Big Bank Back Room Deals Begin

I read the NY Times far less because of the paywall, but today’s editorial brings to light a new problem with big lenders embroiled in the robo-signing scandal: they are already making a backroom deal for a slap on the wrist and permission to continue with business as usual. The banks gameplan that they are “too big to fail” is back in play, and their powerful lobby is making the Obama administration guilty of complicity that makes the Bush administration-Haliburton connection so deplored by the left a few short years ago look like a church tag sale. 

Here’s the irony pointed out by 60 Minutes last week and yours truly when the robo signing scandal first broke: How is it that entities which wouldn’t lend a dime unless the borrowers papwerwork was absolutely, definitively complete, be allowed to cut so many corners with their own paperwork? If a borrower in a judicial state faces foreclosure and their adversary is allowed to produce forged paperwork in court, how can they be getting their constitutionally guaranteed due process? 

Here’s the irony of ironies: Most clients of mine who are facing foreclosure aren’t deadbeats, they are simply victims of the economy that the banks themselves ruined. Their business failed. They were laid off in budget cut backs and downsizing. Many were honorable to a fault, depleting their life savings and even their retirement assets just to do the “right thing” and pay their mortgage obligation until there was simply no money left. These people deserve that every piece of paper in the banks case against them be 100% legitimate. 

I am a registered Independent because I am repelled by different things on both sides of the ideological fence. But the one thing I thought that Obama would do is hold big banks who made the mess accountable. But as the NY Times points out, politics as usual where banks are concerned knows no political party. 

My father would have been 91 this September. He spent 6 plus years overseas defending our nation in World War Two in the South Pacific and in Korea, where he earned a Bronze Star at Inchon. He helped keep our nation great. And with a few signatures on an illicit bill, some political hacks and lobbyists will attempt to unravel his sacrifices. Shame on them, and shame on us for allowing it.