Irvine Housing Blog

Nationalize banks? You sound like Hugo Chavez. The last thing the taxpayers need or want is those banks being owned by the government!

Has anyone heard of a first time homebuyer program that picks up 3% of the 3.5% FHA down (thus requiring the buyer to put down only 0.5%)? I’ve got a realtor pushing this, and of course it sounds fabulous and risk-free, but I’ve gotta believe there is some sinister fine-print that’s going to emerge…. Thanks for any feedback anyone might have!

If banks cannot operate according to the terms of their charter, then they should be either closed or nationalized and sold off.

Same thing with PG&E actually.

They have demonstrated that they cannot manage a pipeline, so should be nationalized, brought up to standard, and handed off to a utility or coop that can meet their obligations.

Should have let them go bankrupt.  Banks are nothing or no one special.  The economy and the populace will do just fine if the TBTF banks go out of business.  The idea that the economy will go belly up if the banks dissolve is a myth promulgated by all those with an interest win government subsidizing of bank losses and socialized profits for the banks.

Get rid of the Federal Reserve.

Let people decide what they want to use for money rather than the government.  According to The Constitution, the federal government is suppose to coin money, not decide what it is.

IR:

You’re still missing the point about robo-signing.

This is a legal matter - you can’t file a foreclosure document without certifying that it is accurate by a representative of the owner.

If somebody is signing hundreds of documents per day, there is no verification occurring.

If even one of the those documents has a significant mistake and is filed with the court - that’s fraud.

When judges hear “robo-signing”, what they really hear is “utterance of a forged document in my courtroom.”

Many judges will not look the other way when that happens.

Kamala Harris is a Bay Area grandstanding crony capitalism tool, and always has been.  She should remind you strongly of Gavin Newsom.  Pity she won that squeaker with Steve Cooley.

You sound like Hugo Chavez

LOL!  Irvine Renter and his little dictatorship bias!

Showing your true cards once again, eh, IrvineRenter?!

Irvine Renter,
Several factors kept the country from nationalizing the bad banks:
1.  Political will and general feeling of free market PC’ness.
2.  The PTB don’t want nationalization but corporate hand-outs.
3.  That would requiring firing the offenders and that would trigger large severance payouts in the employment contracts.  I’ve have not seen any big shots get fired without large severance or wrongful dismissal judgments, except at WalMart.
4.  People would have the records and demand a claw back.
4.  The statue of limitations had not expired, so the shuffling needs to continue until they expire.

IR: Why don’t you title this article:

“Irving Blogger panders to the select right-wing, withdraws from using logic and common sense.”

You obviously have an ideological bias against this woman because you haven’t presented any real
arguments proving she is “pandering” to of all people the evil “loan owners”. 

You state in a number of your blogs how the banks are at fault (even more so you’ve said a number of times) and when the attorney general actually shows some spine at political cost to herself (this is not what Obama and Timothy Geihtner want her doing) she is “pandering” and to whom “loan owners” as if the loan owners struggling are the evildoers in this system.  Is it that you hate democrats or that you hate women that you feel you have to pander to some right-wing agenda.

I for one applaud her for not pandering to the banks and the current administrations whims to get a quick and dirty “sweep it under the rug”
solutions giving the banks a free pass.  This person should be one of your heroes if you believe as you have stated many times that the banks hold the majority of the blame for the current situation and should be penalized for it.

Your bias is obvious in your title and your robosigning comments.  As the sanjoserenter commenter says above you are missing the point: it is a legal matter involving fraud on the part of the banks.  You seem to want to sweep everything under the rug to get the foreclosures moving including our legal system and rights for expediency. 

I used to enjoy reading you blog, but misplaced rants like these articles are showing your true colors I think.

I think the CA AG did the right thing for the wrong reasons. The banks should be held liable for any fraudulent behavior in connection with the foreclosure process.

But that doesn’t mean that non-paying mortgagees should be considered “owners” in any real sense. They gave up their property interest by failing to pay on time.

The job of the AG is to enforce the laws, not to rewrite contracts via judicial fiat. We have a method in place for that, it’s called bankruptcy.

Besides, as an attorney, the AG should know that rewarding the improvident borrower at the expense of the prudent saver is bad precedent. See Clean Hands Doctrine: “equity will not grant relief to a party, who, as actor, seeks to set judicial machinery in motion and obtain some remedy, if such party in prior conduct has violated conscience or good faith or other equitable principle.” Breaching the mortgage contract by late or non-payment demonstrates, to a certain degree, lack of good faith in contract execution.

There is virtualy no legal recourse for defaulted borrowers in California.  All of the robo-signing/show me the note arguments have been tried and the courts have rebuffed them at every opportunity.  It is a non-issue in California.

The AG should take what she should get.  She has no leverage in these discussions.  She knows that, the banks know that. She can issue press releases and hold press conferences but it is pure political posturing. The settlement is going forward even without California.  If the banks feared they had significant exposure, don’t you think that a state the size of California pulling out of the settlement talks would affect the settlement?

It is a pain in the ass for lenders/servicers to deal with nuisance lawsuits that are raised, but it looks like they are making the business decision that it is cheaper to do that than to give the AG what she is demanding.