Holy buckets will this book make you mad and distrust the home purchasing process. It's also a good window into the reality of politics and economics of the Great Recession and today. The law of the land may say one thing but the system is running as if those laws were never written. Buyer beware, indeed. ( )

This examination of the evil done by big banks and loan servicers is BRUTAL in its indictment of all levels of government for being complicit in ruining the lives of so many homeowners during the financial crisis. Three whistleblowers, all going into foreclosure, individually challenged the courts and proved that banks, who had securitized massive adjustable rate mortgages and thusly held no clear evidence of ownership, were foreclosing on millions of innocent citizens. They uncovered rampant bias in favor of the cheating, stealing mega-corporations by the majority of judges in bankruptcy courts, and as their outrage at the blatant scamming grew, they shared their experiences and advocated for many others in the same leaky boats. The robosigning entities and law firms handling the invalid cases for the banks were equally responsible for throwing people out on the street. Once the fraud was proven by heroes Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak, foreclosure proceedings in most jurisdictions were temporarily halted and some of the worst actors amongst the foreclosure law firms were shut down. However, NO ONE EVER WENT TO JAIL. Many Americans were sold on the outrageous lie that "these people just want free houses." The Obama administration, especially Eric Holder, Lanny Breuer, and Tim Geithner, all now comfortably ensconced back at their white shoe law firms or financial institutions, can be held personally responsible for this dereliction of duty. Also called out here is corrupt Pam Biondi, the Trump-loving Florida AG pay-for-play bribe acceptor. The author presents his strong case in clear language that should raise the ire of every person in this country.

Quotes: "If bankers can bring the economy to the point of ruin and get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?"

"The securitization machine resembled the children's game of hot potato."

"Geithner saw HAMP (Obama's weak attempt to help those in foreclosure) not as a relief vehicle but as a way to "foam the runway" for the banks, allowing them to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly."

"Banks had been caught red-handed submitting false documents to courts, with millions of documented examples, and law enforcement treated it like a man catching a too-puny fish and throwing it back. And negotiators never mandated that cash awards to the states had to go to mortgage relief. The top beneficiary of the cash awards was the Justice Department."

"America is a punitive nation, the most incarcerated nation on earth. If you're caught stealing a soda, we'll put you away for way too long. But if you commit systemic crimes, you can get away with it."

"Nobody went to jail because the misconduct was so pervasive that the entire banking industry would have to pay the price, and Washington wouldn't let that happen."

"It's an enormous failure of public policy that we don't know precisely how many families lost their homes. The best estimate is close to six million. The foreclosure crisis generated, as one congressman called it, an “extinction event " for the black and Latino middle class.” ( )

This is an incredibly important piece of reporting that should be read by everyone over the age of 18, whether they are a homeowner or a renter. That said though, David Dayen’s style was tough for me to settle into since it swung from a tabloid-style of personal story to the highly technical that even most mortgage employees do not have the background or wish to understand since they don’t know their DIDMCA from their MERS.

No one, not even the author, seems to get that the crisis started in the 1990s and with some arm-twisting, bribes, and manipulation, the thieves and hoodlums managed to keep relieving people of their life savings until well into the 2000s. Some of us watched in horror as protections put in place after the last financial debacle (the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s) systematically dismantled previous legal protections including Glass Steagall (1933), while big government and big thieves went out and harvested what they could, gorging themselves on the helpless herd. Huge commissions were paid by subprime lenders to salespeople who sold hot dogs the week before, then turned to selling mortgages as a way to quickly get rich. Inside the industry, whistleblowers and people who refused to go along with the robo signers were threatened with arson and death, to themselves and their family.

It's a common myth that everyone (millions of everyones) who lost his or her home was greedy. This is a lie perpetuated by the thugs and the ignorant. People lost their homes for the following four reasons and the first is the most minute percentage : 1) They were greedy and bought more house than they could afford, 2) They were ignorant of how the financing worked and the consequences, 3) they or a family member was sick and healthcare expenses destroyed them financially, and 4) they lost a job during this period of huge layoffs, a perfect storm.

Dayen couldn’t be more spot-on when he says “Crooked banks rely on isolation and shame”. Even family members and next door neighbors did not know anything was amiss until the victims loaded up their cars with what they could salvage and pulled out in the middle of the night, whole subdivisions being abandoned when there was never a greater need for housing. The carrion feeders of the human race, the slumlords, swooped in to pick over what was left, either flipping or renting out the properties, sometimes to the very people who had previously owned them.The lenders kept the down payments, the monthly payments that had been made, AND they had a house to sell all over again to another unsuspecting family.
Often the lenders changed their names or pulled out of states that were not as accommodating to allowing their populations to be screwed, sometimes in the middle of financing a home purchase or refinance, taking with them the already-paid upfront fees and not refunding the money, Loanus Interrupius .

Increased suicides, mental illness, bankruptcies and divorces occurred as the vultures found a way to relieve people of their life savings as well as their trust in banks, government protections, and each other. Today a large segment of the population feels they are too old to buy another house, to take another chance on trying to pay it off in 30 years, and they have taught their children the same, that home ownership (and a personal stake in the future of the country) is not for them. What may be forever gone is the trust Americans have in the system, and the stake they have in the country, also known as home ownership. How do I know? My Life was In Mortgage Banking. I was there.The cast of characters is all too familiar and some of the banks are in the news again today in 2017 for finding another innovative way to fleece Americans. See recent news on Dodd-Frank for that eerie sense of deja-vu.

Do we need to keep doing this every twenty or thirty years, taking out the major source of investment for most Americans? If you keep sending residents back to the baseline of zero savings, where will that lead our economy and our country? Kudos to David Dayen for his hard work on this very important book. One of the ending lines in the book is “Banks steal money!” spoken by the eight year old daughter of a foreclosure victim and justice fighter. Out of the mouths of babes… ( )

How three ordinary Americans uncovered Wall Street's great foreclosure fraud

A bit too inside baseball deep dive into the people who unintentionally became activists and exposed huge documentation fraud in mortgage servicing and foreclosure. Perhaps most interesting as a portrait of people whose mission consumes their lives, and then—despite a few individual victories—nothing really changes. Nobody truly responsible for the fraud or benefited by it goes to jail, though a few low-level people get some punishment. What happens to a dream deferred? Here, it gets foreclosed upon. ( )