J.P. Morgan: Give Me Your Money, Now Get The Hell Out of Your Home

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



J.P. Morgan: Give Me Your Money, Now Get The Hell Out of Your Home

by Jonathan Tasini
Tuesday 13 of September, 2011


Every day that passes, I get the sense that the people who run the big banks are even more brazen in their view that we, the people of the country, are just sharecroppers on their financial plantations. We work, we give--and they take and take...and, then, when they are done with us, we get tossed off their little island.

J.P. Morgan is competing with Bank of America for the honor of worst overlord on the plantation--and in this story one can grasp the reason for the rage we see in the land.

Kudos to the Times' Michael Powell for his story today about Mimi Pierre Johnson:

She and her husband bought their four-bedroom home in Elmont, on Long Island, for $413,000 in 2005. Then the recession blew in. Her husband lost his construction job, her real estate work slowed and their boiler wheezed and died. Their once-reasonable mortgage resembled a forbidding mountain.

She dialed her bank, JPMorgan Chase, seeking a lifeline. The bank gave her a temporary modification, but then canceled it. It lost her documents. It did not return her calls. Late fees and lawyer bills piled up. “I’m a Realtor; I know I’m doomed,” Ms. Johnson said. “But I want to say to Chase, ‘Hello!? The government gave you a bailout to help people like me.’ ”

Here, Ms. Johnson is mistaken. Presidents George W. Bush and Obama spent more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money to bail out our largest banks and corporations. But they exacted no quid pro quo. JPMorgan Chase has recorded splendid profits and has no obligation to bail out hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing dispossession.

Whether you believe the banks should have gotten the money or not, and whether you believe that we should have let the banks fail (I do not because of the wreckage that would have caused), it is absolutely clear that this is an important point: they basically got the money with almost no strings attached. The banks were supposed to give the money out in the form of loans to help the economy--and they have not, by in large. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15291

[Claudia Jones]

1. k and r

No doubt we will see someone post "so should we all just get a free house then?" or "well I guess none of us have to make our mortgage payments then?"

[Kaleko]

13. Maybe you saved this thread from being drowned in red herrings

by saying that.

So far, so good. ;)

[neverforget]

2. I've been dealing with CitiMortgage. If they need a bailout again, let the fuckers

burn. These banks are parasites on the economy.

[izquierdista]

12. It makes nice art

I know it says CHASE, but the artist would probably consider similar ouevres with a change of subject.

[provis99]

3. "our" government conspires against us with corporations.

and what is Holder's Department of Justice doing about this? Not a damned thing.

[geckosfeet]

4. I miss the good old days when thieves would rob you with a gun in a dark alley.

Now they wear suits, call themselves mortgage bankers, and get you to sign on the dotted line.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Nothing new about that.

Think of the 19th century debtors prisons, etc. & all those old melodramas about the heartless banker throwing the widows out of their homes.

[DJ13]

5. Mortgage mods & limits on credit card interest was the least the government should have gotten

Getting no concessions was a betrayal of the people.

[Riley18]

6. There is absolutely no justification for banks to not modify bad mortgages.

[Raster]

7. Oh yes there is: profit margins.

We've been had, plain and simple.

[sarcasmo]

8. Credit Union and a fixed rate mortgage is the only way to go.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. I'll vouch for that.

Last week we moved our mortgage from what had once been a decent local bank until it kept getting swallowed by bigger fish. We got 3.75% at a local credit union where I do all my other financial transactions.

[pa28]

11. Made the switch recently and not looking back.

I could go on a pretty long rant about a certain United States Bank which would end on a recent car loan that involved a 1% origination fee they tried to slip in at the signing (signing never happened).

Moved everything to a credit union, got the car loan and it's like night and day. I'm doing a refi soon and it'll be through the credit union. I'll sleep better knowing I don't have a pack of wolves from JP Morgan looking to foreclose if the payment is a day late.

[sarcasmo]

14. Yep, we moved everything to the credit union over a car loan as well.