"You can't abuse your customers forever"

[dajoki]

As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted November 9, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/story/143813/as_foreclosure_nightmares_increase%2C_will_more_homeowners_pay_off_their_bankers_in_violence?page=entire

<<snip>>

From recent rampages in Orlando, Fla., to mortgage-related torture in Los Angeles, certain members of the citizenry seem to have had their fill of being manipulated for the financial gain of others, and they're firing back with force.

And the situation threatens to burn hotter as the winter holidays -- always a peak period fof domestic violence, due mostly to financial stress -- approach to spark its frazzled strands. The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism's central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they're going postal over it.

<<snip>>

That compressed vitriol is also found in the Los Angeles case, where Daniel Weston and Gustavo Canez allegedly imprisoned and tortured loan-modification agents Lamond Dean and Luis Garcia while three others -- Mario Soloman Gonzales, Marissa Parker and Mary Ann Parmelee, a realtor -- sat and watched.

According to the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, "Weston and Parmelee live in a house that is in foreclosure," and they "allegedly sought loan-modification assistance from the victims but believed that nothing was being done and wanted their money back."

When they didn't get it, they evidently extracted their payback in violent revenge.

"That's not right," explained Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. "But clearly people are really mad about what's happened to them. This is the kind of thing that happens when lenders don't lend responsibly. You can't abuse your customers forever."

Or your tormenters, as Weston and Canez will no doubt realize, once the full force of the state comes down on them for venting their rage. Whatever their perceived or real injustices may have been, their attack on Dean and Garcia crossed a line laid down by the rule of law. But that rule, as everyone from voters to homeowners to municipalities and more have come to fully realize during the last decade, rarely applies in both directions.

For those in power, it is used to shield them from the justice they often deserve. For those on the outside looking in, it is often used to oppress them further. The disturbing blowback from that growing inequality, mirrored by an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor and a true national unemployment rate around 17 percent, can only get worse....

[DJ13]

1. "You can't abuse your customers forever."

......unless you're a credit card company.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. You can shear a sheep many times. You can only skin it once.

[Canuckistanian]

18. Even a worm will turn

The expression comes from Shakepeare - Henry VI, Part 3.

""The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood."

And these days, a lot of people feel "trodden on".

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Apparently they can and do. What do they care? Bailouts all around...for them.

x(

[Greyhound]

2. They never learn.

When "justice" becomes as transparently corrupt as ours, the contract between the governors and the governed is broken and chaos follows.

The interesting times just keep on comin'.

[Turbineguy]

4. "You can't abuse your customers forever"

A good subject for a lecture at business schools. This shit started somewhere.

[dajoki]

5. Exactly!! n/t

[greennina]

6. It started in business school...

why would you think those trained and organized crooks would fight against the thing that makes their house payments.

I'm a recent victim of Apple. My new MacBook quit out of the box, and instead of the Apple Store manage telling how they'd help, she spent about twenty minutes explaining how fixing all of their customer's new laptops would make her "numbers" look bad. While Apple makes amazing products, we're just numbers to them rather than people.

[jwirr]

7. The business schools are a good bet. I remember riding home from

class on a bus in Iowa City. In the seat behind me were two business college students talking about ethics. It was so bad I was sick to my stomach. Ethics was being given a spin so that it was just fine to lie in commercials etc. That was in 1976. Imagine what they tell them now.

As to the violence I am surprised that there has not been more direct violence toward bankers already. I think the reason there hasn't been is because it is easier to take it out on less powerful people closer to home - family.

[havocmom]

9. Can we have lecture re treating workers decently, as they are also customers?

Seem the business schools missed that important part of the equation too.

[RayOfHope]

8. the BANKS are the reason so many are in forclosure. We are in the middle of trying to buy

a house that is a 'short sale'. The seller's mortgage holder has taken 60 days so far to get back with us, and is apparently in no hurry. The house is a great deal, we have stellar credit, and even offered a hair over asking price. I keep thinking of the poor people who are still paying on this mortgage, TRYING to get out from under this rather than just walk away, but the mortgage co seems to not care if the house goes into foreclosure.

[RB TexLa]

11. The PMI company, not the mortgage company approves short sales. Often the bank and the investor

are wanting to sell the property but is waiting to hear back from insurance company with approval.

[greennina]

13. PMI only applies to people who didn't put much down...

and who haven't yet paid towards their mortgage what they should have put down. You're talking about a subset of a subset. I've counseled about three dozen people who were losing their homes, and as far as I know, only one of them still had PMI.

[RB TexLa]

15. MI that they were paying for. The investor can purchase PMI on their loan and for a short sale to go

they have to approve because they are going to be making a payment.

Just because a homeowner isn't paying for MI doesn't mean there isn't MI on the loan.

[RayOfHope]

19. Nope. Its the bank. Its Bank Of America, unfortunately. Google, and you'll get nothing but

horror stories. They told us they weren't ready to even talk to us yet, and it had everything to do with them and zero to do with PMI.

[gleaner]

20. They don't care about ....

the people losing the home. My husbands mother died in October of cancer. Due to her physical limitations resulting from the disease and decreased income from the cuts in the pensions which resulted when her husband died the previous April, she could not afford to make the mortgage payments anymore. She walked away from the house and went into an assisted living arrangement where she fell and entered hospice, starving herself with the help of hourly injections of morphine and lorazepam because she simply could not face the thought of any more pain.

She told the lender what she had to do and why. The lender, one of the biggest banking chains in the country, then started pressuring her and offering her loan modification so she would keep paying on the house. She didn't need it and finally she told them, "I'm dying. I don't care about the house anymore. Burn it if you want to. I'm leaving." And so she did. First by moving out physically and then by leaving the world. I half expected them to try to start dunning me and my husband for what she owed, but they haven't. It wouldn't be legal because we have entered into no contract with them, but legal doesn't seem to matter much anymore to the banking/credit industries.

My husband and I have been having enough problems with another big banking chain over unannounced changes in their procedures which they simply implemented without informing us. We have moved our accounts to a credit union which actually wants the business and we have applied for modification of our mortgage loan under the federal stimulus plan. We more than qualify. If the bank, who holds our mortgage doesn't comply with the stimulus guidelines, we will go to a lawyer who specializes in this, after careful professional checking of professional standards and see if he/she can do better.

I have know it was us against them for a long, long time. I did not pick the banking chain I have now. The Bush administration declared my old banking chain which was actually ethical as "failed" and the interloper bought it and our business for pennies on the dollar.

I'm not a violent person, and I wouldn't be violent, but I do intend to talk with my business and get all of the relief I can. I just wish the people at the bank who were hounding my m'in law could have seen her. She was nearly six feet tall, but weighed under 120 pounds. She had lost all of her hair taking chemo in unsuccessful attempts to arrest the cancer and her body was covered with huge bruises. I hope they are very proud now. I know I am mixing metaphors here, but enough is really enough. We need more protection from the government than we have been getting. Much more protection.

[Odin2005]

10. Get the guillotine!

[anonymous171]

14. They would deserve it. nt

[bobbolink]

16. K&R

:kick:

[JoeyT]

17. Sure you can.

Just look at phone(Landline and cell), cable, satellite, ISPs, utility companies, etc etc.
You most certainly can abuse your customers forever. You just have to make sure you have a government that won't enforce any of the laws on monopolies first. That and be damned sure to promote a system that prevents them from fighting for their rights. Be it through intimidation, legislation, or by simply making it cost too much.