The city of Los Angeles is thirsty for justice. They recently added Bank of America (BofA) to their lawsuit against Wells Fargo and Citigroup Inc. for discriminatory lending practices, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Los Angeles alleges the Big Banks discriminated against minority borrowers by:
- targeting low-income neighborhoods; and
- peddling predatory loans to individuals with no proven ability to repay.
The city is seeking money damages since the banks’ predatory lending practices led to a foreclosure wave that severely diminished property tax revenues for the city.
While the city claims the banks acted with
“willful, wanton, and reckless conduct,”
BofA says they,
“responded with urgency to rising mortgage defaults that resulted from the country’s severe economic downturn and the personal financial hardships.”
Now, just take a closer look at BofA’s statement here for a minute. They argue they are not responsible for California’s foreclosure wave since it was caused by “the country’s severe economic downturn.” Do they think we are stupid?
What caused the country’s severe economic downturn? The excessive risk-taking, derivatives gambling and junk mortgage making that BofA (owner of Countrywide, may we remind you) perpetrated during the Millennium Boom!
We’ve got our fingers crossed that L.A. is successful with this suit. A successful judgment for money damages sets legal precedent and opens the door for any number of municipalities to go after the banks for diminishing revenues by causing foreclosures and severely diminished property values.
This lawsuit comes just weeks after the federal government found Bank of America (BofA) and Countrywide senior executive, Rebecca Mairone, liable for intentionally making bad loans during the 2000′s real estate bubble.
It appears as though the juggernaut of justice has finally started rolling. If the city of L.A. wins this suit, there will simply be no stopping it.
I believe that our LA City Attorney (and his staff) should be commended for his willingness to protect the public interest of the LA community by taking legal action against economic exploitation by these corporate abusers. Hopefully we will also see criminal penalties levied against many of the corporate individuals involved in this widespread abuse.
I’ll be happy if these entities are held to account in anyway at this point, but what about justice for the homeowners?
The people of America have yearned for justice regarding the crimes of the Banking Syndicate for years now. Everyone knows the banks are bigger and richer than ever, and that they got that way by using predatory practices and by soaking up easy money from the government, given willingly by a Congress not beholden to the American people, but to the elite bankers.
Rumors are flying that the first quarter of 2014 might see us facing a “monetary reset”—a revaluation of the world’s currencies, which, considering the United State’s massive debt, will mean the dollar gets revalued downwards even as currencies of more solvent nations, like China, get revalued upwards. The rumor mill is bantering around the number 30% for the dollar devaluation.
Should that indeed come to pass in the first quarter of 2014, we will see gradual inflation in kind, as current supplies of goods run out, and as merchants will be forced to repurchase at higher prices to replenish their inventories. Of course, those higher purchasing prices would then be passed on to us, the consumers.
America is fast on its way to becoming more and more like a third world country, and at the heart of that decline is greed, avarice, and blatant materialism. Once the “cleansing” and the “pain” work their way through our culture and society, we will then begin the climb back up to become the nation and people we were meant to be.