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Closure = foreclosure

By Mike Flugennock on Thursday March 20, 2008 09:08 PM

Just got this bit of handwringing in the email:

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:00:37 -0400
From: Stop Foreclosures and Evictions 
Reply-To: stopforeclosures@safewebmail.com
Subject: Nat'l Protest on Foreclosures
To: flugennock 

The Ad Hoc National Network to Stop Foreclosures & ,Evictions

Bailout people before banks! 
You'd think these people would've read that LA Times article about how the banks are crapping themselves because the social stigma's disappearing from foreclosures. More and more people have gone into it, and decided it's actually in their best interest to go into foreclosure because you basically get to live in the house free for a year and save up some cash while the proceedings grind on... and, because it stiffs the banks, deliberately letting your house go into foreclosure might actually be a new and innovative form of civil disobedience...

...not to mention the fact that I'm having a really hard time summoning up any sympathy for all these people who signed onto the ARMs so they could have the cushy McMansion with the cathedral ceiling in the living room and the granite countertops in the kitchen.

The other day, when I accidentally saw ten minutes of CNN, they were running a profile of a two-earner couple who are now living at a public campsite after losing their big cushy house, featuring the wife wistfully talking about the granite countertops, and whining about how the bank hustled her and her husband into signing onto the ARM and how they were "lied to" by the bank.

Seems like the only time CNN and the like try to show any sympathy for "homeowners", it's these lily-white couples who went for the bamboozle because they somehow thought they were entitled to the big cushy pad. There's little concern for the millions of people who'll never be able to afford the illusion of owning their own home...uh, that is, what we call "homeownership." These folk are lucky to even be able to afford rent on a decent apartment anywhere in this goddamn' country anymore.

Comments (5)

Anonymous:

from the sublime to the pettifogged

first the sublime

"deliberately letting your house go into foreclosure might actually be a new and innovative form of civil disobedience... "

now the pettifogged


"the lily-white couples .. (who)somehow thought they were entitled to the big cushy pad"

ugh mike
why attack a pale fool's gold
just cause it ain't gold

and what possible meaning
can we attach to pivot
word here "entitled "
that would lead us to ish
on such star crossed misbegotten souls
shame misery and pain

Anonymous:

"whining about how the bank hustled her and her husband into signing onto the ARM and how they were "lied to" by the bank. "

are u suggesting they weren't defrauded ??

how can u devine this my friend ??

D'ahh, man, c'mon. How could they have been defrauded when, iirc, it says right there in the goddamn' fine print, words to the effect that the interest rate on their subprime mortage may, at any time, take off like the goddamn' Saturn V.

As far as the bank lying to them...well, as I recall, this KOA-dwelling wife was repeating in the CNN interview that that bank kept telling them it was "the only way to go". Like hell it was. Another way to go would've been to actually live within their means and save up the cash to take out a proper mortgage, and yet another way to go would've been to not let themselves be hustled by the bank. Jayzus, man, it wasn't like the bank was putting a gun to their heads or anything.

Granted, losing your house sucks -- especially if you've actually worked a lifetime and saved your money and taken the time to do some homework and get a decent mortgage with a rate that won't suddenly take off for the Moon -- but still, it seems more often than not these days that most of the home "owners" doing the suffering here are suffering due to their own greed and stupidity. As I said, there's buttloads of people in this country who've been totally suckered by the real-estate marketing pitches that insist they're "entitled" to, or "deserve" a piece of some vaporous, mythical Amerikan Dream. This couple wasn't the only ones who'd bought some absurdly ostentatious house when they had no children either present or on the way; I can remember about this time last year, another time I accidentally caught a few minutes of CNN, right when this whole brouhaha was breaking, when they interviewed a couple in their mid-30s who bought into the subprime mortgage scam because -- even though they had no family to raise -- they still just had to get in on that granite-countertopped Dream.

And meanwhile, the real housing crisis plays out in cities all over this country, as poor and working-class people with no prayer of buying a house -- with a subprime loan or otherwise -- are being gentrified into the streets in a slow-motion Trail Of Tears.

op:

"meanwhile, the real housing crisis plays out in cities all over this country"

yes ....quite so quite so

on the picturesque side of life
for many an 'umble jobbler
waitin for....' my ship to come in '
can involve some fear
of u and the two raw ones of yours
doin some serious street time

but don't that make you a better employee ??

' you gotta
do what the man sez'

op:

mike

just noticed
my name
'she no appear'
on first two comments
sorry old top

i guess its the flaubert in me

to fall for an emma b act
like madame granite top's

ahh i can tell ya a tale or two
of trying to feed such thirsty illusions ...

case in point
my late 80's x
she of a thousand deep green looks

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/photo/current/show_image.cgi/ula_green.jpg

required constant prizes

and a guy even a nose ringed smitten guy
... at least if he ain't the sheik of georgetown
has only so much to blow ...eh mike ..
no matter the cause ??

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Thursday March 20, 2008 09:08 PM.

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