StopTheSqueeze.org Newsletter - Americans For Debt Relief Now!

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-- 23 May 2007 --

BREAKING NEWS: BANKERS RESPONDING TO PRESSURE, PROPOSE MILD REFORMS

In response to mounting criticism of the lending industry, such as the criticism expressed in the film IN DEBT WE TRUST, the Banking and Lending Industry is proposing modest reforms to undercut increasing demands for regulation of their practices. They want the focus to remain on the lenders - not on them! They want to appear to be responding to the crisis their own greed created.

This shows that pressure and exposes work - and can force needed change before two million families are thrown out of their homes.

WASHINGTON, May 21 —(AP) Banking industry trade groups endorsed mortgage reform principles Monday as the troubled market for high-risk home loans worsens and Congress ponders whether to intervene.

The statement from five industry groups says lenders are already stepping up efforts to assist borrowers who face default or foreclosure and emphasizes that lenders are voluntarily tightening loan standards.

BANKS SAY: "FOCUS ON LENDERS ONLY"

Any legislation or new regulations should focus on lenders only being permitted to issue high-risk home loans if they "reasonably believe" at the time the loan is made that borrowers have the ability to repay, the statement said.

Mortgage terms should be "clearly disclosed" to consumers, and estimates of monthly payments that could quickly jump in later years should be made clearer, the groups said.

The statement came from Financial Services Roundtable, American Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association and America's Community Bankers.

Stop The Squeeze
Weekly Tip

Wonder why your interest rate just skyrocketed? Don't blame the economy. Thanks to a sneaky credit-card policy called universal default, credit cards can jack up your rate for just about anything that's related to your credit score: from being late on another credit issuer's card to applying for a car loan or mortgage. You could even be penalized if your score drops because of an error in your credit report!

DISSECTOR DEBT BLOG
In Debt We Trust Director Danny Schechter reports on the film and campaign.

The good news this week is that the press is finally waking up to the seriousness of the debt crunch. The story is moving from the business pages to the front pages, although it is still being treated as a consumer and financial story when it should be covered as a CRIME story.

The Governor of Massachusetts says mortgage frauds should be CRIMINALIZED:

“Gov. Deval Patrick, reacting to record numbers of people losing their homes, called for the criminalization of mortgage fraud, better tracking of foreclosures, and a public education campaign for would-be homeowners.” full article...

Where are the legislators and editorial writers to support him?

When someone robs a bank, that’s news. But when the bank robs us, it doesn’t quite get the same attention. That may be because tales of individuals in distress makes better copy than stories about whole classes of people who are being targeted.

Last week, as I traveled in Detroit, now called the Capital of Foreclosures, I read about families who are losing their homes after living in them for 50 years because of higher taxes and water bills. The Michigan Legislature is being asked to act but all the remedies focus on the debtors, not the forces that are driving them under.

"It's tragic because workers who had made it into the middle class are falling out of it," writes Si Contino of Global Research who says they then can’t pay their debts.

“A worker formerly employed in a lost economic sector, (manufacturing for example), earned between $50 - 60,000 annually. That job gets outsourced.
Now that worker takes a job paying $20 – $25,000 annually. All the tax cuts, cheap foreign goods, and low paying jobs being created by President Bush and globalization aren’t going to restore this worker’s former standard of living.

Presently, someone trying to pay down a debt service based on their former “un-globalized” salary, and prior level of affluence, just can’t do it. The fact is, now that America’s been globalized, that worker – along with all others of the same economic rank – can’t afford the assets they’ve purchased and are trying to hold on to.”

So what happens then? They become DOWNWARDLY MOBILE and join the Working Poor:

To its credit, Business Week did a cover story on predatory companies who are making millions on poor people:

“In recent years, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers. Greater access to credit has
put cars, computers, credit cards, and even homes within reach for many more of the working poor. But this remaking of the marketplace for low-income consumers has a dark side: Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge.

NOTE THE PHRASE: “BY THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS!

Federal Reserve data show that in relative terms, debt is getting more expensive. In 1989 households earning $30,000 or less a year paid an average annual interest rate on auto loans that was 16.8% higher than what households earning more than $90,000 a year paid. By 2004 the discrepancy had soared to 56.1%. Roughly the same thing happened with mortgage loans: a leap from a 6.4% gap to one of 25.5%. "It's not only that the poor are paying more; the poor are paying a lot more," says Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.”

On Saturday, May 19, the New York Times profiled a Michigan couple who are getting deeper and deeper in debt---an unfortunately common experience share by millions. Reporter John Leland explains”

‘….changes in federal regulations since the 1980s, along with consolidation in the banking industry and changed consumer attitudes toward borrowing and saving, have made credit more widespread, more heavily marketed and more confusing, with offers of more credit — at low rates — extending to even the least reliable risk. In 2006, the industry mailed out nearly 8 billion credit card offers, up from 3.5 billion in 2000. Credit card debt, less than $8 billion in 1968 (in current dollars), now exceeds $880 billion, more than tripling since 1988, adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Penalty fees alone cost consumers $17.1 billion in 2006 — up from $12.8 billion in 2003, adjusted for inflation, according to R. K. Hammer, a bank card advisory firm. In part because of the debt burden, the consumer savings rate fell below zero percent in 2005 and has stayed there….
“It’s a whole change in what we consider normal now,” said Vanessa G. Perry, an assistant professor of marketing at the George Washington University School of Business. “Not only has the total amount people borrow increased, but the number of instruments we borrow on has increased. An average family has a mortgage, home equity loan, various credit cards, a car loan, maybe a student loan.”

Most of these stories are good at documenting the outrageous rip-offs underway but few, if any, focus on what can be done to fight back.

Back in New York on Thursday night, I went to a packed screening of In Debt We Trust in the offices of DEMOS, a think tank showcased in the film. We showed an hour version to permit a panel discussion afterwards featuring Tamara Draut of Demos and Sarah Ludwig of NEDAP, a research and advocacy organization also in the film and Kirsten Keefe., the Director of Americans For Fairness in Lending of AFFIL (http://www.affil.org/) a coalition of organizations fighting to end predatory Lending with whom we hope to work more closely. All agreed that the time is right for action, to put these issues on the national agenda.

I have been talking up this issue in conferences in Windsor Canada and Pullman, Washington. I am also finding willing buyers for the IN DEBT WE TRUST DVD. Later this week, I will be in Santa Fe and Albuquerque New Mexico screening IN DEBT WE TRUST thanks to Jason Silverman who has been helping us get the film out.

You can help us too by steering friends and organizations to the www.InDebtWeTrust.org and www.StopTheSqueeze.org websites. Help us set up screenings and get the word out. If we don’t act, others will. Check out the debt blog compiled by Sharon Keyser featuring important stories on the issue you may have missed.

And yes you can always pray although the Good Lawd helps those who help themselves.I found this on the internet. It takes all kinds.Remember you can pray AND fight back.

The Model Prayer: Forgive Our Debts

We are sinners who are constantly in the need of
forgiveness. We have obligations to God. We owe God a debt. We need Him to cancel our debt because as
sinners we can never repay it. We are spiritual
debtors in the need of God’s saving ...