Baltimore: Our city sucks and it’s all Wells Fargo’s fault
Baltimore’s mayor is a corruptocrat.
Baltimore’s ACORN thugs break into houses with impunity.
Baltimore crime is out-of-control.
Baltimore’s schools are a mess.
So, what is the city doing to take responsibility for its ills and fix them?
They’re suing Wells Fargo:
A federal judge suggested Monday that he might restrict the scope of a first-of-its kind lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against mortgage giant Wells Fargo Bank N.A.
The city accuses Wells Fargo of engaging in illegal “reverse redlining” — targeting black neighborhoods for bad loans that resulted in mass foreclosures. The resulting drain on city services cost tens of millions of dollars, the lawsuit alleges.
Lawyers for Wells Fargo filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in September, arguing that the city lacked standing to file the complaint. Baltimore was the first municipality to sue a lender in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. Similar lawsuits were later filed in Cleveland and Birmingham, Ala., but those complaints have been dismissed by federal judges.
During a hearing Monday on the motion to dismiss, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz described the condition of Baltimore’s impoverished, predominantly black neighborhoods as “shocking, disturbing, despicable.” But he suggested it was implausible to hold Wells Fargo responsible for “the deterioration of the inner city.”
Baltimore has an estimated 30,000 vacant properties, but attorneys for the city have found about 150 homes that were vacant as a result of foreclosures by Wells Fargo. Motz said he would consider limiting the damages sought by the city to the costs of dealing with those properties.
“The general damages, I have problems with,” Motz said. “If in fact the case needs to be cut down, I’ll cut it down.”
Motz did not indicate when he would rule on the motion.
Race card + blame game = recipe for perpetual urban misery.
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It’s damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Reader D. e-mails: “What’s funny about this is, Baltimore sued Wells for not making more loans to minorities a few years back. When the housing bubble burst, the lawsuit was dismissed and Wells basically had the last laugh. Now they want to sue them for this? So it’s basically, we’ll sue you for not lending to minorities or we’ll sue you for not ‘giving’ people houses. By the way, my wife is a Mortgage Loan Consultant for Wells in Delaware. However, our state requires lawyers be involved in all real estate transactions. Therefore, no one in Delaware can scream ‘predatory lending’ because the lawyers would end up in court, not the mortgage companies.”
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Categories: Corruption,Subprime crisis
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The city of flat roofs sucks for many more reasons than Wells Fargo.
Good crab cakes though!
Baltimore — you city sucks because it is run by the DemocRAT, hand out, race bating, malcontent blame everyone but yoursleves.
If the allegations are true, it seems Wells Fargo was involved in some real shady business. Why shouldn’t the city sue them for such wrongdoing?
Well maybe the lawsuit will finally bring “the Community Re-investment Act” to trial and hopefully will show how this “Social Carpet-bombing” has caused the economic mess…
So let’s get this straight. Wells Fargo is responsible for the area being a blight because they loaned money to a demographic they are pressured by the government to loan to? I am sure they claim Wells Fargo profited unfairly too by basically flushing money down the toilet.
From what I’ve read, Wells Fargo made money off of these loans by repackaging them and selling them off before they were foreclosed on.
As the late Paul Harvey used to call them, “The sewers.”
Or, did they just make many loans to borrowers who were bad credit risks in black neighborhoods? Let’s just twist everything around to make sure there is a racist element to it, shall we?
Bluesoc – Perhaps you are unaware that banks like Well Fargo were shaken down to provide the bad loans in the first place?
If THAT had not happened – then they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing now.
True or false?
Sheesh, deceitful people get a house that they cannot afford with no intention of making mortgage payments, (yeah, what’s up with dat?), let the place go to hell when it is foreclosed and of course … it’s all the banks fault!
Mortgage loans are repackaged and rebundled into derivatives and sold every day. That works great until you mix in these toxic loans in an otherwise batch of sound loans.
Barney Frank was instrumental in championing this practice.
No SANE mortgage institution would have ever granted these loans. Again see Barney and Chris for details.
Next: Blue crabs are racist! We need to harvest more black crabs!
False.
These banks were making a ton of money until the bubble burst.
As I’m sure everyone here knows, banks have considerable sway in Washington (TARP anyone?). Do you really think they would have been shaken down by the same bureaucrats they convinced to give them billions in bailouts?
Flyoverman said:
dead on correct – throw in Clinton also as – he signed the CRA into law.
Just another example of the liberal desire to be immune from the fiscal and moral consequences of bad policies and bad decisions. Make a total hash of things, then scream bloody murder while scapegoating the people they dragooned into the mess with them.
When liberals learn to (1) accept responsibility for the bad things they bring into their lives, and (2) stop worshiping at the altar of avoidance, then you’ll see me riding a flying pig, waving my hat over my head and whooping it up just like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.
Fail to loan money to The Grievance-Mongers. Get sued.
Loan money to The Grievance-Mongers. Get sued.
No wonder we have so many lawyers.
The real blame for all of this emanates from Washington, DC.
Can we have Flight 93 back for another shot?
blusoc,
I worked in a corporation that did mortgage loans. I can point blank tell you that without government financial backing from Fannie and Freddie, plus the directive from the Congress to write these loans, NONE, repeat, NONE of these loans would have ever met the the written due diligence criteria within that company.
When I bought my first house I had to provide a minimum of 15% cost of the home in CASH. Why do you think a financial institution suddenly waived that requirement in this instance? …….the loans were government backed.
Virtually all mortage loans get sold. To “dilute these “toxic loans’ the only way financial instituions could sell them was to roll up a bunch of good with some bad loans in a derivative and sell them.
This entire shell game was orchestrated and blessed by the Congress. The problem for Barney and Chris is the stinking mess exploded before they left Congress. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid et. all are being managed in the same way. Just keep the lid on until I can retire……..
The Liberal Delusion:
Hire enough Corruptocrats to plunder others to get what you want.
Make them stamp their fraud with the words “Government Backed” (“Ah, there, we’re all safe now!”).
=======================================
Bin Laden can relax. Liberals are destroying America for him.
Why isn’t Baltimore suing the real culprit. Barney Frank who targeted Black neighborhoods for these high risk loans.
Put him in jail, and then lets talk about Wells Fargo.
Reverse redlining? Unfreakingbelievable.
No reason to come any closer to Baltimore than BWI airport. Close enough.
How about if the customers and shareholders of Wells Fargo sue the city of Baltimore for mismanagement? I’d love to see the document dump during discovery for that.
The blight that is Baltimore is due to the ruling class of socialists in city government. You want to do something for the poor? Ban socialism.
One could wish that they would use this trial the way the left will be using their show trials for terrorists, to publicize the way the left used CRA to force banks to make high risk loans.
Hell, it was Clinton/Janet Reno’s justice department that pioneered the use of Federal lawsuits against banks for “redlining” (following Carter’s C.R.A.) that started the whole housing mess in the first place. Banks who were accused of redlining were forced to give loans at reduced rates with low down payments, after paying up with multi-million $ fines. Other banks took preemptive measures so they wouldn’t be sued. Voila! A disaster of epic proportions.
bluesoc-
Are you aware of what the original meaning of redlining was? Supposedly banks were redlining neighborhoods, most poor and black, where they would not make loans, or at least demand higher down payments and less favorable term. While this was just a sound business decision, as events have born out, it was demonized as racists by liberals who shamed banks into doing business in these areas with negative publicity and threats of lawsuits. I remember this well as much of this got it’s start here in Atlanta in the 80′s at the instigation of the local liberal rag, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Back then the requirements to get a loan were even more difficult than they are at present. Banks love making money but hate losing it even more. They would never had engaged in this so-called “predatory lending” if they hadn’t been pressured into doing so.
Explain how exactly they were making a ‘ton of money’ from so many people not making their mortgage payments – what LED to the bubble bursting?
Are you going to try to tell me that the bubble would have burst if the fraud mortgage holders had made their payments? No….
The only people who made a ‘ton of money’ were people like Bernie Sandler who sold off just before the bubble burst – the one he helped create along with Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. Them and of course all those people who managed to sell their house right then too.
Try watching that SNL skit again -it’s TRUE! Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt anymore.
If you can sue for succesful ghetto production, Detroit must deserve Billions…
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Sounds like Baltimore needs a little old West vigilante justice. Cue Charles Bronson (RIP) and his Death Wish movie approach. Mix in some Dirty Harry style policing, and some Chuck Norris “freelance” work.
***
Turn them loose on the CorruptocRATS–of both political parties–and stand back for the “community reorganization” to take hold. Extra bounties on CRA lawyers and ACORN members. Suing Wells Fargo won’t even get you to first base.
***
But don’t even think about abandoning the city and moving to my Texas!
***
John Bibb
***
And most of them are, ahh, errr, .. lawyers.
On a related note, Congress is about to consider re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act . If you think bankers are upset now, wait and see what happens if their lobbyists are told to take a hike.
Probably the biggest mistake of the 1990s was enacting the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 which revoked the sensible, very effective and efficient Glass Steagall Act. In lieu of wise regulation, we are facing a gigantic and certainly to be corrupt new bureaucracy to police the “to big to fail” monsters.
They didn’t own the mortgages by the time people couldn’t pay them. They had already cut them up, repackaged them, and sold them off to people who thought the bubble wasn’t going to burst (or thought the derivatives were somehow safe).
The racist element was strong arming banks and financial institutions to loan money to poor risks. Bwarny Franknlisp and Senator Chris Dodd are the real racist here.When banks were red lining neighborhoods they were doing so for a reason: real estates gains did not exist-values were dropping.
Baltimore might TRY to run a straight city, live within their means and stop the gangs and hoods from running away the few businesses and working people city taxes have not yet driven away. But I suppose that statement is racist.
I am aware. I’m also aware that at a certain point, due to an insane housing bubble and loads of capital just lying around, it became profitable to make riskier loans (hence the sub-prime mortgage boom), even if those individuals defaulted.
The rules for making a profit seemingly did a 180…until the bubble burst.
Yes, because defaulted loans are good for business.
Which they would have done even if there had not been a bubble. See, banks do not want houses, cars, boats, any collateral items used to guarantee loans- they want money. They DO NOT want foreclosures because they are not in the real estate business.
You said yourself Wells Fargo is not the bank that foreclosed on the houses in question so how is it Wells Fargo’s fault? No matter who owns the lien, the home owner still has to make the payment, no? So how is anyone else to blame but the home owner?
Can you honestly NOT SEE how the community organizers that forced banks to lower their standards for mortgage qualification are ultimately to blame? If not, there is no amount of proof that will change your ideological drive. Merry Christmas.
Welcome to New Hamsterdam!
If I were in charge of Wells Fargo, I would nip this in the bud by pursuing the nuclear option. That is, threaten to investigate every mortgage, threaten with prosecution every person involved with fraud in Baltimore real estate. Brokers, appraisers, homeowners, illegal immigrants, community activists, Acorn, politicians and con-artists. I’m sure you could find a pattern of organized fraud in Baltimore real estate. That should shut the grievance mongers right up.
Memo to bluesoc: EVERYONE was making money before the bubble burst, including many homeowners of all stripes who got cash out to pay debts or start businesses or buy RVs or …. Get reasonable and rational. This is why government needs to stay out of any kind of business enterprise. Bureaucrats are always out of their depth at best and even criminal in the case of rascals like Dodd, Frank, and Raines et al.
Government has killed the American dream and done it with careful deliberation. Baltimore and the Federal government need to be counter-sued and criminally investigated. Lots of crap in that sewer.
Wells Fargo must have branches in:
Detroit
SanFrancisco
Chicago…
Since they are claiming and suggesting that blacks were duped into doing something they really didn’t want to do blacks as a group must be as smart as a box of rocks.
Nicely said. A pity that the crooks in DC don’t give a rip about business or logic. They have their Marxian utopia to craft with themselves at the top of the dung heap.
EXACTLY CORRECT
Read this article by a Harvard Economics Prof, from CNN (so the leftist trolls don’t think I’m cherry picking)
Excerpt:
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Complete article:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html
And yes, although the problem was created under Carter in 1977 and worsened by Clinton in 1990 (with Dodd and Frank pulling the strings and making personal profits), President Bush was wrong in bailing out the banks. Most of the home owners over their heads would have still foreclosed but the banks would have recovered faster if allowed to fail and we would not have had the entire meltdown.
Moral of the story: Just as in the Depression, government only makes things worse and should stay the hell out of financial markets.
Red-lining: Those folks got no credit and no jobs, we aren’t giving them a mortgage.
Anti-red-lining: No credit equals no BAD credit. Let ‘em buy a house.
Now: They still can’t pay. ..Who cud a guessed ?
And that’s the description of the GSE’s (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) role in all this. They bought the mortgages from the banks and did the repackaging and reselling.
I don’t dispute that. I think Freddie and Fannie deserve a lot of the blame (however, they weren’t the only ones doing this either).
However, some commenters have been saying that banks like Wells Fargo were FORCED by the government to make these loans. That’s just ridiculous. They made these loans because they made money off of them.
Alan Greenspan, the biggest free market guy there is and a member of Ayn Rand’s inner circle, could have blamed the crash on government intervention.He didn’t. Doesn’t that make you question your views?
Then they are suing the wrong people. Seriously, every single mortgage I have gotten or have seen has been sold. SO WHAT??? This lawsuit is a joke. What happened here was that a whole bunch of people didn’t pay thier bills. Period. And now they want to blame someone else. If this lawsuit goes forward look for a massive drying up of mortgage funds and a huge tightening of lending standards beyond what it is know because the banks couldn’t stand the exposure.
oh and even if they had already cut them up, repackaged them, and sold them, that in no way made the people not pay thier mortgages.
Baltimore is a cesspool and I blame it’s citizens and the government they elected.
Can the rabbit hole get any deeper? Or stranger? First, liberal socialist morons strong arm lenders into lending money to minorities who cannot afford the mortgages. Now when the inevitable happens, liberal morons state that the sub-prime lending was really a big conspiracy to cause mass foreclosures in minority neighborhoods. Crazy. Crazier. Craziest.
PEOPLE GET THE GOVERNMENT THEY DESERVE! our forefathers wouldn’t tolerate this level of crooks and scoundrels, so for nearly 200 years this country progressed and led the world in industry and freedom. today, we demand someone else take care of us from cradle to grave. i foresee a big migration of john galts out of this country in the near future. ACORN and it’s ilk have killed the goose that kept these leeches in walking around money. 2010 is the year state and local gubmints must reconcile too many parasites and too few taxpayers. merry christmas and a fun new year school boards, fire departments, police departments, and welfare recipients wherever you are.
NYC tried something like this until someone with a brain pointed out to them that punishing people who leave might prevent people from coming. If Baltimore punishes Wells Fargo, then why would any other business move in to Baltimore to put their ability to make rational decisions at risk?.
bluesoc, are you saying the bank should be sued because it was trying to make a profit? I am failing to understand your argument.
It is a question of risk/reward. Both the banks and the buyers have to balance the two out. HOW many banks lost money when buyers just walked away from their mortgages? But if taxpayers don’t have to step in, that is their risk. So they have to be more careful making loans. Now the homebuyer takes the risk that he can’t make future payments (maybe because it was an adjustable rate mortgage or he loses his job). And he takes the risk that the value of the house goes down. Again the buyer wants to make money on the house. So he should not whine to the bank or taxpayer (or court) when it happens.
I would say there was was a dis-agreement between Wells Fargo and the people who took the loans out. Wells Fargo wanted payments for the loans and the people didn’t think they had to pay for their loans.
So you totally dismiss the social justice shakedown that occurred. Maybe you are right- the bankers should have told the low income applicants to piss off. Would you have been so forgiving had they done so? Somehow I doubt it. Of course I could be wrong but then that is the power of being a Monday-morning quarterback isn’t it? No one can say you are wrong because you have the benefit of hindsight. That is a safe position but rather cowardly in my opinion.
What a ridiculous lawsuit. And the judge will be overturned if he permits it to proceed. Wells Fargo has no duty to the City of Baltimore to alleviate its burden of dealing with foreclosed properties. I can see where certain neighborhood CC&R’s may require that the owner of a home keep the landscaping trimmed and the propery rodent-free, but beyond that, the City can’t claim losses. The judge thinking he’ll split the baby by limiting damages to actual financial losses is going to be overturned. There is simply no basis for this lawsuit under any law.
The City of Baltimore has become the poster child for political corruption. Mayor Sheila Dixon has been convicted of stealing gift cards meant for poor children. Her excuse? She thought the were for her from her developer ex-boyfriend. They were delivered to her office in a plain white paper envelope by another developer.
The city has started a rotating shut down of firehouses to save money, which is being blamed for a fire fatality because the local fire house was shut down and the 911 operator gave the wrong address to the fire crew responding.
A once great prosperous city is bleeding itself dry of productive taxpaying citizens.
Oh, Mayor Dixon is refusing to resign and is trying to stay in office after she is sentenced.
Will low income liberals ever learn that democrats are not helping them but actually keeping them down? Maybe this administration will drive home the point. Then again some will probably never learn.
Right and I haven’t seen bluesoc respond to that. If Wells Fargo managed to sell off the risky loans then those cannot be the loans that Wells Fargo is foreclosing on – someone else is. You can’t have it both ways bluesoc.
Who’d want to buy a house in
BeirutBaltimore in the first place? Think about it – the most successful, popular crime dramas were set in Baltimore: Homicide – Life on the Street and The Wire.I’m no thespian, but could that be called typecasting?!?
bluesoc and others need to take a deep breath and go back and read the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) passed by the Dems under Carter which gave birth to the banks being forced to make more real estate mortgage loans to those living in minority neighborhoods or else. This was widely expanded under Clinton to add pressure on the banks make the “no down payment” and other risky loans without proper verification of income and credit. This allowed ACORN and their sort to make direct threats to banks and mortgage companies to sue them and literally close them down if they did not go along with the new “rules”. People such as Frank and Dodd and their Clinton cohorts running Fannie and Freddie made millions while refusing to allow any changes in additional oversight from Congress to be implemented.
Many folks can be blamed at various points along the way but no single bank can be balmed.
Isn’t it odd that Baltimore can sue Wells Fargo but no one can sue Baltimore because they are protected by law from law suits?
balmed=blamed … DUH!!
What do you expect from a City that gave us Piglosi
Then shouldn’t the buyers of those loans be selling Wells Fargo?
Homicide, Life on the Streets.
Classic.
This should come as no surprise. Recall the city attorney of Baltimore came out quick to say that she was going to file charges against Hannah Giles and her pimp for exposing ACORN.
No doubt the city of Detroit will be watching this case very closely….
Dickensian. “Please Ms Dixon, may I have a gift card?” “Gift card?!! You want a gift card?!!”
Hmm – I’ll bet not one kid in Baltimore has ever read Dickens.