Protest Takes Backseat To Water Heater Trouble

I really wanted to attend the protest, but my water heater decided that it just had to break the day before, and I had to forgo attending in order to deal with that troublesome appliance.

 

I did check  on the Internet and I checked on TV, but I did not see any media coverage of a large protest outside of IndyMac/OneWest’s  Pasadena office, so I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if anyone actually showed up. If it was only a few people, or if there wasn’t anyone there, then it would not have gotten any coverage, and that would be a shame.

 

I did receive a mass-mail out from IndyMac/OneWest inviting me to apply for a HAMP mod. This is a good thing, right? It shows IndyMac/OneWest is reaching out to its troubled borrowers, you might think.

 

Well, yes, except for the fact that when you read the list of documents that is required, there are two blatant lies right in the modification application. Two lies that would discourage certain people from applying and that make it exceedingly hard to meet the purported documentation requirements, almost impossible, you might say. The first is a requirement for self employed persons to submit an audited profit and loss statement or one signed by a CPA and the second is that if you’re using unemployment of disability income, that it must be expected to last for at least three years to be considered as income.

 

First of all, there is no requirement in HAMP for an audited profit and loss statement. Initially, this was unclear, but since then, the HAMP documentation makes it clear that while profit and loss statements are required of self employed persons, it is not required that they be audited. Such a requirement would make applying for a modification prohibitively expensive, and since people who need modifications are already in financial difficulty, it makes NO sense to require them to spend even more money that they don’t have. Lacking an audit or a compilation (where a CPA looks at your books and compiles your profit and loss statement based on your books,) no CPA will simply look at your profit and loss and sign it. There is no such thing, so IndyMac/OneWest is asking for an impossibility.

 

As for UI benefits, HAMP provisions are clear that if there are 9 or more months remaining of UI benefits,  UI counts as income. This is a recent provision, and a good one, since jobs are scarce and more and more people are out of work.

 

The application is full of lies…no, not misinformation, not mistaken information, but outright lies, for IndyMac/OneWest has no interest in modifying anyone’s loans. They make too much off of foreclosures thanks to the sweetheart deal the FDIC made with them. Thanks, FDIC!

 

Think I am making this up? Out of 1711 trial modifications, there have been ZERO permanent ones offered by IndyMac/OneWest.  While they might talk a good game and pretend to “be there to help,” nothing can be further from the truth.

How Do You Sleep At Night?

This post is aimed at George Soros, Michael Dell, and Steve Mnuchin, the owners/primary investors of IndyMac/OneWest.

The deal you struck with the government renders any effort by me or others like me to get a loan modification in order to save our homes useless. Why? Because your loss-sharing agreement with the FDIC will certainly always make it more profitable to foreclose rather than to modify.

Instead of being honest about your intentions, you hide them by signing on to the HAMP program, and with NACA. You drag homeowners like me along for a year, extracting inflated payments that I can’t afford, and for which I sacrifice or at least juggle other necessities to pay. Your customer service representatives have the nerve to try and charge me $20 for the privilege of making said inflated payment to boot.

Why don’t you just be honest about your intentions? Yes, you’ll take public flak, but you’re already extremely unpopular anyway. Don’t think we love you or are praising you simply because we’re still in our homes…we know our days are numbered and eventually we’ll be forced out.

By being honest, you can at least let us make the proper decisions to see to our best benefit, just as you are seeing to yours. Maybe our best benefit is to stop paying you a single penny and save every time to secure a new place to live. What is not in our best interests is to be kept on the loan modification merry-go-round forever, all while you suck us dry…which I guess is the point.

IndyMac Is Evil

Over the past year, I have had to field numerous collection calls from IndyMac on my cell phone. I purposely gave my cell phone number to avoid calls on my home telephone number because my elderly mother lives with us and she doesn't need to hear the harassing phone calls ten times a day.

Well, just recently, IndyMac started calling my home number and completely out of the blue. Like I am going to find all of money that I owe them because they somehow found another number to call. I specifically told them under NO circumstances to call my home number and to remove it from the contact list. I was told my home number was removed.

Tonight, IndyMac rang my home number again. I went off on the representative. I told her in no uncertain terms to remove my home number and only contact me on my cell number. I told her a few other things, too. I did not hurl obscenities at her, but I did tell her that IndyMac is a criminal bank.

I am so sick of IndyMac/OneWest. I am sick of the calls and sick of them bleeding me dry while I am on the modification merry-go-round. I am sick of their tactics and I've had enough.

I am looking forward to Monday, January 4th when I can stand in protest outside of IndyMac/OneWest's offices. I hope there are thousands of other homeowners like me who attend and I hope it gets on the news. They need to be stopped. The evil needs to end.

January 4th 2010: National Shame On IndyMac/OneWest Bank Day

It is clear that IndyMac/OneWest has no intentions of granting anyone a permanent modification. It is clear that IndyMac/OneWest will make more money EVERY time it forecloses, thanks to a sweetheart deal with the FDIC. It is clear that our government is owned by the banks and is unresponsive to the will of the people.

We don't have to sit here and take this crap any longer. We need to stand up and demand that our voices be heard, and the first step to doing that is to attend the protest outside of IndyMac/OneWest's offices in Pasadena, CA. on January 4th 2010. More info on the protest here.

But protesting outside of IndyMac/OneWest is not enough. We need to let our government know that we don't approve of the way they've handled the foreclosure crisis and that we don't approve of all of the breaks the banks are getting while homeowners are getting thrown out of their homes.

In order to do that, I propose a massive homeowner protest all across America. On the day of the protest, every distressed homeowner needs to protest outside of their local government offices. If you live in the capital of your state, protest outside the state capital buildings. If you live in Washington, protest outside of the halls of Congress.

Under the face of such a massive public outcry, our government will have to respond. The Wall Street fat cats who were the architects of the current disaster are counting on the American people to be apathetic, to care more about who Tiger Woods is sleeping with than the provisions that are being sneaked into legislation passing through Congress. Prove them wrong. Raise your voices and be heard.

The Motley Fool is more Foolish Than Ever

Ok, these arch conservative investor types need to go to hell, seriously. Even in my cold addled state, I still bristle when I think about this article.

The article states that it is a mistake to hold the bankers accountable for not doing enough modifications. Leave the banks alone, the author rails! Let them do what they do best and get tear off the scabs that are delinquent mortgage holders by foreclosing on them quickly! Read the article, I've accurately summed up this idiot's words.

First of all, let's start with "leave the banks alone" for a minute. Isn't "leaving the banks alone" what got us into this mess in the first place? Isn't the deregulation that allowed mortgages to be "securitized" and traded on the stock market the main factor in the financial pickle that we're all in? So, yeah...let's continue to leave the banks alone...that's worked out so WELL!

Secondly, let's look at what would happen if foreclosures were allowed to proceed unchecked. Housing values would continue to dive as more and more foreclosures flood the market, and with unemployment continuing to soar, there are very few buyers out there. So, homes would stand vacant and untended. Neighborhoods would deteriorate and the number of homeless would rise sharply. All of this would drive the economy into a deeper depression, which, newsflash! is good for no one, not even fat cat investor types like the author.

The author is big on letting the markets correct themselves, only this problem was not caused by free market forces. This problem was caused by governmental policies that institutionalized greed and facilitated the biggest re-distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in United States history.

In closing, there needs to be a major economic re-balancing, and those firms that took risks that they never should have taken need to be allowed to fail. Their victims, the homeowners of America, need to have their mortgages reworked to make them sane and affordable, regardless of how they came to be, and regardless of income.

The Truth About IndyMac/OneWest

I have a cold today and my thinking is muzzy, so this post may not be as coherent as it might normally be.

The news on my modification fight is that not much has changed. NACA still reports that IndyMac has not responded to my submission as of yet. IndyMac loan resolutions employee Mike claims that IndyMac has requested updated financials through the NACA website. NACA customer service claims otherwise.

So, basically, I am still in loan modification limbo, and IndyMac still collects a payment every month (to keep me from slipping into foreclosure) although I remain 90 days behind. I don't know how long I can keep this up as it is draining me dry.

Today, I did some reading and I found out more information about IndyMac/OneWest that is very interesting and enlightening. According to this article, OneWest never plans to do any modifications whatsoever because when OneWest acquired IndyMac from the FDIC early this year, the deal included a provision that the government would subsidize losses from foreclosures to the tune of 80-90% of the original loan amount. So, this means that even if OneWest forecloses on a home and can't recoup the value of the loan in the foreclosure sale, the government will kick in and pay 80-90% of the value, on top of what OneWest receives from the foreclosure sale. This provision all but ensures that any IndyMac mortgage will end up in foreclosure because if OneWest were to modify, it would lose out on the chance to profit.

It is no wonder, then, that all through-out this year as I have been struggling to get a modification that I have met with such resistance. Indymac/OneWest has no reason to modify. They profit from foreclosure, they profit from kicking people out of their homes, they profit from the misery they inflict on others. They have no shame and they're no better than wartime profiteers. We're in an economic war right now, and these criminals are preying on the weak.

In my earlier post, I indicated that I am ready to take the fight to the next level. Well, it appears that I am going to have little choice. So, I am going to be searching for an attorney to represent me and I am going to go after IndyMac/OneWest full bore. If I need to stop making payment so I can pay attorney fees, so be it.

Furthermore, I understand there is going to be a protest outside OneWest's Pasadena offices on January 4th. If you live in the Southern California area and you are a victim of the beast with no heart, then I urge you to attend. Together we can make a difference!

Lehman Brothers & My Mortgage

The other day I found out something very interesting about my mortgage. The "investor" is a securitized Lehman Brothers trust. The servicer of that trust, Aurora Loan Services, LLC, was a wholy owned subsidiary of Lehman Brothers that somehow managed to survive the bankruptcy in tact.

What does this mean? It means that the Lehman Trust and Aurora Loan Services benefited from the government bailout and because they benefited, they MUST modify my loan pursuant to HAMP.

This entire year of hell could have been avoided had IndyMac/OneWest done the right thing. But, no, they insist on playing games. Well, I have news for them. I am newly energized and up for the fight.

If it takes allowing my home to fall into foreclosure so I can contest in in court, then so be it. I am through playing their little games and I am through waiting.