Firms are getting billions, but homeowners still in trouble

[progressiveGI]

When one reads news like this item, it adds to the realization that the whole system has become corrupt to the core - what can we as ordinary citizens do to clean up this system?


The federal government is engaged in a massive mortgage modification program that's on track to send billions in tax dollars to many of the very companies that judges or regulators have cited in recent years for abusive mortgage practices.

The firms, called mortgage servicers, have been cited for badgering, manipulating or lying to their customers; sticking them with bogus fees, or improperly foreclosing on them.

Mortgage servicers are the middlemen between homeowners and the investors that hold their mortgages, collecting homeowners' checks and disbursing payments for the mortgages, property tax and insurance. They're a necessary player for any modification.

The reliance on such companies points to an ironic paradox for federal regulators: Cleaning up the nation's financial crisis often rewards the firms that helped create the mess. Those Wall Street banks and mortgage servicing companies argue that they're best positioned to repair the damage they've helped cause. In the case of the mortgage program, the firms getting the taxpayers' money are, after all, the firms that control the troubled mortgages.

To make matters worse, the Government Accountability Office , Congress' watchdog, has said that the Treasury Department hasn't done enough to oversee the companies participating in what's known as the Home Affordable Modification Program, which emerged from the bank bailout bill Congress passed last fall.

Excerpt: McClatchy Newspapers

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20091004/pl_mcclatchy/3324260

[brentspeak]

1. Unbelievable. The corruption and ineptitude just won't end

[lib2DaBone]

2. It's going to end... sooner than we thought...when the whole system implodes...

Bernake, Geithner, Summers...the Goldman Sachs gang thinks that they can re-inflate the bubble and all will be well.

How can you fix the problem by hiring the very people that caused the problem the first place?

China is not going to lend us any more money. The game is over... stay tuned...

[AllentownJake]

3. Christmas

They will not be happy when the Peasants are not shopping.

[Fire1]

8. We all can't leave what jobs we have left to run off in protest

but we can certainly be heard if we stop shopping. That's the protest in which we can ALL participate.

[AllentownJake]

9. It really isn't a matter of Protest

10% unemployment.

[RKP5637]

10. My feelings too. You can only milk this country so much. China will eventually be the one

pulling the world strings, not the US. Most of us will be serfs. Sadly it's possibly only a matter of time. I think we're caught in a continuing downward spiral. It reminds me of the corporations I used to work for. The ones causing the financial problems stayed in place, the rest of us got laid off.

[MichiganVote]

4. That's Our MONEY...That's OUR Money....THAT'S Our Money

WTH is going on in this administration?

[Trillo]

5. K&R

And off to the Greatest page.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. we have a champion, though! we do! we do! we really do!

[Yuugal]

7. +1 nt

[inna]

11. +2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/americans-have-been-taken_b_285225.html