Richmond adopts eminent domain mortgage plan

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The city said it will buy home mortgages from financial institutions, write down those loans and refinance homeowners in the properties into new loans. If financial institutions do not cooperate, the city will seize the loans using eminent domain, Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said.

www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richmond-eminent-domain-20130730,0,7196420.story


Awesome !
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Here's a better title:

California city's drastic foreclosure remedy: Seizure


http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/30/real....html?iid=Lead

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Re: Richmond adopts eminent domain mortgage plan

The city then said it will file for bankruptcy, seize the bankruptcy court using eminent domain, write down its debts to zero, and then sell the city to itself to recapitalize. The head of a major US investment bank approved of the plan saying, "Hey, we do it all the time, in secret of course. It'll be great seeing someone doing it in public; coming out of the closet, so to speak."

"Banking and Politics were invented so that weak, incompetent, cowardly men could have access to women, money and power." Jehu Galt

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Re: Richmond adopts eminent domain mortgage plan

The city then said it will file for bankruptcy, seize the bankruptcy court using eminent domain, write down its debts to zero, and then sell the city to itself to recapitalize. The head of a major US investment bank approved of the plan saying, "Hey, we do it all the time, in secret of course. It'll be great seeing someone doing it in public; coming out of the closet, so to speak."

"Banking and Politics were invented so that weak, incompetent, cowardly men could have access to women, money and power." Jehu Galt

Cute ;-)

I dunno... Seems to me like people confuse occupancy with ownership. Government already has the legal right to seize privately owned land if the landowner doesn't pay their property taxes, just as banks can seize homes if homeowners fall behind on the mortgage. So, while a homeowner can pay off their mortgage eventually, they will always have to pay property taxes. They will never truly have sovereign ownership of their property.

So, if I had an underwater mortgage and had to choose between making mortgage payments to JP Morgan or to my city, I'd rather pay my city at this point. The banks blew up the housing bubble for all it was worth, then left neighborhoods in ruins when it popped, as they transferred the wealth of the middle class to their own balance sheets and gave themselves obscene bonuses. Now the cities have to contend with the devastation left in the bubble's wake, and it's destroying them.

Cities care about their neighborhoods in ways that the banks never will. There may be negative unintended consequences to what Richmond is trying to do, but I find it hard to believe that they will have worse results than what the banksters have already accomplished. I suspect, in fact, that the protests about this comes from fear that Richmond's plan will be a model of success that other cities will want to emulate.

You know the old saying: "Don't steal. The banks hate competition."

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Re: Richmond adopts eminent domain mortgage plan

I am not particularly fond of banks, but I am not sure if we can point a finger to one entity or person in this whole mess. Fed policies, politics, wall street, ignorant citizens -- all connected and responsible to some extent.

Just pointing to another blatant misuse of law.

Cute ;-)

I dunno... Seems to me like people confuse occupancy with ownership. Government already has the legal right to sieze privately owned land if the landowner doesn't pay their property taxes, just as banks can sieze homes if homeowners fall behind on the mortgage. So, while a homeowner can pay off their mortgage eventually, they will always have to pay property taxes. They will never truly have sovereign ownership of their property.

So, if I had an underwater mortgage and had to choose between making mortgage payments to JP Morgan or to my city, I'd rather pay my city at this point. The banks blew up the housing bubble for all it was worth, then left neighborhoods in ruins when it popped, as they transferred the wealth of the middle class to their own balance sheets and gave themselves obscene bonuses. Now the cities have to contend with the devastation left in the bubble's wake, and it's destroying them.

Cities care about their neighborhoods in ways that the banks never will. There may be negative unintended consequences to what Richmond is trying to do, but I find it hard to believe that they will have worse results than what the banksters have already accomplished. I suspect, in fact, that the protests about this comes from fear that Richmond's plan will be a model of success that other cities will want to emulate.

You know the old saying: "Don't steal. The banks hate competition."

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Re: Richmond adopts eminent domain mortgage plan

I am not particularly fond of banks, but I am not sure if we can point a finger to one entity or person in this whole mess. Fed policies, politics, wall street, ignorant citizens -- all connected and responsible to some extent.

Just pointing to another blatant misuse of law.

You're right, of course, in principle. I'm irked at myself for being willing to abandon my libertarian principles on this issue, because once we abandon our principles for expediency, we slide down a treacherous slippery slope. I see the Constitution being abandoned left and right to benefit FIRE interests and/or an overreaching central government. Everything is Orwellian doublespeak now. We're expected to follow the rules, but the rule makers are sociopaths that keep changing said rules in the middle of the game to favor themselves. Then if we abandon principles in order to save ourselves, they scold us for not being principle-centered, while laughing all the way to the bank... hell, "they" are the bank!

The distortions to our economy caused by abandonment of true free-market principles are now so severe that it might not be possible to remedy them by conventional methods. If principles are to be adhered to, they must be adhered to by all parties involved, not only selected parties. What happened was TBTF banks got bailed out against free market principles, but cities and citizens are having their feet held to the FIRE to pay their debts.

dcarrigg posted this in another thread:

"There is, in fact, no recognised principle by which the propriety or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested. People decide according to their personal preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the government should do, or according to the belief they entertain that the government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere, as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me that in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly condemned."

-John Stuart Mill

I firmly believe that two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left. No. Wait... I'm confused...