Abigale Field’s column in AOL Daily Finance offers the best analysis of the current state of the foreclosure catastrophe and should be required reading for every man and woman in the United States. Read it Here One of the reasons why this column is so important is it explores the very real possibility (I say probability) that the foreclosure mess cannot be solved.
It really is amazing when you take a step back and think about all that is wrong. The crimes, the fraud, the collusion, the cover up, the complicity, the complexity, the total unwillingness of regulators to punish. The total inability of regulators and policymakers to foresee this trainwreck as it was happening. (and as it continues to happen) The collapsed economic picture. The failings of our court system. The utter lack of leadership from the local level all the way up to the White House.
Consider that in Florida only a small percentage of the foreclosures that could be filed were actually filed. Less than 500,000 foreclosure cases have been filed in Florida and this has paralyized our court system. Just think about that for a moment. The legislature has defunded our court system to such a degree that our courts are not able to decide the civil disputes of our people. And if our courts cannot handle the volume that exists today, what if the lenders really started filing all the cases that they could be filing? It just boggles the mind.
Manatee County’s Clerk of Court recently sent a letter to the editor of the Herald Tribune urging all citizens to examine the title to their property. This is a profound acknowledgment of just how bad things are. Just as our courts have been defunded, our clerks and property recorders have been so badly defunded that our property ownership system, literally the cornerstone of our entire nation, has been destroyed.
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism nailed it when she described all of this as very similar to Japan’s Nuclear disaster. She’s right, but it’s worse. One of the things that makes it worse is the vast numbers of people that had to just turn their backs on all sense of logic and reason to allow this to occur and continue. This should provoke a real crisis in confidence of our entire system of government and way of life. If it doesn’t, that’s even worse.
