Florida's foreclosure crisis

Millions of Floridians are losing their homes due to foreclosure. It would be easy to just say "pay your mortgage, deadbeat" as many people have, but things are not as easy to solve as that statement would indicate. Matt Weidner, a Tampa area attorney, has a blog that spends a good deal of time and bandwidth explaining the problem:

The lenders of Florida, and the firms that bought mortgage backed securities, have traded, sold, spindled and mutilated the mortgage notes and mortgages in this state in such a fashion as to make it impossible for anyone to determine or prove who owes what to whom. When confronted in court, many of the lenders and their attorneys are manufacturing the evidence they need to take the home. They have been caught doing this so often that the Florida Supreme Court had to issue rules that apply to these foreclosures in an attempt to curb some of the lies, fraud, and manipulation that is going on.

Reading Mr Weidner's blog made me truly understand why the mortgage, insurance, and bank failures that caused our current recession occurred. The banks and mortgage lenders have been lying, cheating, and stealing their way to billions in undeserved profits by enticing lawmakers and the courts to game the system in their favor.

Now we come to the reason for this post. As the courts begin to catch on to the fraud being carried out here, the banks are beginning to lose foreclosure cases all over the state. They have responded by getting legislators to introduce a new bill ironically called Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act. The purpose of this proposed law is to change Florida from a Judicial foreclosure state (requiring a bank to take you to court to in order to take your home, thus allowing you your day in court) to a non-judicial foreclosure state, essentially allowing people using "Operation Repo" style tactics to take your home without you ever getting your day in court.

If you think things are going to improve in our economy anytime in the near future, you are sorely mistaken.