60 Minutes exposes banks’ massive mortgage fraud (via Beyond Money)

I hope this makes a difference. I was blogging about this back when it was one step above UFO posts. Things certainly have changed. There is talk of fines as high as 20 billion dollars although the white knights of Congress are already calling these monetary penalties for illegal or borderline illegal, “confiscatory.”

Pleas watch.

James Pilant

My special thanks to Beyond Money.

This is a truly astounding story about how major banks have routinely used falsified documents to foreclose on people who were lured into the housing bubble. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdeFyPC5MNI … Read More

via Beyond Money

An American Tragedy

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.

This is from a Reuters article entitled -

Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes

All over the United States, cities, counties and entire States are sinking into bankruptcy. A working America beset by ten percent unemployment has little tax paying ability left to pay for roads, schools, police and fire. But the other beneficiaries, corporations and banks are doing well. On  the whole, large corporations are having a great year. The upper class, those over a quarter of a million dollars a year are doing very well indeed. In fact, statistically, they are not experiencing a recession.

Why aren’t these organizations paying taxes?

Can you tell me?

The upper half of the nation is booming. Profits are great. Banks are paying out enormous bonuses.

Why can’t we tax them?

Look, if you haven’t noticed, a middle class that has had an 8% increase in real income over the last thirty years cannot be squeezed for more taxes.

If you are going to tax go where the money is.

It would be wrong to ask banks and other corporations to pay taxes if they didn’t get any benefits. That’s not a problem. The roads, bridges, the educational system, the sacrifices of soldiers, the day to day protective work of firemen and police, not to mention the constant payments made by millions of Americans, make bank and corporate profits possible.

They owe this nation and they owe it big.

I don’t want to be relieved of my tax burden. I want the people and organization who are not paying taxes to pay their fair share.

James Pilant

MERS And Ownership

MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registry System, is a system used by the banks to evade paying fees or having to do the traditional paperwork necessary to change the ownership of property.

To quote the Associated Press -

MERS’ owners are all the big mortgage companies, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and GMAC. They are all facing a foreclosure-fraud investigation launched by all 50 state attorneys general, and all took government bailout money after the financial meltdown in 2008.

As I mentioned in my last posting, our lame duck Congress is thinking (if you could ever refer to their processing as having thought) of legalizing this system now, years after the major banks began using it with full knowledge of its legal problems. (Being a bank is very much like being in love in the movie, Love Story, you never have to say you are sorry.)

This is from the Washington Post. It explains why MERS is a problem.

I very much appreciate the Washington Post for developing this little picture and trust it was useful to you.

James Pilant