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Related: About this forumA Serious Challenge to Wall Street
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/12539-a-serious-challenge-to-wall-street
Theres been so much corruption on Wall Street in recent years, and the federal government has appeared to be so deeply complicit in many of the problems, that many people have experienced something very like despair over the question of what to do about it all.
But theres something brewing that looks like it might be a blueprint to effectively take on the financial services industry: a plan to allow local governments to take on the problem of neighborhoods blighted by toxic home loans and foreclosures through the use of eminent domain. I can't speak for how well the program will work, but it's certaily been effective in scaring the hell out of Wall Street.
Under the proposal, towns would essentially be seizing and condemning the man-made mess resulting from the housing bubble. Cooked up by a small group of businessmen and ex-venture capitalists, the audacious idea falls under the category of "Thats so crazy, it just might work!" One of the plans originators described it to me as a "four-bank pool shot."
Heres how the New York Times described it in an article from earlier this week entitled, "California County Weighs Drastic Plan to Aid Homeowners":
Desperate for a way out of a housing collapse that has crippled the region, officials in San Bernardino County are exploring a drastic option using eminent domain to buy up mortgages for homes that are underwater.
Then, the idea goes, the county could cut the mortgages to the current value of the homes and resell the mortgages to a private investment firm, which would allow homeowners to lower their monthly payments and hang onto their property.
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A Serious Challenge to Wall Street (Original Post)
eridani
Jul 2012
OP
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)1. sounds like they are going to take the homes and sell
them to investors. Sounds like more screwing of the home owners and boons for the rich investors. Hope I am wrong.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)2. You are both right
The idea is appealing, so appealing, that the vultures think to use eminent domain as they always have: to dispossess the poor of their last remaining wealth, and then charge them for the opportunity to rent what they once owned. And after a few years, when the ungrateful tenants have bashed the properties to pieces, they will sell them off to more undercapitalized poor people. For another swing around the merry-go-round of Capitalism, Inc.
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)3. it's a sad fucking world we have let the rich create for us.
May we all wake up and take it back.