If a bank broke into my house while I was on vacation and removed all my belongings and destroyed them, I’d ask for a lot more than $18,000 in compensation. I would expect to own the bank president’s home before I was through with them. And for the bank president to refuse to pay “retail” prices to replace the stuff he stole and destroyed? The guy should be thrown in Gitmo.
We really need an incredibly punitive law that basically cripples any lending institution that wrongfully forecloses on someone’s home.
I think all we really need is a law that puts a high-level executive in jail for a few months. The banks might be too big to fail, but the individual bankers are not. If these guys actually faced even a few months in a country club prison, this shit would stop immediately.
Like Martha Stewart? No, they need a few months of hard time, either paying for protection or gaining a wider asshole.
Just like Martha Stewart, yeah. Except, you know, banksters instead of Lifestyle Celebrities. I can’t say that the guillotine doesn’t appeal, but baby steps …
(And really, I just think that the only way to curb this behavior is to put CEOs and such in personal jeopardy. Financial or otherwise. That’s all they care about. A huge whacking fine against the company? Cost of doing business. Actually, it just occurred to me that this might have something to do with the whole corporate personhood question, but I don’t know if that’s true.)
I’m a big fan of the Chinese approach. Fuck putting them in jail, shoot a few.
I thought you were referring to death by a thousand cuts, or the execution of the ten agnates.
I’m for stringing them up. The crimes of the banksters are beyond comprehension. Our friend Donna is a lady who does painting for a living. She needed to restructure her loan. You will not believe how often they “lost” her paperwork. Beyond belief, I would easily go along with shooting some of those executives. And now it is coming out that there was deliberate, systematic, and planned cheating of these homeowners. It is a RICO situation.
“I think all we really need is a law that puts a high-level executive in jail for a few months.”
TOTALLY in agreement here. There needs to be some PERSONAL responsibility placed on the top leaders of these banks and other organizations that abuse the public. For another example, those jackholes from BP and Halliburton responsible for the Gulf disaster needed jail time, abso-fucking-lutely.
I’ll note that the GOP’s rhetoric about “taking responsibility for yourself and your actions” iS completely ignored when it comes to The Rich.
How about a Clinton-Warren ticket to start laying the groundwork for a president who would actually do what she was elected to do? Then maybe Clinton is too old in 2020 …
Oh yes, Clinton will fix it. She and her husband have such a history of being tough on the financial sector.
This is me doing a double face palm.
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What’s also amazing about that story is how she called the police, and they did nothing, even though they could easily find out who took her stuff. Certainly whoever the bank hired did not throw away everything, but kept at least some of it for themselves, and the police chief (in another article) said basically ‘nothing to see here’, and actually refused to investigate! http://gawker.com/bank-repossesses-wrong-house-sells-off-homeowners-stu-893629920?utm_campaign=socia
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What’s even more amazing is, I bet the bank and the cops acted perfectly legally. They’ll settle to avoid more bad press, but that’s my guess: that yeah, they can do this now. Everyone makes mistakes.
I have shared this story on FB and called the bank. Customer service told me there are two sides to the story. I laughed, and said that’s not true. So they transferred me to the bank president’s voicemail, where you can imagine what kind of message I left.
very curious what the other side to the story might be
I’ll call back Monday and find out.
Likely it hinges on the difference between current value and replacement value for the damages. Bank wants to discount based on the age of items.
How many F-bombs were included? 😉
None. I was very polite, kind of like the way the Scorpio Killer is polite to Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry”. “I’ve decided to let her die anyway. I just thought you’d want to know that.” “I’ve shared this story on FB and Twitter, where I have 1500 friends and followers, many of who are relatives in Ohio. Theyre sharing too. I just thought I’d let you know.”
I would be exploring my extra-legal options.
Seriously. Suicide bomb the motherfuckers.
This is not an isolated incident. David Dayen has been covering all of the fraudulent and “Ooops” aspects of the mortgage crisis since it began.
And federal, state, and local governments have been treating banks with impunity.
Indeed, there is a bipartisan move in Congress to codify the use of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System as equivalent to a courthouse filing and loosen the “show the note” requirements on the foreclosure process.
Instead of the repo man mistaking the address, other cases the MERS system had a typo in the address when the title changed from one holder of the servicing to another through the bundling transactions involved in the whole credit default swap mess. There are likely a lot of houses that have been foreclosed on just in this way.
But before stories like this one, most folks thought is was a random error and bought the bank’s explanation and settled quietly.
Please stay on top of this and keep us informed. SCOTUS Kelo decision could make such legislation legally problematical. (And maybe lefties will finally appreciate that decision.)
What would I do? What would I DO?? What WOULD I DO???!!!!
I’d be losing my shit all over the place.
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How about a law against stealing things? Seriously, isn’t there already a law against breaking into someone’s house and taking all there stuff? Is there some sort of law that says it’s ok if a bank does it? Let’s repeal it then.
She needs a good lawyer to strip their bones. Imagine how this looks to a civil jury. Imagine their reaction to “we won’t pay retail because some of those items are old.” They are not an insurance company, they are the damned burglar!
$18,000 actual damages. $180,000 punitive damages. Plus attorney’s fees of 40%.
“The guy should be thrown in Gitmo.”
Er, no. Whoever the ‘guy’ is. No one deserves ‘Gitmo’ (which is obviously now not just a physical place in the Yank imagination but a metaphysical hellhole for sending to of enemies).
Bit shocked you would type that.
Do I need to even explain why? Are you joking?
I called the bank. They are now quite defensive. The woman who answered said that I should read the statement on their web site. I’ll do it later when I’m drunk.
I looked around their web site, but didn’t see a related statement anywhere. However, I did run across a story on one of the local tv news stations and they had seen the statement.
Thanks, you just save me time.
What I would do is [comments redacted to avoid prison time]
I wish a bank would…