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Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit From Bad Loans
“It has been very successful — very strong.”
“In fact, it’s off-the-charts good.”
Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.
Surprised? Hey, this is America, Land of FIRE Dancers....
You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector
The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead. Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.
Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.
Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.
New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”
“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.
Only the FIRE vampires are eternal around these parts...
Stimulus Spurs Road Projects, Big and Small
VP Biden waits for Bernanke helicopter to make another pass...
More than a dozen states have now said how they plan to spend at least some of their transportation money, giving the clearest picture yet of how one of the president’s signature programs is playing out around the country.
A bridge will be painted on a rural road, a new lane added on a suburban highway, a guardrail built on a median strip.
And Paul Harvey and Norman Rockwell will look down benignly from above....
“It has been very successful — very strong.”
“In fact, it’s off-the-charts good.”
Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.
Surprised? Hey, this is America, Land of FIRE Dancers....
You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector
The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead. Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.
Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.
Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.
New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”
“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.
Only the FIRE vampires are eternal around these parts...
Stimulus Spurs Road Projects, Big and Small
VP Biden waits for Bernanke helicopter to make another pass...
More than a dozen states have now said how they plan to spend at least some of their transportation money, giving the clearest picture yet of how one of the president’s signature programs is playing out around the country.
A bridge will be painted on a rural road, a new lane added on a suburban highway, a guardrail built on a median strip.
And Paul Harvey and Norman Rockwell will look down benignly from above....
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