Foreclosures

Of all the dark trends ushered in by the Ronald Reagan's Great Leap Backwards, the economic model based on "private profit, public risk" is among the most alarming. High on Reagan's free market kool aid, federal regulators began a systematic process of spreading financial and environmental risk to the public sector while private enterprise reaped record profits. George Bush carried on the tradition, pushing public risk to its natural endstate: widespread public losses.

Our motivation was simple: we wanted to get the word out to the leaders in DC that loan modifications have been slow. We wanted to let people hear the voices of housing counselors. HAMP is not working! Housing counselors are the foot soldiers in the battle against foreclosures.

CRA-NC took more than 50 North Carolina housing counselors on a bus to the nation's capital in November. We met with two North Carolina Congressman as well as policy leaders from HUD, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the OCC.

This post includes a link to a documentary of that day.

It is always a treat to hear from Congressman Miller and tonight he sent out an email entitled, "I've Been Working. Honest." Although he took a little break from emailing updates to all his constituents after the elections, he wants us to know that he's been on the front lines working for us all.

Although most of the banking and securities industry denied for the longest time that there was anything to worry about, we've known for a couple of years that we would have a bad problem with foreclosures. I introduced legislation a year and a half ago to close a special interest loophole in the bankruptcy law that exempted home mortgages from court modification. Home mortgages are the only kind of debt that a bankruptcy court can't touch. Closing that loophole is now part of the Obama Administration's plan to address the foreclosure crisis.

Data from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts shows that the pace of foreclosures continues to increase. In the first five months of 2008, there were 23,507 foreclosure filings. That is an increase of 3,495 relative to the same period last year in North Carolina.