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Everyone To Bank of America: "We Don't Want You Steenkin' Free Cash"
The venerable Bank of America recently sent letters to 60,000 struggling homeowners with the caveat-ridden generous offer of slicing an average $150,000 off their loans; the response was - silence. It seems the total and utter 'borrower fatigue', as Bloomberg puts it, that leaves homeowners relying on the very same banks that committed loan servicing abuses to avert foreclosures. Yet another program, that BofA specifically accounts for almost half of the fines of, ends up helping far fewer people than intended. Simply put, borrowers have lost faith in the process and in response to BofA's question, "we are working very hard to determine why response rates are lower than expectations", the incredulous response is "there’s incredible dysfunction in the way they set up their systems to handle this, and when mistakes happen, which is constant, they have very little ability to correct them. If Bank of America is complaining about borrower fatigue, they can look to themselves for the reason."
From BBG:
“The number of customers responding is lower than we expected, given the significant assistance available,” Frahm said in an interview. “We are working very hard to determine why response rates are lower than expectations.”
Bank of America, the second-biggest U.S. lender by assets, will offer principal reductions to more than 200,000 clients by August, Frahm said. Other steps include cash incentives to sell a delinquent borrower’s home for less than the amount owed and a pilot program to turn owners into renters, he said.
Homeowners are exhausted from fighting foreclosure and may think offers to cut loans by one-third aren’t legitimate, Ron Sturzenegger, head of the lender’s Legacy Assets Servicing unit, said last month at a conference in Denver.
'Modifier' complaint forums are replete with examples of rejection due to 'bank mistakes' and 'botched customer interactions' and "it’s been nothing but a horrible experience with Bank of America." leaving poor old "confident of meeting their obligations" BofA with all this money (due to come off its balance sheet) but as the Center for Responsible Lending noted "The whole nature of the settlement was ‘We had a broken system,’ and now you’re asking people to trust this system, a lot of people are reluctant to believe the banks", and while we are certainly not on the side of a wealth transfer for non-performing mortgage holders leaving the diligent mortgage payers at an implicit loss; as Bloomberg notes "If the attorneys general and the monitor are willing and able to crack down on Bank of America and the other servicers, the settlement may help a lot of people, if they don’t, it will be yet another disappointment", leaving people so mistrusting that they won't even take 'free money' because what 'strings are attached' this time?
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BAC trying to clear title, but it aint working. A new loan would solve the problem (in an attempt to legalize ownership) but even then, no "legitimate" title company will sign off. This is the biggest single problem facing the fraudsters. Still waiting for the state AGs to claw back all the transfer fees that MERS so casually disregarded and omitted. Property rights and legal ownership dating from the Magna Carta are now poof; vaporized or Corzined.
Las Vegas with mafia running the place during 60's and 70's was more honest and transparent than this Wall Street joint.
They had (and still have) the decency to comp the big losers.
sooo glad i stayed away from housing PONZI scheme!!
zero hours contacting my shark "lender"..zero stress..zero BALLON payments...100% enjoyment of life....gimme another 40-50% drop in housing with a 2% interest rate and THEN i'll buy my FIRST house....it ain't gonna be no starter or fixer upper....
my guess is that those poor homeowners are thinking something like:
fool me once shame on me...fool me 2X shame on you...they ain't buying any of the MARKETING GARBAGE BS!! LOL !!!
Ha !cant believe they used the word trust in that artical, oh it's mistrusting! sorry
FACEBOOK & SKYPE causing more plastic surgery
http://betabeat.com/2012/07/facebook-skype-plastic-surgery-cosmetic-increase-
A cheaper solution
Jane Jetson would hold up a mask when she answered the video phone too early in the morning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiHiasKg
I'll look for my paper Joe Lieberman mask from the last election, courtesy of Lamont. Better yet, one of you guys should start making cheap rubber masks of Blankfein, Timaaah, Paulson, Kraemer, Lie sman, et.al. Not good only for Skype, good for when you go to the bank.
When is someone going to pull a John Q and bomb a bank HQ already?
Are you volunteering?
If you're upside down on your mortgage, not paying and facing foreclosure (some day) why would you participate when you can keep living in your shadow inventory home forever without paying?
What the fook man, they got all that money from the bailout, why should the homeowners pay at all? The banks are making money on the front and the back of this deal and we're the ones getting bent over.
The public percieves the banks as not being hurt by all the bullshit they created. All they know is that the banks fooked up and screwed the economy and now they don't have a job. So why pay?
You don't need a panel of "experts" and a study to figure out why people wouldn't participate - you just need to be human to understand.
Since most banks were bailed out in 2008 to "save them and your mortgage" otherwise you'd own the home free and clear because the fraud bank would be gone. So, if "A" borrows from "B" and then "B" needs to borrow back from "A" to stay in business does "A" really owe "B" anything?
BAC, do you really want to help people? Here's how - blow the fuck up and go away.
Never trust a bankster
Article from 2010 on 'Refi Hell' from BAC. These POS do everything they can to discourage refi's by stalling and creating foreclosures for years then want to play the down beat Good Guys when no one takes them up on their 'latest greatest offer'. Unfugging believable.
Love the line in the article about "BofA, which this week agreed to pay $137 million to settle charges that it helped rig bids on municipal bond contracts, says it was justified in how it treated Ashford. " That should tell you everything you need to know about BofA.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/10/business/la-fi-lazarus-20101210
Why are these people not bankrupt, in jail or hanging ?
Isn't that really the BIG question? Not necessarily in regards to these specific folks running BAC,etc but all the criminals in the T(BTF)PTB circle?
I believe it was Cloud9.5 that wrote, "Your voice and views have been sold out by the Party on the Potomac" in an earlier ZHcommentary today and it is true. All of 'em, the whole stinking lot, have fucked us. It is time to see these so called leaders and their money masters in jail or swinging. But then comes the answer to the big question: It will happen when we make it happen.
What will be the spark? Who is going to step up to the plate and begin the revolution? Who or what is the catalyst to awaken the people? These people are not in jail or hanging because we haven't got the stones to require enforcement of the law or fashion the noose ourselves. We will though....people are getting angrier. Just keep trying to give people a glimpse behind the curtain and ready yourself.
"Why are these people not bankrupt" -
They paid protection money, in the form of generous campaign contributions (and probably a shitload off the books). Throw in a little propaganda to our moronic masses, and they are none the wiser! The real story of course, is you're correct, they are not only BK, they are insolvent on just their HELOC exposure alone. Unfortunately, we live in a world of CONgressional, State Legislatures and State Attorney Attorney Generals corruption. So the corruption continues and NO ONE GOES TO FUCKING JAIL.
Very rational behavior by those debtors. If you are $200k underwater and you can stay without payments in your home for years, it makes no sense to accept $150k and then obligated to make payments under new conditions while home price is declining further.
It's like Poker. They are calling the bank's bluff and will chase them to the river, they can't a consumer out when they know they have the better hand.
Borrowers pass up $150k with Holder's boot on their throat? Hmm. How about thousands of borrowers committed fraud or can't qualify for the write down? See the Wells Fargo settlement.
Banks are terrified of Holder and Cordray. Don't think differently.
Http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com
It's been 5-6 years since the big kaboom. If they are still in the house now, and current with the payments, I would say they qualify. The ones who commited fraud wouldn't have lasted so long. There are way many more that don't qualify now because they are underwater, or underemployed. It was not a circumstance of their making.
Why would 60,000 people want to take on a new deal when they haven't made a payment for three years. BAC is probably paying their property tax as well.
BofA desperate to get a "new" contract signed. Seems the old ones are damaged or missing.
Thank Obama for saving all of those homeonwers with the HAMP program. What a success!
Uh yeah it would be a boon in tax revenue to the fuckin' gubment. Thats why they want Bof A to push the shit.
Is this why renters are so Happy?
It's petty, but...
Our paychecks are drawn from BofA. There's a branch right here next to the Uni lot on Lankershim. So weekly on payday I walk over there and cash my check; I remove money directly from their coffers instead of adding more to their fractional reserve ghost ship. They ALWAYS ask me if I'm ready to open an account (I use a credit union). They ask me "how would you like your cash?" Sometimes I ask for the entirety of it in tens, sometimes fifties.
"May I have two hundred ten dollar bills, please?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yes. I love the ten. It's the new single."
Other times I'll ask for fifties (which I actually prefer, espeically with fuel prices they way they are)
"Fifties this time, please."
"Okay."
"It's the new twenty, you know."
***Crickets.***
The tellers there are of course clueless, they're just doing their job. But I take a perverse pleasure in taking a little tiny bit of their fiat away from Skank of Amerika
next time see if you can get $9.75 in quarters, $0.95 in nickels, $0.26 in pennies, etc.....
Be sure to arrive during the lunch rush hour, or on a Friday about 1/2 hour before closing time.
Have fun!
I thought I'd give a perspective from someone who isn't a deadbeat. I have one of these loans. I get the letters from BOA almost every day. I'm underwater in Ca.
I have a cedit score of 814.
Right now there is no way I would consider calling them. Even if I have to pay more. Right now my contract is a contract. Who knows what any modification of that contract could entail. I am pissed that people took out loans they couldn't afford. I'm also pissed the banks told people they could get modifications only to repossess their house. I am a capitalist. Yet I think banks are purposefully stealing land from consumers. Maybe they will just donate it to the government for a fat tax write off. Maybe they will just turn in into government housing.
At any rate - I am not in any hurry to modify any contract with any financial institution. Even though I also belong to a credit union. The banks are lawless.
You've also got to realize you paid a vastly inflated price because of the games the Government and Banks have done for decades with Fiat Currency and interest rates which led to the housing bubble and now housing market semi-collapse which will lead to a full collapse eventually. So, your "contract" wasn't fully executed in good faith by both parties. You were played whether you understand that or not.
And all those MERS holes in your current (pre-2008/9) contract would be fixed in a refinance, so be cautious.
And the rest of us are pissed that millions of people act like doormats by applying false and stupid "morality" to business deals and thus keep the banksters going from one day to the other. They are insolvent and would go under if anything else goes wrong for them, but as long as they have the cash flow provided by millions of grossly underwater mortgages they can keep the lights on and pay the bribery money to K Street. Those that continue to pay absurd sums to banks for houses which will NEVER be worth what the payoff on them are, are the same people enabling the banksters to continue to perpetrate their frauds.
Ok.
Being someone who hasn't been in debt since 2003; I got a call from LLoyds TSb asking me if I wanted to take out a loan (from the local bank manager).
He seemed more than a little pissed, cos I pay off my credit card every month and use these guys as chumps.
He asked me ' Can I we do anything for you'; I said (in front of my wife) 'Dude, you've screwed your bank, you've screwed your shareholders and you have betrayed your country! You've done enough already'.
No greater truth spoken than when your drunk and trying to impress the missus.
I would have said, "Do you have any property I can take off your hands?"
Submit paperwork to BOA
~two months pass~
BOA says we forgot some items even though all were included
"Missing" items are re-submitted
~two months pass~
BOA loses paperwork - re-submission
~two months pass~
BOA says we forgot some items even though all were included
"Missing" items are re-submitted
~three months pass~
Call BOA for status. They have no idea what I'm talking about and swear we never submitted - Resubmission
~three months pass~
BOA says we're not qualified in the first place and denies the package
REMIND ME WHY I SHOULD DO THIS???
BOA sucks!
“The number of customers responding is lower than we expected, given the significant assistance available,” Frahm said in an interview. “We are working very hard to determine why response rates are lower than expectations.”
Gee, Dan, could that be because you never mailed the letters? All we have is your word on it and we all know what THAT is worth...
No Problem understanding why no response! Having been through one attempt to lower my rate with Wells Fargo and one of these earlier programs, I worked for weeks to supply the necessary docs and paperwork, only to be judged on year-to-date income only (in March), which was self-employment income and much lower than a 1/4th pro-rata of my annual -- only to be told that I was *not making enough* money to qualify for the rate reduction. Refused. I will not be going to Wells Fargo again to suffer the same fate, of which I was not warned.
Basta! Duplicate posting! Say, whatever happened to Marla? I have her Cobalt Blue Synth Mix and it is excellent!
More to the point.
What you have to sign away to get this largesse.
By signing you validate the phoney baloney paperwork thereby
giving BoA the option to foreclose legally later on.
A lot of former house owners are starting to re claim houses lost
through fraudclosure.
BoA is history ,they just haven't fallen over yet.
trusting anything Bank of America asserts would be like believing your rapist when he says he really loves you, and btw, could you meet him behind the diner after it closes for a chocolate malt.
I trust BAC. I have a credit card with them and every month I make sure I have at least one transaction, usually under $7 at Burger King. Next time I pass one of their banks and have some time to kill I make my payment - before I even get the statement. I wonder what it does to my cridiit, but I don't need any credit at all.
Take a deep breath. Tell me that people will forgoe a $150,000 principal reduction because they are burned out?
How about thousands of borrowers committed fraud or can no longer qualify? Do you really think with Eric Holder's share the wealth jackboot on the bank's throat that they won't do what Holder says?
Look at the Wells Fargo settlement. Borrowers not longer have to shop for loans or take responsiblity. Nannie Holder will sue for ANYTHING to redistribute wealth. READ the settlement!!!!!
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/wells-fargo-settles-f...
The problem is not BofA - they were an A paper company before the crisis.
Countrywide (who they were forced to acquire as surely everyone here knows) is the problem with all the garabage paper they brought and if it was not for BofA absorbing that gigantic pile of Angelo Mozilo sh#t (who should be in JAIL) which accounted for 1 in 6 loans in this country - those of which could have easily brought the system down but now we get to deamonize BofA as they limp along.
Hey Tyler - why don't you write the full story instead of half of it OR is it you just don't know it? Christ I get sick of reading your garbage as much as HuffPost or Fox News - media spin for some unknown interest all under the guise of "the truth is out there" BS - as if we are supposed to mount up with Sculley to weed out the gems from the unknown source while battling the smoking man - for all we know you are publishing from under.
Guess there is only one thing to do.... smoke up Johnny
"Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise."~Samuel Johnson
The problem IS BofA. BofA was an A rated pain in the ass LONG before the crisis. I understand that they have a 'basement full of dead bodies' thanks to the Countrywide acquisition, but that doesn't excuse them from a decade+ of shitty predatory behavior.
Feardevil, you sound like you know quite a bit about it, but maybe the BofA / Countrywide thing, although significant, is just assumed to be all part of the same issue at this point. I think you're right, but BofA is just as full of shit as the next bank, only bigger and now they have some revenue stream from Merrill. They all should be in jail, how about Thain paying himself a $200M finders fee for 'saving' Merrill, pure theft like any of the Countrywide deals. Then again, I may have missed your point entirely.
ML was forced on them but not Countrywide, fool !
I’d guess, and it’s anybody’s guess, that it’s an ongoing setup and Ken Lewis was the fall guy – a victim of centralized fraud, the continuing takeover of the ownership and resources of the planet by the globalist cabal.
“Bank of America Corporation today (January 5, 2008) received approval from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to purchase Countrywide Financial Corporation. The transaction remains subject to the approval of Countrywide shareholders and other closing conditions. Closing is expected to occur in the third quarter.”
http://mediaroom.bankofamerica.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=234503&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1390076&highlight=
“After 2007, the only question about Countrywide was who was going to buy them. I remember having lunch sometime during 2006 with an in-the-know friend of mine who believed that Bank of America wanted to buy them. Turns out that Bank of America was forced to buy Countrywide. Maybe the Fed didn’t have to twist their arm as much as we have been led to believe since then. You could also argue that buying a bad lender is a smart move at the right price. Four billion for one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders is not much money. To put that sum in perspective, Bank of America sold a 5 percent position in China Construction Bank for twice as much.” – Bank Talk ( Real Estate Attorney Names Names) November 21, 2011
http://banktalk.org/2011/11/21/real-estate-attorney-names-names/
Spot on, FearedDevil.
It’s a global financial coup d’ etat and Bank of America is the diversion to keep the public’s eye off the real perpetrators in the Fed and the government who are using financial fraud to centralize political and economic power in the United States. We have a situation where the Fed, aka the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is using investments to prop up fraudulent corporations on a massive scale, using theft to transfer private assts into corporate hands and government assets.
Hence, the use of smoke and mirrors and Bank of America as the bankers’ yom kipper (scapegoat) to hide their heinous sins.
No Bank of America employee with a digital camera or public information officer with an extensive photography budget can match the number of photographs of Bank of America storefronts possessed by the Huffington /AOL Post, at least, that’s the way it looks. Because every disparaging story about any bank requires a photo to draw the readers’ attention on HuffPost; thus, a new BofA picture shows every time.
The reason for this is that Bank of America has become the American mainstream symbol for banking malfeasance, scandal and bail-out cheater. One wonders where is the photo gallery of the storefronts of Chase, even though giant Chase signs dominate the business sections of village and city throughout America.
Where are the Goldman building photographs?
Prior to the Fed raid and forced shotgun marriage with Merrill, Bank of America was the largest retail banking establishment with substantial real estate value and had repeatedly refused to play the bailout game until threatened by Fed Chair Bernanke and Hank Paulson, then U.S. treasury secretary cum Goldman Sachs CEO credentials.
"From 2000 to 2008, Angelo Mozilo, the chief executive of Countrywide, received total compensation estimated at $521.5 million; in 2010, without admitting or denying any wrongdoing, he paid $67.5 million to settle civil fraud charges brought by the S.E.C. The Justice Department, for its part, decided not to pursue a possible criminal case against Mr. Mozilo." – The NY Times January 2012
Follow the money, not the hype.
Does anyone else feel like we are in "the calm before the storm" phase? News outlets on all fronts (alternative and mainstream) seem to be dredging the bottom for something worth posting. Kind of creepy if you ask me.
There are a lot of things in play worldwide that the outlets aren't covering.
Things that make you go, hmmmm.
Except for a checking account - I am SO done with banks. Never again. I will never own a home and I will never give any unncessary biz to a bank.
We need to strangle the Beast.
The people running BAC are smoking bath salts if they think I am ever doing business with them again.
was waiting for the fry guy meme on ZH.
i'm not disappointed regarding its application.
The 60,000 are rational...
"These guys are giving me 150 grand? Oh, well isn't that so fucking nice of them!"
And in the fine print there is a fine or a repossession scheme buried in it. Not only does the fine print fuck you in the ass, it prolapses the anus.
Nobody wants to get the 150 K Pink Socking. They've been bleeding out the ass for years on their home mortgages, no need to go all the way and get pink socked.
Hell, they aren't even being evicted for years. Every month they can avoid signing paperwork that would evict them they get rent free in a gigantic apartment, basically.
I was a little disappointed that this article did not explain how the program worked. I found out more from ZH post that from the article.