Banks fudge housing documents

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5) Reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay, and cut the retirement age to 55. Provide unemployment and retirement payments at the level of union We propose an EMERGENCY CONGRESS OF LABOR to discuss and take steps 6) To combat inflation: A sliding scale of wages and pensions that matches the 1) Bail out the people, not the bankers! Open the account books of the banks to rises in comsumer prices. To combat high medical costs: A free, universal, public full public inspection. Nationalize the banks to be supervised by workers’ commit7) Immediate citizenship for all undocumented workers. No job discrimination;

2) No foreclosures! No forced evictions! Cancel usurious debt payments, and equal pay for equal work — regardless of gender, sexual orientation, skin color, or reduce mortgage payments in proportion to their capitalist-caused decline in value.

3) Full employment at union wages! An emergency public works program to 8) Nationalize manufacturing, big agribusiness, energy, and transportation coremploy all jobless workers and youth! Employ people to build what we need — porations and place them under the control of elected committees of workers. low-cost quality housing, efficient mass transportation, cheap and renewable 9) To mobilize support for the demands it adopts, the EMERGENCY CONGRESS sources of power, schools, clinics — and to conserve our water, forests, farmland, should organize ACTION COMMITTEES in every workplace and neighborhood threatened by the crisis. These committees can draw up more concrete demands 4) Immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq & Afghanistan! Close all U.S. bases abroad! No money for the military — use funds instead for public 10) To put all these measures into effect, we need a LABOR PARTY — based on a works! Convert the war industries to making products for people’s needs and to fighting union movement and all people who are oppressed and exploited. For a Editor: Michael Schreiber International Editor: Gerry Foley Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly by Socialist Action Publishing Association, P.O. Box 460501, San Francisco, CA 94146-0501. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Socialist Action, P.O. BOX 460501, San Francisco, CA 94146-0501. RATES: For one year (12 issues, 1st-class mail): U.S., Canada, Mexico — $20. All other countries — $30. Money orders and checks should be in U.S. dollars.

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are expressed in editorials. Socialist Action is edited, designed, and laid out entirely by volunteer labor. It is printed by members of Local 583, Allied Printing Trades Council, San Francisco, Calif.

man who paid for his house with cash for not having a mortgage. A woman called 911 when JPMorganChase tried to break into her home to change the locks. She was behind on her mortgage, but the foreclosure process hadn’t begun.

Bank of America entered a woman’s home, changed the locks, cut off the utilities and seized her pet parrot—even though she had not missed any mortgage payments. A homeowner sued Bank of America for seizing his home even though he owned it outright. The bank cut the power, leaving 75 pounds of salmon to rot in his freezer.

There’s definitely something fishy about this whole foreclosure business. But The New York Times’s what-me-worry kid, Eric Dash, doesn’t smell anything rottin’. His bottom line: “Oh, get over it, it’s just a few missing signatures, and the whiners are deadbeats!”

Says Dash: “Revelations that the nation’s biggest banks may have fudged crucial documents in their rush to reclaim tens of thousands of homes have the public in an uproar. Attorneys general from all 50 states announced sweeping investigations.”

He admitted that the banks’ brief foreclosure suspension was “something of a public relations game.” But anyway, “their internal reviews suggested that the problems were not as deep as they feared, giving them the confidence to resume evictions.” And why should we doubt their word, right?

Dash admits banks “allowed a single employee to sign off on thousands of documents attesting to information he or she did not know to be true,” i.e., “robosigning.”

And forgetting the cardinal rule of computing—Garbage In, Garbage Out—Dash blames the banks’ elecA WORKERS’ ACTION PROGRAM TO FIGHT THE CRISIS to implement the following demands — tees. and open space.

combat global warming.

Name Address City Phone E-mail tronic mortgage filing system. He conveniently doesn’t mention that this system was used above all so mortgages could be packaged in speculative securities—for which we paid trillions already through the Obama bailout, and are now going to pay for yet again.

In reply to the question, “Who is the victim here?” Dash replies: “There are few reports that banks have mistakenly foreclosed on a homeowner. In many of these cases, borrowers are more than a year behind on their payments, and do not currently live in the home.”

What’s worse, in the eyes of Dash and business columnists, is that the deadbeats are endangering the economy by stalling their evictions! “An industrywide moratorium, or lengthy delays, could seriously hamper a recovery of the housing market. … Homes that sit in foreclosure, especially vacant ones, can depress property values and consumer confidence.”

That, in turn, could ripple through the economy. “Banks might pull back sharply on lending, triggering a repeat of the credit crunch. … That is why the Obama administration wants the foreclosure system back on track—and to stamp out calls for a national freeze.”

wages and benefits.

health-care system.

national origin.

than the ones outlined above.

workers’ government!

State Zip • Ashland, Ore.: [email protected] • Ashland, Wis.: [email protected] • Boston: bostonsocialistaction@gmail. com (781) 630-0250 • Carrboro, N.C.: (919) 967-2866, [email protected] • Chicago: P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657, [email protected] • Connecticut: (860) 478-5300 • Duluth, Minn.:

P.O. Box 16853, Duluth, MN 55816, [email protected], www.the-red-raven.blogspot.com • Florida: [email protected] • Kansas City: [email protected] (816) 221-3638 • Louisville area / Lexington, Ky.: [email protected], (502) 451-2193 • Minneapolis/St. Paul: (612) 802-1482, [email protected] • New York City: [email protected] Sod the paperwork, let’s get evictions rolling again!

One real estate lawyer explained to The Times how the banks intend to fix their paperwork “lapses”: “You can go to the judge in the foreclosure action and say: ‘I think I bought this loan but there is one thing missing … you should overlook this gap because I am the rightful owner.’” “I think I bought it,” he says they should plead! Imagine an evictee using such an argument!

An even larger threat to the economy looms because of the fight between the banks and the investors who bought their mortgage-backed securities, now revealed to be based on fraudulent or at least inadequately documented titles. Regardless of who wins this battle, you know who’ll pick up the tab. And the fallout from this battle in financial markets could easily deepen the continuing global depression.

The solution, once again, is to make those who caused the crisis pay for it—including by measures that would expose the systemic nature of the crisis. That’s the approach taken by the Take Back the Land Movement, a national coalition, which noted that “foreclosure fraud … is but a symptom of a deeper structural crisis. They put forward a set of what they call “transitional demands,” which “can potentially heighten the overall contradictions within the system of capitalist exploitation and appropriation”:

• Government take over and administration of loan modification programs, taking the banks out of the process.

• Restitution for foreclosure fraud victims.

• Use this crisis to convert residences to cooperative housing units directly governed and administered by the impacted families and communities.

To win these demands, they call for “concerted direct action of those most affected and those in solidarity”:

• Nationally coordinated days of action against banks and government agencies.

• A nationally coordinated rent strike of those facing foreclosure and eviction.

• Community occupations of vacant properties and land to transform them into cooperative housing.

— THE EDITORS For info about Socialist Action and how to join: Socialist Action National Office, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610, [email protected], (510) 268-9429 Socialist Action newspaper editorial offices: [email protected] Website: www.socialistaction.org WHERE TO FIND SOCIALIST ACTION • Philadelphia: [email protected] • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected], (401) 419-1706 • San Francisco Bay Area:

P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, Ca 94610 (510) 268-9429, [email protected] • Superior. Wis.: [email protected] • WASHINGTON, DC: [email protected] (202) 286-5493 National Office

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Socialist Action candidate Hutchinson debates his

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