Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith, a razor-tongued chronicler of the assorted banking foibles that are tied up in the ongoing foreclosure crisis, has a sharp takedown of the financial services industry in Sunday’s New York Times.
Some pointed and articulate excerpts from “How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater“:
Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didn’t mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality.
And on the prospect of congressional intervention on banks’ behalf:
Asking for Congress’s help would also require the banks to tacitly admit that they routinely broke their own contracts and made misrepresentations to investors in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Would Congress dare shield them from well-deserved litigation when the banks themselves use every minor customer deviation from incomprehensible contracts as an excuse to charge a fee?
It’s an emphatic rundown of reasons consumers and voters ought to be suspicious of the banks’ defenses of their foreclosure practices. Read the whole thing.
mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor
