for loans the banks had no intention of modifying.

[dkf]

6. It's not done falling yet.

[dkf]

5. Isn't that known as "unemployment insurance"?

[The Magistrate]

8. Is It, Ma'am?

Often it is just consequence of an adjustable rate or a balloon come due, or a sudden and unavoidable increase in expenses owing to illness or accident, or even the loss of value of investments.

[Wilms]

3. x-post - NPR: Why Prosecutors Don't Go After Wall Street

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1480990&mesg_id=1480990

[EFerrari]

4. Are you freakin' kidding me?

They made a gentleman's agreement with cannibals?

:rofl:

[The Magistrate]

7. That They Did, Ma'am

Now a cannibal can be a gentleman, but these certainly are not....

"The nearest thing to an ethic a merchant knows is 'Don't gouge too deep.'"

[CaliforniaHiker]

9. I doubt that anyone is really surprised

to know that the banks weren't truly interested in helping borrowers. I still find it difficult to believe that the Federal Government bailed out the banks without any stipulations that they must in turn make a good faith effort to help borrowers.

[EFerrari]

11. The Feds paid the banks to steal homes in their fake modification programs. n /t

[slipslidingaway]

10. Thanks ...

getting lost in today's noise.

[gratuitous]

12. Far better to let properties be vacated and deteriorate

No sense reducing principal amounts and letting people stay in their homes. Far preferable to the mortgage companies and their bureaucratic buddies like Ms. Bair to simply denigrate borrowers as a bunch of irresponsible graspers trying to buy too much house, and letting the properties go to pot when they're vacated and their value goes down the drain.

Nocera's comment is spot on, about our governmental "leaders" being unwilling to take any heat for helping people who were underwater on their mortgages. Unsaid by the New York Times writer, naturally, is any hint of just how that heat would have been stoked by the popular media, encouraging people to turn on their neighbors and denounce any individual who falls afoul of the financial sector. Institutions are never to be criticized no matter how predatory their financial behavior.

[EFerrari]

13. Did you notice Nocera is not going to work in the industry

but for the Pew Charitable Trust?

[Dappleganger]

14. Yeah, but our tax money was sure good enough to bail their lyin', thievin' asses out.