For years, voices like 4ClosureFraud and Foreclosure Hamlet sounded like alarmists and famously there are those who accused me of harboring paranoid delusions.
I’m most bothered by the fact that our state and particularly our local leaders are totally disconnected from these issues. During the November campaign cycle, you couldn’t find a single candidate who would speak about foreclosures or the dramatic impact they are having on our whole economy. We’ve been screaming for months but the candidates were so out of touch.
But now the alarmist, paranoid, delusional chatter ball has been picked up by the mainstream media and they are uncovering more than even paranoid delusional people like myself could have come up with. The stories hit the news every day in local, regional and national news organizations. It really is staggering just how wild and out of control the mortgage industry was allowed to run and we’ll be paying the consequences for decades to come.
Billions of Dollars Drained From Local Government.
A particular concern I have is the billions of dollars in fees that have been drained away from our local government and diverted into the hands of both legitimate and unsavory characters. Our cities and counties are broke. Their pensions are unfunded. Many predict that thousands of municipalities will go bankrupt…..but those that diverted the money will walk away with fat accounts and live quite well, thank you very much….but enough from me…listen to a journalist tell the story….
Another detail here: for those of you wondering why so many localities are broke, here’s one small factor in the revenue drain. Counties typically charge a small fee for mortgage registration, roughly $30. But with MERS, just like with Pop and his pickup truck, you don’t need to pay the fee every time there’s an ownership transfer. Multiply that by 67 million mortgages and you’re talking about billions in lost fees for local governments (some estimates place the total at about $200 billion).
