Rising Foreclosures

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as unemployment in community after community rises to double digits, and foreclosures similarly rise, Wall Street is at it again, milking both ends of the foreclosure debacle.

As many of the banks who volunteered to do foreclosure moratoriums, along with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have ended those moratoriums, foreclosures are rising again and expected to continue to rise even with administration programs up and running. Between the first of this year and April 22, in my home county of Lucas, the major county I represent, 442 foreclosed properties have been sold.

Now, would you think that's good? Who do you think is buying those homes? The very same institutions that made the liars' loans and subprime loans in the first place, Deutsche Bank, followed by Citigroup, by Wells Fargo, by U.S. Bank, Fifth Third and JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, you know the names, or their subsidiaries.

So, they foreclose, they buy, then they sell, pulling profit each step of the way, while destroying neighborhood after neighborhood, community after community in their wake.

When are we going to stop letting Wall Street make money coming and going while people lose their homes and our communities are destroyed?

[Time: 19:30]

Now, who do they sell to? That's interesting. All to absentee investors who don't care or don't even know where we reside. Absentee investors across our country and, in many cases, across the world.

Of the 442 properties sold--get ready for this--93 percent--93 percent--were sold to banks or to absentee investors. I don't call that community reinvestment. I call that community disemboweling, community disinvestment.

These buyers have no connection to Ohio or our community. They have no tie to our people. They merely seek to make more profit off the anguish of places such as where we reside, through the foreclosure process, as unemployment skyrockets. Communities do not have the tools to defend themselves from this predatory pillage.

Realtors from our district are telling us that the same banks purposely are slowing down short sales of properties, pushing off sellers, and leaving properties vacant. Why? To make more money again.

Federal policy should support Main Street families regaining equity and hope. Wall Street is rigging every transaction to laden their pockets--at the expense of the very taxpayers that supported them when they were crashing, and continue to support them as they stabilize. Business as usual for Wall Street--never doing for others, but profiting at everyone else's expense.

Foreclosures weaken communities. Absentee investors do the same. We see home prices fall, which leads to more foreclosures as communities weaken and mortgages go underwater. People in communities are drowning across this country. To jump in and save them will require creative, big picture-thinking that goes beyond the gains of these big banks or the silos of governmental programs and goes beyond the benefit of one institution over another.

We must let the FDIC and SEC deal with troubled banks and their ledgers and our financial system as they are designed to operate. Any Federal agency that deals with housing and foreclosures and jobs must join forces in designing funding mechanisms to radically transform the most hard-hit communities across our country. I would start with those that are now at double-digit in unemployment and foreclosures. Saving them will save more than just those communities. It will begin to breathe life back into our Nation's economy.

It's time Main Street was put ahead of Wall Street. And it's time that this Congress paid attention to what is happening coast-to-coast.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

In fact, last week we lost what one can say was a final hope for some Americans. With their mortgage completely underwater, credit card bills unpaid, home heating or cooling bills unpaid, healthcare bills unpaid and less food on the table ..... they turn to bankruptcy. This is the last chance and last hope for people who have tried everything else humanly possible to crawl out from under their debt. The decision is hard. Their hearts and souls demoralized, they turn to bankruptcy.

Currently, bankruptcy does not include dealing with one's primary residence. The House passed bill H.R. 1106 included ``cramdown'' provisions. Not ideal. Not what anyone wants to do, but a tool to help some of the most desperate Americans settle debts and begin again.

No such luck ..... the amendment in the Senate to achieve such a path was defeated. The New York Times editorial harkens this to a negative feedback loop. .....

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