Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => The Greater Depression - Chapter I => Topic started by: RomanCatholic1953 on October 21, 2010, 10:13:03 PM
-
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-big-wall-street-banks-have-found-a-new-way-to-strangle-the-american-people-predatory-property-tax-collection
-
The Big Wall Street Banks Have Found A New Way To Strangle The American People: Predatory Property Tax Collection
It turns out that the big Wall Street banks have found a dirty new way to make loads of cash from U.S. homeowners, and they really, really don't want to talk about it. So what is this dirty new business? America's biggest financial institutions have become property tax collectors, and it is extremely lucrative. From coast to coast, the big Wall Street banks are buying up thousands upon thousands of tax liens and are making a killing by socking distressed homeowners with predatory interest, outrageous penalties and almost unbelievable legal fees. In some areas, the big banks are able to foreclose on these homes in as little as six months. The elderly and the poor are the most common targets of these practices. An absolutely brilliant expose in the Huffington Post has brought these issues to light, and it is creating quite a controversy in the financial world. The big banks are doing nothing illegal here. Local governments are offering to sell thousands of tax liens and somebody is going to end up buying them. But something seems extremely unsavory about the big Wall Street banks capitalizing on the economic downturn that they were so instrumental in causing in such a predatory manner.
Today, millions of American families are barely hanging on to their homes by their fingernails. Millions are out of work and millions of others are barely making enough to put food on the table. Meanwhile, property taxes have absolutely soared in most areas of the nation over the past decade. Many Americans are finding that when that time rolls around they simply do not have a big chunk of extra money to pay a property tax bill.
So millions of American families, including many that have completely paid off their homes, now find themselves in danger of being thrown out on to the street over an unpaid property tax bill.
For many local governments, the headache of trying to collect on thousands of property tax liens is just too much, so they are glad to "outsource" the work of collection.
So how do the big Wall Street banks get involved? Well, it goes something like this....
1) The big Wall Street banks set up or invest in shell companies that will disguise who they really are.
2) These shell companies run around and buy up all of the tax liens that they can get their hands on.
3) Predatory levels of interest (in some states as high as 18 percent), fees and penalties rapidly pile up on these unpaid tax liens. The affected homeowners quickly end up owing much, much more than what the original tax bills were for.
4) If the collecting firm has to hire a lawyer, then that gets charged to the homeowner as well. The bloated legal fees for some of these lawyers can end up being the biggest expense of all.
5) If the tax liens do not get paid, the collecting firms move in to foreclose as quickly as legally possible.
According to the Huffington Post, Wall Street banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have been gobbling up several hundred thousand tax liens from local governments. It appears that "distressed housing markets" are being particularly targeted.
Many of these tax liens are sold in online auctions, so it is unclear if many local government officials even realize who the big money behind many of these shell companies is.
Once again, this is all perfectly legal, but it is more than a little distasteful.
The following video by the Huffington Post does a good job of summarizing what they found....
The truth is that there is a huge difference between the letter of the law and true justice.
Just consider the following tragic story from the Huffington Post article....
Barbara Carpenter, a 58-year-old disabled Ohio retiree, found herself in such a situation. The former worker for the American Red Cross struggled to save her Toledo home from a JPMorgan entity called Plymouth Park Tax Services, which in recent years has been among the nation's top buyers of tax liens.
"It's a great neighborhood and the house is in good condition,"said Carpenter, who paid $67,000 for the one-story home in 2004. But she fell behind in paying her taxes and a certificate for $1,500 in unpaid taxes was sold off to Plymouth Park, which is based in New Jersey.
Carpenter's lawyer, Joseph Westmeyer, said Plymouth Park routinely charges an upfront fee of around $1,500 as soon as it buys the lien and 18 percent interest on the debt. If they don't get paid, they foreclose.
"It's not a good deal for poor customers," said Westmeyer. Carpenter wound up selling the house in August for less than half what she had paid. Plymouth Park received about $12,000 in legal fees and other charges, including some additional taxes, Westmeyer said, quoting from court records.
Does that sound like an honorable way of making money to you?
Would you like to make your living by throwing elderly women out of their homes and into the street over unpaid tax bills?
Unfortunately, this problem is not going to go away any time soon. One out of every six Americans is enrolled in a government anti-poverty program. Tens of millions of Americans are barely hanging in there. In addition, tens of millions of elderly Americans live on fixed incomes. Meanwhile, property taxes just continue to go up in many areas of the United States.
Unless the U.S. economy experiences a dramatic turnaround, we are going to continue to see large numbers of Americans get behind on their property taxes, and the big banks will continue to be there to scoop up the tax liens.
Large numbers of poor and elderly Americans that don't even have a mortgage will lose their homes and it will all be perfectly legal. Executives at the big banks will be having a good laugh about their huge bonus checks as thousands upon thousands of our most vulnerable citizens are dumped out into the street.
But weren't the big banks largely responsible for causing the housing crash and the economic meltdown that followed?
Yes.
But so far none of them is really paying any kind of a price. The big banks got bailed out by the U.S. government, and now it looks like the Federal Reserve is preparing another round of "backdoor bailouts" to help them out again.
But do the big banks show any mercy on the poor and the elderly who have gotten behind on their property taxes?
Not at all.
This is 2010 - a time when greed dominates the financial world and when most banks don't seem to know a thing about kindness or mercy.
-
Property tax is all about letting people know they still have a landlord. And the local schoolboard (very often masonic) really does consider itself entitled to collect rent.
In this state voters cannot put school tax decreases on the ballot.
-
But something seems extremely unsavory about the big Wall Street banks capitalizing on the economic downturn that they were so instrumental in causing in such a predatory manner.
I like the use of understatement.
It's not only unsavory, it's stupid. Short-term thinking and get-rich-quick schemes are all anyone cares about, it's like they can't see two feet in front of their faces. They aren't just destroying their dupes but themselves. People cannot be gouged anymore, the money just isn't there. And a land full of poor, angry people with an axe to grind against the banks and government will not be a pretty sight, although frankly I don't see any revolutions taking place in America. This nation talks big but the people are soft. Everywhere else, yes, but not here.
Worse than predatory loans on homes are the college loans. You can't just walk away like you can walk away from a house you're underwater on. They will suddenly change the interest rate on you and you have no say in the matter; then they will send sharks after you the rest of your life. The Masonic secular university system is due for a fall, and it is well-deserved, words cannot express my loathing for the anti-Christ educational systems that have been put into place in our time. You can go from campus to campus to campus and you will be lucky if you find one single professor or TA who even has a 20% grasp of the Catholic truth. These universities are heavily responsible for formatting everyone into a thin white irreligious gruel.
-
The Masonic secular university system is due for a fall, and it is well-deserved, words cannot express my loathing for the anti-Christ educational systems that have been put into place in our time. You can go from campus to campus to campus and you will be lucky if you find one single professor or TA who even has a 20% grasp of the Catholic truth. These universities are heavily responsible for formatting everyone into a thin white irreligious gruel.
Yes, exactly. I would add that you'd hit the jackpot if you find on most campuses any educator who has a grasp of philosophy and morality as right reason and common sense dictate, let alone of what Christian philosophy teaches.
The funny thing is that academic standards are the lowest they have ever been in most educational institutions. The system has failed to produce students who avail themselves of reason in the proper way because its horizontalist anthropocentric worldview has bereft youth of the knowledge [i.e., of the faith] and the ability [i.e., by means of prayer and the Sacraments in order to obtain necessary grace] whereby to attain to the virtue of studiousness properly so called (vide Summa Theologica, II IIae, q. 166), together with the temperance and self-discipline requisite for efficiency and industry in academic pursuits. After all, why should they discipline and temper themselves in order to attain to intellectual knowledge, if all that matters is to conform to pedantic and artificially contrived pedagogical constructs and to "network" to have the right connections, more important and necessary than the education itself (since from thence employment opportunities may originate)?
It is because the nature of God and the nature of man have been woefully forgotten and obfuscated, that modern day academicians commit the grossest intellectual errors and sometimes succuмb to the basest moral disorders. Because these individuals endeavor to attain to sciences that exceed their moral capacities, enfeebled by original and actual sin together with the neglect of the interior life, they sometimes give themselves over to a strange state wherein they are torn apart by a hyper-developed intellect and a psychological immaturity which harshly contrasts with their age.
I have seen it at the University myself when I was a student. It's like watching lemmings hurl themselves in foolish glee to the precipice they cannot see before them. Pretty creepy.
-
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php/The-People-vs-Goldman-Sachs
-
Short-term thinking and get-rich-quick schemes are all anyone cares about, it's like they can't see two feet in front of their faces. They aren't just destroying their dupes but themselves.
While this is true of the stupids who do the grunt work of the Masters, it is is the exact opposite of the truth where the Masters are concerned.
It isn't about money; it is about power; and the Masters' patience is/has been truly diabolical.
-
They aren't just destroying their dupes but themselves. People cannot be gouged anymore, the money just isn't there.
All parasites destroy their hosts. This is nothing new.
Further, these parasites already have a plan to crate a new host -- and it is just as easy for them to 'revivify' the new host (same as the old host) as it has been for them to extend a pretend. If God does not step in, the utterly-clueless sheeple (who survive the jackboots) will go for the Banksters' solution.