1hundredsixty8

 Poll results released this past week by Farleigh Dickinson University’s Public Mind indicate that 29% of those surveyed agreed that an armed rebellion to protect Constitutional liberties may be necessary in the next few years. Among those who identified themselves as Republicans, 44% were in the armed rebellion camp. (In comparison, the results for Democrats were 18%, Independents, 27 %.) You may be excused if you think these people delusional, but I myself contend that they simply have a mistaken sense of who the real enemy of the people is: It is not the government who oppresses them, and certainly not through its efforts alone. It is instead the banks, those colossi of finance who manipulate the strings that control the marionettes that are the Congress and the various regulatory agencies, that impinge upon our freedom.

As we are painfully aware, the economic crisis of 2008 was precipitated by the bursting of the housing bubble- a catastrophic collapse of housing prices resulting literally in the vaporization of wealth. Mortgages lost their value, and so did the myriad derivative securities based on those mortgages. The house of cards- pardon the pun- collapsed. Amid the rubble, millions of homeowners found themselves “under water” (owning more on their mortgage than their home was now worth) and many defaulted. In the frenzy of damage control that followed, the banks went on a foreclosure tear in 2009 and 2010, a process that was riddled with errors and even outright fraud. The most egregious abuse was “robo-signing”, the banks’ practice of having low-level employees signing court documents that attested to their having complete knowledge of the foreclosure cases presented in court (which they didn’t, of course). The consequences of the banks’ misfeasance were outrageous: Foreclosure actions taken against active-duty military personnel who were entitled to relief, against homeowners already involved in a loan modification process with the same bank, and against parties who had sought protection via bankruptcy court. Most amazing, a number of homeowners who had faithfully made their mortgage payments were also subject to foreclosure actions; some of these actually lost their homes! Over 4 million American homeowners were caught up in the tidal wave brought on by the banks desperately attempting to protect their balance sheets.

You may feel some outrage at this, but probably not, since, after nearly five years, we are numb to the fact that those who brought us economic Armageddon still sit comfortably in their palaces. Since the financial sector carpet-bombed the rest of the economy in 2008, the banks have done remarkably well: Profits are soaring, Too-Big-To-Fail has become even bigger (as well as Too-Big-To-Jail), and bank executives are awarded large bonuses. Even Dodd-Frank, the law put into place to protect us from our banks, has been resisted every step of the way by the large financial interests. Occupy Wall Street came and went without inspiring continued peaceful protest, let alone armed rebellion.

Perhaps it is time to grab your pitchfork. Earlier this year, the Office of the Controller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) announced a settlement with 13 banks over the abuses and fraud in the foreclosure case. Originally, the regulators had directed the banks to have outside consultants conduct Independent Foreclosure Reviews. The abrupt halt to the audits with the announcement of the settlement was justified as a way to speed up the process of getting funds to the victims of foreclosure abuse. Since then, some disconcerting facts have come to light, as a result of investigative reporting (see Matt Taibbi’s blog post, for example), and in hearings held last month by the Senate Banking Committee:

·       -The banks agreed to pay $3.6 billion in cash directly to the more than 4 million borrowers, and to provide another $5.7 billion for “soft dollar’ assistance such as load modifications, principal reduction and judgment forgiveness.

·        -The consulting firms doing the independent audits were paid more than $2 billion.

·        -Most of the homeowners were to be paid $300. The maximum of $125,000 was earmarked for military personnel and those whose mortgages were foreclosed even though they were not delinquent.

·       -The amounts to be paid to the borrowers within each category were determined by statistical extrapolation from a sampling of foreclosure cases. Under questioning by the Senators, officials of the auditing firms admitted that the banks themselves had provided the numbers. Other evidence appeared to indicate that the banks grossly underestimated the number of cases of error and fraud.

·        -Officials of the OCC and the Fed testified that they had not determined if they would release any of the evidence they had gathered against the banks to those homeowners who sought further redress through the courts.

·        -Adding further damage to the original injury, the initial settlement checks sent to homeowners bounced!

So, for all those who view our national government with suspicion, I urge them to reconsider before taking up arms. If you need an object for your anger and outrage, I believe you should be searching the canyons of lower Manhattan.