Dear NCRC members,
As the Treasury has shoveled out trillions — $12.8 trillion and counting — over the past year and a half to prop up the big banks, any meaningful effort to assist struggling homeowners has been met with surprising political resistance. We’ve heard you — our members — ask more than once: Is anybody [...]
Read portions of Jim Carr’s speech at the University of Baltimore Law School that was featured in the Baltimore Sun. His speech focuses on the foreclosure crisis and using NCRC’s HELP Now proposal to accomplish broad-scale modification of troubled loans.
“With unemployment rates at a 25-year high, American workers need help now more than ever,” said HHS spokeswoman Jenny Backus. “Community groups will have the resources they need to continue to strengthen cities and towns across America.”
In society, we have grown uncomfortable with calling out those who don’t live up to expectations. That has a lot of ramifications. Right now, it is most visible in our willingness to help out institutions whose products have not kept up with the expectations of consumers in the marketplace.
Do we want banks and thrifts to be measured by these new, lower standards?
Lending in America has been schizophrenic. The regulated part of the financial industry, banks, has by and large made responsible loans that enable communities to thrive. The unregulated part of the industry, independent mortgage companies financed by Wall Street, has issued reckless loans that have plunged this country into the most severe recession since the Great Depression.
