More recently, and very quietly, the foreclosures were halted by the banks, who acknowledged a few paperwork issues. Which turned out to be the numbing onslaught of hundreds of forms required to activate many, many foreclosures, which were signed by people with no knowledge whatsoever of what they were doing. And then, even more quietly, came the admission that some of the paperwork that connected a mortgage to a specific property and a specific owner wasn’t, well, it wasn’t all in the file. (The “To” line on the check I write each month for my house payment has changed five times in eight years, so I’m not surprised that the files are in disarray).
Then, “the White House” – never Obama, or anyone else with a name, but always “The White House” – urged the banks to not impose a moratorium on foreclosures because “the White House” believed that would be bad for the economy. Finally, the foreclosure machine is up and running again, but more slowly and with almost no mention on the nightly news.
The miners emerged in Chile, and on Today a poodle rode a skateboard while other poodles jumped rope. The father from Happy Days died the same week as the mother from Leave it to Beaver – neither of them, thank goodness, were competing on Dancing with the Stars – and the Oregon Ducks were ranked number one in a poll.
Once, either late in 2008 or early in 2009, a congresswoman from Ohio called Marci Kaptur was dismissed as a populist (a word that seems to have ran its course for now, and for that I am thankful) because she expressed some very unpolished sentiments about the banks. She was but a blip on most of the news channels. The right wing talkies accused her of inciting criminal behavior by urging people in her district, which includes Toledo, to not leave their homes just because they’re put into foreclosure but to instead become squatters.
Bill Moyers had her on for a real conversation – you could rely on him for that – during which she explained that she was not inciting criminal behavior at all.
She’d been to a meeting with some moneyed authority figure with Ohio connections, who, according to her, made sure she knew that he was tight with someone in the state who had more political and financial power than her. “I guess that was supposed to be some sort of threat,” she said, and laughed. Another of her ideas was to decentralize, geographically, the U.S. Treasury. She thought it was too close to Wall Street, that there was a bit too much coziness between the two allegedly separate entities, so she suggested part of it relocate further west, someplace like Ohio, perhaps. Not surprisingly, the “leadership” at the treasury was not pleased. Finally, regarding the foreclosure situation, she said, simply, this: If you’re ordered to leave your house, demand to see the paperwork before you start packing. Marci Kaptur didn’t hesitate to say that when the mortgages changed hands so many times, she believed it was important to confirm that the company kicking you out of your house could prove it had the documents required to do so.
What a naïve, simple-minded populist. The whole story – or lack thereof – makes me wonder, of course, if Marci Kaptur is having a good laugh these days, or if she’s about to be tossed out of office by a candidate funded by anonymous donations, the kind that are now blessed by the wise ones in robes.
