Weekly Audit: Will Obama Save Homeowners From Wall Street’s Latest Fraud Scheme?

TARP might have kept the banks alive, but was it our only choice?

While the unfunded pension liabilities in many public retirement funds have received an inordinate amount of attention, the larger retirement deficit of most Americans is not generating the level of concern that it deserves. Individuals who have been left on their own to save for retirement in 401(k) accounts face challenges that are not being met.

Reagan announced the robbery but couldn’t pull it off. Clinton robbed us blind. Bush Jr. and Obama drove the get-away car, with Obama disguised as a security guard.

This is a PBS video re-post from The Daily Bail up on today’s Patrick.net (a site that follows the housing crash)

What is most disturbing about the meeting with Treasury and the things that were said, or more accurately admitted, is that an argument could easily be made that this was an overt act by the administration to mislead and trick the American homeowner. That our government has been complicit in the bank’s ravaging of the bank accounts, retirement, and investments of nearly five million people.

by Amanda Anderson, Media Consortium blogger

Editor’s Note: Zach Carter is out this week, but we’ve compiled a rundown of the biggest economy-related stories, including the rise of foreclosure mills and why social security isn’t in jeopardy. Zach will be back next Tuesday, so stay tuned!

Who needs ethics when you’ve got foreclosure mills?

Want to make money quickly, but don’t want ethics to get in the way? Big banks are outsourcing their foreclosure duties to fraudulent law firms, known as foreclosure mills, and getting away with it.

Proponents of TARP insisted that there was no alternative to handing hundreds of billions to the banks with no questions asked. They are still pushing this line.

Many of the banks lack the proper paper trail to prevail in foreclosure and that judges are beginning to wake up to this, and sometimes even cancel mortgages outright, it is not surprising that the banks are beginning to realize that their own bad faith, their own shoddy dealing, their own rupturing of the social contract has put them in a position where they may not be in the driver’s seat on foreclosures much longer. No wonder the baks are starting to preach the gospel of mortgage modification.

Videos from yesterdays protest on K Street in Washington DC.