A Fire Sale For Arsonists: The ''Revised'' Bank Settlement Still Stinks

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http://www.nationofchange.org/fire-sale-arsonists-revised-bank-mortgage-settlement-still-stinks-1319552563

Imag­ine that a group of ar­son­ists was ter­ror­iz­ing your town. First they'd buy in­sur­ance on a stranger's home, then they'd show up with a blow­torch and a tanker truck filled with gaso­line and burn the place down. Imag­ine that they've burned down a thou­sand homes this way, ru­in­ing the lives of the home­own­ers - and every­one else's, too, as real es­tate val­ues plunged and the local econ­omy col­lapsed.

Now let's imag­ine that the Mayor, the DA, and the Chief of Po­lice said they've come up with a great "set­tle­ment": The ar­son­ists will pay a small fine, and they'll never be pros­e­cuted for arson. Plus, if they're asked very nicely, they'll also agree to pro­vide a lit­tle help to 27 out of the 1,000 fam­i­lies they made home­less - al­though they'd con­trol the 'help' process and the town might wind up foot­ing the bill any­way.

And one more thing: They get to keep the gaso­line truck and the blow­torch

Sub­sti­tute "coun­try" for "town" and "banker" for "ar­son­ist," and that pretty much sums up the mort­gage fraud set­tle­ment that the Ad­min­is­tra­tion and some At­tor­neys Gen­eral keep try­ing to im­pose on the na­tion. It's a sweet­heart arrange­ment that asks for pen­nies on the dol­lar, would only help a tiny frac­tion of those harmed, and would allow the wrong­do­ers to keep the tools of their crim­i­nal trade - mak­ing fu­ture crimes all but ir­re­sistible to the felo­niously in­clined.