Occupy Protester Almost Makes Bank CEO Look Sympathetic
I saw a story that Occupy protesters were picketing outside the home of the CEO of Wells Fargo today. Little did I know that after I read the story, I'd actually almost think that the CEO ought to be picketing one of the protesters!
What caught my eye was the fact that the protester interviewed for a story in the San Francisco Business Times was protesting because she had been foreclosed on her second home:
San Leandro residents Donna and Nuno Vieira and their 7-year-old son Leonardo each carried a placard discussing an element of their story about losing a second home in Reno, Nev., through a Wells Fargo foreclosure.
Donna Vieira says a fraudulent appraisal meant her Reno house was $243,000 under water on the day she took out her Wells Fargo mortgage. The Vieira family later lost the home to foreclosure after pouring $350,000 into a down payment and monthly mortgage payments.
That sounded like an awful lot of coin for a typical 99 percenter to plunk down for a second home! So I was intrigued by the fact that someone who was apparently living the lifestyle of a rich person just a few years ago was picketing amongst the Occupy protesters.
After researching the matter, I found a writeup on the Vieiras' story, entitled Profiles: Family Won't Give Up . I found out that this was a purchase mortgage-- the Vieiras are claiming they bought a home for $243,000 more than it was worth, and blame a fraudulent appraisal by the bank who made their mortgage, instead of blaming themselves for overpaying.
The thing is, when the bank gets an appraisal, that's for the benefit of the bank-- to make sure that the value of the collateral covers the amount of money they are lending. It's the bank that is damaged by an inflated appraisal-- if the borrower defaults, as happened in this case, the collateral is not worth as much as it was purported to be, and the bank will have a larger writeoff. The borrower saw the property and knew what the price was. If they had paid cash, there wouldn't have been a bank appraisal.
Should they have known all this? Well, there's the fact that the Vieiras were appraisers themselves, owning a "successful real estate appraisal business"! I find it hard to believe that the Vieiras were ignorant of the fact that some appraisers would work with the numbers to ensure that an appraisal would conform to a desired purchase price.
But anyway, the Vieiras stopped paying on their mortgage-- not for any financial hardship or inability to pay, but because the appraisal was allegedly inflated:
"Knowing the mortgage was fraudulent, we just couldn't keep on paying," Nuno said, adding that they stopped making mortgage payments in September of 2009.
This is what a classic strategic default looks like:
"Despite the foreclosure, both of us still maintain near perfect credit scores," Vieira said, "but due to something that is completely not our fault, we can't take advantage of the low mortgage rates now and switch to a 30-year fixed. It just creates so much uncertainty in our life."
They can still send their son to private school-- bet that isn't cheap!
They send Leo — a first-grader with a fourth-grade reading ability — to a private school, despite the good public schools in the area. "We can't send Leo [to the public school], because I don't have the time to help him with his homework or to track his progress in school," she said.
And why doesn't she have time for her son, you ask?
Now Vieira spends an average of five hours a day, seven days a week, in a legal fight with Wells Fargo over the mortgage fraud issue.
If the Vieiras' story were presented in a story to highlight strategic default and contrast it with foreclosure out of true hardship, it would not be that remarkable. But that is not the case. The site on which the article appears is entitled "What went wrong: The Betrayal of the American Dream". The article that tells their story is presented as a profile of "those hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis". This is being presented as if I am supposed to feel sorry for the Vieiras!
If folks strategic default, that is their decision-- I wish that people would feel a strong obligation to pay their debts if they can reasonably do so, but if the law allows for it, and it is to their advantage, I can't say that I blame a person for a strategic default. The banks screwed up badly during the housing bubble-- including in their appraisal process-- and I see strategic defaults as chickens coming home to roost in a sense. But when someone overpays for a second home, strategically defaults on their mortgage, and then not only has the audacity to blame the bank for the fact that they can't refinance because of a mark on their credit report, but makes a full time job out of pursuing the bank over a loss that they have already stuck the bank with, I end up almost feeling sorry for the bank CEO. Almost.
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Comments :
Why are you a Democrat?
Or even a liberal for that matter? I just don't get you sometimes.
Too many reasons to name
For starters:
--The inmates do not run the asylum in the Democratic Party.
--Democrats run government better.
--The Democratic Party has been less corrupt in my lifetime.
--The Democratic Party has far less bigotry.
--Democrats run a more moderate, peaceful foreign policy in most cases.
--In Democratic regimes, better legislation is passed.
--Almost everything that Republicans say that they are for that I agree with, Democrats have proven better at delivering.
Oh, and by the way, have you seen the frontrunners in the GOP Presidential contest? Pretty pathetic, huh? Well guess what-- the guys at the local GOP luncheons sound just like em if not worse! The rot in that party runs wide and deep.
Really it is not even close, and the gap between the parties grows wider all the time it seems. Neither party is a perfect fit, but until there is a viable alternative, I guess I am a Democrat, because I see absolutely no reason to vote for any Republicans right now.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
we need a solid Center-Right party
that grabs a large number of moderate/conservative Democrats and moderate/regular conservative Republicans. To leave the nutcases on both sides to fend for themselves :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Mitt Romney being the standard bearer for this party, I presume?
No thanks. He used to call himself a moderate, now he calls himselve a severe conservative in this primary. I take him at is word now-- he sounds every bit a severe conservative, not a middle-right moderate.
Romney has a nice haircut and a decent resume on paper, but on the campaign stump he hits all the same notes as the far right wingers in the Republican field. Not a dime of tax increases on the rich, even billionaires paying less than 15%, even though we are running huge deficits. His economic plan is the same old tried and failed trickle-down nonsense. More tax cuts modeled after the failed Bush tax cuts that have not worked. No coherent plan on increasing our competitiveness, or on energy, or on illegal immigration-- no amnesty, so I suppose we are going to deport 20 million people? No plan on education. No plan on dealing with Iran, he says that if Obama is elected Iran gets a nuke and if he is elected they won't but nothing he says he would do is substantially different from what Obama already is doing. Repeal Roe v. Wade, reinstate DADT, amend the constitution to prohibit same sex marriage-- no to even civil unions. Repeal all of Obamacare, even the cost savings parts, the parts that were concessions to the Republicans, and the parts that look exactly like Romneycare. Hard right positions on social issues across the board. People on welfare should get jobs-- duh, why didn't I think of that? I guess he thinks that all the people holding cardboard signs at exit ramps willl just magically get jobs too when he takes the oath of office.
He's not allowed in any party I'm in. There isn't a tent big enough to have me on one side and Romney on the other.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
In all fairness,
Obama sounded a lot more liberal in the primaries than he did in the general election....let alone compared to how he has been in government where he has managed to thoroughly disappoint the loyal base of the Dem party....much to my pleasure. ;-)
You will not see the same in Romney.
He's already flip flopped too many times. He has a nasty reputation for it-- well earned! The right wing base isn't going to take another betrayal lightly. He'll run in the general as a generic right winger.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
you misunderstood me
I wasn't thinking of any existing candidates as leaders but talking in generalities.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Agreed.
And I still don't like him. ;) hahahaha
so what you are saying is that
Obama is a master liar, while Romney is just an apprentice level?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
The reason why Obama was more convincing to the base...
...was that he did not have to do so much to appeal to them. He mostly just had to project a winning image and bash Bush-- the primary voters did not box him in too much on the issues. Romney has had to pass a right wing litmus test on all the issues. I guess if you were being extremely charitable, you could say that the right wingers are paying close attention to the candidates on the issues. But I do not see it quite that way, because the issues are only treated superficially in the Republican Party, there is no nuance whatsoever, no recognition that issues are complex. I see it as a lack of leadership, and a caving in to every common bias that a pretty uninformed and right wing populace has. It is not being an elitist to recognize that the leaders should know better than the population in general, and their positions on the issues should reflect that!
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
With Romney and the GOP it is a little different now
In 2000, when Bush ran as a moderate conservative in 2000 and won the nomination, you would have been correct about Romney. But that was back before the hard liners had such firm control. All Bush had to do to gain enough support in the primary to win was to fine tune his message a bit, emphasize his positions that appealed to conservatives, etc.
But now, it is 2012, and the tea party hard liners and the religious zealots are in firm control. You are absolutely right that Romney has to actually pretend to be something that he is not to win the primary in the current GOP. He has had to do far more than just change his rhetoric, he has had to adopt the right wing position on the issues. How do you switch back from that, if you have been concealing your true, moderate position? He would be rightly called a liar!
When Obama ran in the primary in 2008, sure, he tuned his message for the base, but he was able to maintain his true positions on core issues. The Obama who took office is the same guy who ran. Is Romney really going to govern like Eisenhower after running as Goldwater? I do not believe it. He has his word to keep at this point. So I'm judging him by what he has said the past several years, not by his record in Massachusetts. I do not think he will change his positions back to moderate positions.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Well, while I agree with the spirit of your explanation
as far as the GOP is concerned, I simply have no love for the Dems either. You're far too kind to the Dems on many levels. The GOP makes my eyes roll or my fists tighten, the Dems just make me cringe. I cannot associate with a party that houses the blithering idiot social dems I see all over the web...or overhear spewing their emotional "wouldn't it be nice if....?" crap. All that being said, I was slightly more for Obama in 08 and Egypt showed why. I was counting on a little more backbone from the GOP on homefront issues. Oh well. Better to waste money on harmful, stagnation-inducing policies at home that spill blood and raise tensions abroad. yippie. What a choice!
So if I were trying to sell you...
...on at least softening your stance a bit, I'd point to the bit about the inmates not running the asylum, because really, The fringe left doesn't drive the bus in the party. In our primary, the Kucinichs and the Sharptons tally in the low single digits... in the Republican Party, the only center-right guy, Huntsman was scoring 1% and the far right bomb throwers were taking turns in the lead with Romney, the "severe conservative". Has Obama ever referred to himself as a "severe liberal"?
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
No. Obama is not a severe liberal
and I think level headed people not blinded by hatred or love could see that before he got into office. His campaign left a lot cryptic wording that showed a man who was to the right of his frothing base that carried him past Hillary in the primary. I never expected him to be a strong liberal. Where it counted on a pragmatic or realistic level, he struck me as a center left Bill Clinton type...and he has been in many ways.
I'm not the "base"...
...but in the primary in 2008, I had a choice more than one candidate in the Democratic primary that had some appeal to me.
I originally supported Bill Richardson, a center left Clinton-style guy. He made a bunch of gaffes and turned out to be a dud as a candidate, but that happens sometimes-- your guy just is not as solid as you thought he was and does not stand up to scrutiny.
So I switched over to Obama. Hillary Clinton would have been a third candidate who would have been perfectly acceptable to me, but her votes on Iraq made Obama the clear choice between those two. Biden would have been acceptable to me, not that he ever got any support. None of these people are perfect-- none of us are-- but they do not sound like raving, frothing zealots, not even in a Democratic primary.
The only major candidate that I did not like at all was John Edwards. He made Mitt Romney look like an amateur in the phoniness department, a rich hedge fund guy pretending to care about the poor when in front of the cameras. Subsequent events showed just how phony he was in every respect! He was the base's darling, not Obama, and he lost, even though Obama and Hillary were splitting the center-left vote.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
check out these freaks of nature
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/01/1069799/-Senate-defeats-Blunt-amendment-in-a-too-close-for-comfort-51-49-nbsp-vote-?via=blog_1
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
of course the Right has similar hyperbole
here and there, but this is almost beyond :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
By "here and there"...
...you must have meant "coming out of the mouths of the GOP standard-bearers".
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
only some of them :)
And when you appeal to the base, you gotta throw them the red meat. It's the law.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
In the Democratic primary, we toss the base a couple scraps.
In the Republican Primary, you take the crazies out to Ruth's Chris :-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Just garden variety hyperbole
As you point out, this is an inmate expressing her view-- an inmate that is not running the asylum. On your side, we have your frontrunner in the R primary, saying:
There's your freak show... in your primary, tied with your guy Romney in the national polls. With a GOP frontrunner saying stuff like that in his political speeches, maybe the hyperbole from the inmates is a bit understandable, even.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
hehe I guess that's true to some degree
Rational people though would understand that even if that GOP lunatic ever became president, it would still never threaten birth control :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Nice poll for Romney
Santorum had a horrible week. He sucked in the debate and just made one crazy statement after another in his campaign appearances. If he had made crazy statements on cuffing all the illegals and shipping them in boxcars back to Mexico, or eliminating the IRS, or impeaching Obama, he probably would have pulled into the lead. But he is a crazed lunatic on issues involving sex and religion, which probably is embarrassing to a lot of more or less secular right wingers. He is probably toast.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Heh
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
This one?
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1069799/45175617#c5
I also considered the Helpless comment, first comment in the thread... that one seemed like a possible impostor too, but I looked at one of his diaries and he did not seem to write like you do.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
nah
I don't pretend to be one of them... :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
cryoanut then?
Heh... I have seen that name around some. Had no idea.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
yeah
cryonaut. I don't comment that much though. Here and there :) Most of the time a TU even though I never say anything really democratic.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Yeah
I have five bars of mojo, and I am not very popular and have only been back commenting regularly there for a couple months.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
I liked your comment here--
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/03/03/further-proof-romney-supported-a-national-individual-mandate-in-2009/#comment-174993
I agree with all of that. I would have given you support on that over there, but I do not think it would have helped your cause to have a Democrat interloper supporting you.
What does the wholesale abandonment of mandates say about the GOP? Used to be, when the other side adopted your idea, you welcomed that. That was a win for you. The legislation passed, and you had a bipartisan moment. Now, if Obama adopts any historically Republican positions, the Republicans reject the idea they formerly supported, and move the goalposts further right. For some reason, Obama is seen within the party as so toxic that any sort of agreement with him is to be avoided, no matter what his position is. I believe the same thing has happened on tax reform, entitlement reform, and spending cuts, where Obama adopted center to center-right positions during the debt ceiling debate last year, putting Medicare on the table, advocating significant cuts in discretionary spending etc.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
thanks
It is the case with Obamacare. It's not necessarily the case with Obama's so called center-right positions. I don't think Obama ever proposed significant cuts in anything. Sorry. Same with tax reform or entitlement reform. I do not trust Obama there. He is not for shrinking the government or spending. I still remember all the celebration on the Left when Obama negotiated $60+ billing in "cuts" with the GOP for a deal on debt extension, and it turned out to be mostly smoke and mirrors from Obama, and there was no savings whatsoever. The Left celebrated.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
hahahaha
God, kossacks have to be the dumbest, most hysterical lot in American Politics. And if they aren't by some subjective measure, they sure are close by any objective measure.
?
What's that supposed to mean?
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
I think you know exactly what it means
...
If posters on high school sports sites are a good gauge
A number of GOP voters, that always vote GOP, make Santorum look like a conservative Democrat.
Lots of people vote to keep the wrong lizard out.
-----------
ftr
I'm voting for actual socialist, and randomly for libertarians, as a protest vote for the 2nd major election run coming up.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
I have to correct your guy's mistakes :)
You like that HR? hehe
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Yeah, you got him, you were right.
I thought it was a fair use of an HR, I've done that before as an attention-getter. The guy should have just pulled the diary once he discovered that he was wrong, but he's being a bit defensive about it.
BTW, I like how some random DKos poster becomes "my guy" when he screws up...
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
it was a stupid as hell diary
so it's hard to believe it was so recommended :) But I was polite.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Well, you were polite *at times*...
and somewhat blunt at other times. Nothing that should be considered out of line, of course, but if a similar opportunity presented itself at RedState, I'm not so sure I could have gotten away with your frank disdain for the diarist's lack of due diligence.
Sadly, not hard to believe that it was recommended by so many. Those who will just unthinkingly accept anything that fits their wishes and beliefs far outnumber the folks who will read critically and challenge a diarist on the facts.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
agreed on multiple points
I can be more confrontational on dkos than I can be on RedState. However I have to watch what I say much more carefully on dkos, ideologically speaking heh
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
off topic-- Looks like someone...
...is able to hack the blog and put in their own gibberish into blog entries at will :-(
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
yeah
I am trying to figure out whose account is hacked. Once I do, I can lock it down and restore the blogs from backup... Annoying!
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Well, it is not going too well for me at RedState
I have been commenting there quite a bit the past ten days or so. Unfortunately, I have the equivalent of a DailyKos troll hunter on my case, a real aggressive neanderthal who responds with harrassing comments to every comment I make. Really, once that happens, you might as well be banned, because it makes discussion nearly impossible.
There's more than one person there who has said that they like to have some Democrats around and/or treated me civilly, but that's not going to matter it does not look like.
I have also already been warned by an admin that I can't defend Obama, that it's not a "debating society" etc., so I think what I am doing is against their rules to begin with. I don't see any other Democrats in the threads, so I guess they don't survive there. The future looks dim for skymutt on RedState :-(
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
RS and DK are ying and yang
Being someone who has gotten harassed and attacked at both sites in the past, I can tell you that both sites suck for their narrow-mindedness, belligerence and intolerance. I haven't been to either site in years. There's really no point.
I quit there just now.
Wasn't banned, and actually it looks like my shadow may have been prepared to ease up, but there's still the mods, and the restrictions on what I can say, and the fact that what I have to say, most don't want to hear... you're right, just no point.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
John is essentially right
There are plenty of neanderthals there to spoil the possibility of debate :)
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
The thing is...
...when I got called out for using a talking point by the mod, it <em>was</em> a talking point, I admitted it and I apologized for the slip up. The mod just kept on lecturing me, calling my comment a lie.
Once I got noticed, every thread, no matter my initial comment, they turned into a left vs. right thing. I should have just not responded further when any thread took that turn-- that was a dead end. My only good threads were before I got noticed, when I could mostly go back and forth with one person and was able to keep the threads on topic. After I got noticed, there were 10 people jumping in with their accusations about "the left", in which I guess I as a Democrat am supposed to try and defend every fringe view and character that ever might be considered to be on the left side of the spectrum, no matter what the topic of my initial comment was :-(
It is like Dailykos without the "fail" picutres-- and that may be only because RedStaters are not as HTML-savvy :-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Funny, Ender....
I already see both you as essentially where more or less where I am in terms of general views. The superficial partisan window dressing is the only difference.