Those who have been paying skyrocketing monthly mortgage payments and have been receiving reduced earnings are probably feeling the pinch of the economic crisis. Many of them have stopped payments and are facing foreclosure.
With 18.7 million vacant homes this year and 7 million more properties expected to foreclose in 2010 and 2011, this mortgage crisis is more than our neighbors’ issue — it is our own personal issue as well.
Many of us have grown to be skeptical as no one seems to be able to lend a hand. Not attorneys, not government officials, and especially not lenders.
When we started to distrust the system, this man came along.
Bruce Marks was named 2007 Bostonian of the Year, yet his activism affects all of us, including Tracy and Mountain House residents.
From Oct. 16 through Tuesday, Marks and the nonprofit organization he founded, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, had a colossal Save the Dream tour at the Cow Palace.
I was there, and I was among 25,000 people who were grateful and astonished by the magnitude of this event. Most lenders nationwide, 270 NACA counselors, and a few hundred volunteers provided their services with homeowners’ interest in mind.
As a scholar-activist, I am a hopeful individual. But I always keep an objective view, so by nature I wasn’t too enthusiastic when I first heard about NACA. Today I’m relieved and proud to call myself a NACA member, a Bruce Marks follower, and a loan restructuring activist.
Marks has advocated the public’s interests since 1988 with his debut activism for the Hotel Workers Union in Boston. Today, he is known as “the nonviolent bank terrorist,” as Wall Street Journal named him. He literally “terrorizes” bank CEOs with his strong, pit-bullish words.
Marks has advocated for elimination of a second mortgage scam and has campaigned against predatory lending by going to each bank and having them sign an agreement with NACA. He also won a case against Sen. Phil Gramm, whose Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 removed the separation between consumer and investment banks and has been believed to have caused the current economic and mortgage crisis in the first place.
Bruce Marks is the only name we need to remember when it comes to fighting the foreclosure crisis. Even if you have to fly to the East Coast to attend one of his tours, the effort would be worthwhile.
NACA has more than 1 million members who can testify how their loans have been restructured based on affordability, instead of credit score and how much their net incomes are.
NACA’s underwriting guidelines have proven to result in the lowest default rate nationwide — less than 1 percent — while other nonprofit organizations have showed more than a 2 percent default rate.
“Bruce Marks is a godsend,” one NACA member said at the Cow Palace. With more than 1 million people who agree, no endorsement is too exaggerated.
For the next NACA Save the Dream tour schedule, registration and documents submission guidelines, refer to www.naca.com.
• Jennie S. Bev is a four-year resident of Mountain House, a housing activist, and a columnist for The Jakarta Post. Visit her blog here for more of her thoughts.
I found out NACA is paid by the banks.
Moreover, the state actually has a better rate of successful modifications. 4 out of 5 loans are modified.
And you don't have to volunteer with NACA to camp outside someone's home in a protest for pete's sake.
In response to criticism of his signing the bill when President, Bill Clinton said in 2008:
"I don't see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn't signed that bill.... On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence."
In February 2009, one of the act's co-authors, former Senator Phil Gramm, wrote in its defense that:
"...if GLB was the problem, the crisis would have been expected to have originated in Europe where they never had Glass-Steagall requirements to begin with. Also, the financial firms that failed in this crisis, like Lehman, were the least diversified and the ones that survived, like J.P. Morgan, were the most diversified.
" Moreover, GLB didn't deregulate anything. It established the Federal Reserve as a superregulator, overseeing all Financial Services Holding Companies. All activities of financial institutions continued to be regulated on a functional basis by the regulators that had regulated those activities prior to GLB."
The economists Brad DeLong (of the University of California, Berkeley) and Tyler Cowen (of George Mason University in Virginia) have both argued that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act softened the impact of the crisis. Atlantic Monthly columnist Megan McArdle has argued that if the act was "part of the problem, it would be the commercial banks, not the investment banks, that were in trouble" and repeal would not have helped the situation. An article in National Review has made the same argument, calling liberal allegations about the Act “folk economics”.