Economy – Foreclosures
Editors | Issue: Volume 40, Number 5
Why would Wall Street’s flagship banks so flagrantly break the law and dispossess North America’s middle class — the better-paid sector of the working class — from their homes? The answer comes from the inner workings of capitalism, today’s capitalism in particular. One of the Bank of America employees who testified in Massachusetts (see story […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: Volume 40, Number 5
The unending saga of the megabanks’ dispossession of working-class homeowners The checks have been mailed, the billions dispensed that the banks were supposed to give homeowners to redress the wrongs committed during the housing crisis. It turns out even that was a sham. If you or a friend — or a family member, a […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: February | March 2013
A quiet coup at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Don’t look now, but one or another of the richest men in the U.S. may be your landlord, if not now then soon. Some of the oligarchy’s biggest bankers and hedge-fund operators have carried out a quiet coup at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: February | March 2013
“Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are lining up to become landlords to cash-strapped Americans,” writes the Wall Street Journal. No joke. One of the chief architects of the subprime-mortgage industry and its collapse recently left his bank to start up a billion-dollar hedge fund and become your landlord. At the big investment […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: July | August 2012
‘The Top One Percent Is Buying Up All the Real Estate’ “The top one percent is buying up all the real estate,” a long-time Southern California realtor complained to the Los Angeles Times in March. As a new wave of foreclosures picks up steam, billion-dollar investors are lining up to buy thousands of homes — […]
Tribuno Del Pueblo | Issue: July | August 2012
No more can the politicians and media assert that the victims of the banks’ foreclosures “got in over their heads” and “should have known better.” Until now, the banks have foreclosed the most in Latino and African-American neighborhoods — where one family out of four have lost, or are losing, their homes. What’s new is […]
Salvador Sandoval MD | Issue: July | August 2012
MERCED, CALIFORNIA–Claiming that potential buyers want it that way, Merced bank owned properties are sitting empty as the banks evict renters. Despite this, there is a glut of empty houses as homelessness and families needing housing increase. This makes no sense, unless one values property rights over sheltering families. As a case in point, Maria […]
Salvador Sandoval M.D. | Issue: February | March 2012
Renters who had been evicted when investors surrendered homes due to foreclosure to the banks successfully managed to get the “Just Cause for Evictions” Ordinance which protects renters, passed in Merced, California on November of 2012. However, they incurred the wrath of bankers and their entourage. A juggernaut of realtors, developers, appraisers, and other moneyed […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: February | March 2012
The struggle between the users and the owners of housing in Merced, Calif., is happening all over the United States. It is part of a massive transfer of wealth from working-class America to the rich and powerful – the capitalists, the One Percent. Likewise, the takeover of the Merced city council is just one of […]
by Tribuno Del Pueblo | Issue: November / December 2011
The Occupy Wall Street protests began with a few hundred Americans standing up in New York City to let the 1% know that the American people weren’t going to take it anymore. “Business as usual” i.e. robbing the people — of their livelihood was over. This historic day was September 17, 2011. Who is the […]
by Tribuno Del Pueblo | Issue: September / October 2011
As the economic crisis deepens, some of the world’s biggest banks are emerging in control of a commanding share of this country’s housing. They are only a few — Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo., Deutsche Bank. Major world oligarchs, all of them. Together they hold a large part of the country’s […]
Dave Ransom | Issue: May / June 2011
Wall Street benefits from destruction of working-class homes All across the Rust Belt, cities are tearing down working-class housing — in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, Detroit. Nearly $2 billion in federal money is being used to raze homes that have been left vacant because of the economic crisis. A generation ago, the Rust Belt — […]
by Tribuno Del Pueblo | Issue: May / June 2011
“Just letting these houses sit empty while there are people freezing to death on the streets is not ethical,” Rachel Nartin told the Financial Times in February. Nartin and four other homeless people have been squatting in a vacant house in Rochester, N.Y. They share the expenses for utilities and repairs. Rochester itself has taken […]
by Dave Ransom | Issue: February / March 2011
As housing prices plummet, the financial oligarchy is forcing millions from their homes Housing prices have plummeted since the economic crisis began. Workingclass homeowners have lost a massive $9 trillion in the decline. That’s almost twothirds of the equity they had built up over years of making mortgage payments. People at all levels of wealth […]