And anyone currently working for it who wants to retain their honor, or their reputation, or have a future in journalism should abjectly apologize and look for another job.
The Washington Post:
How not to help homeowners: Right now, the national home vacancy rate is about 10.9 percent -- well above the historical average of 7.7 percent.... [I]t will take until mid-2012 to work through this excess inventory, which amounts to about 4 million homes. Anything that delays this process also postpones the inevitable bottoming out and ultimate stabilization of the U.S. housing market -- and the resumption of broader economic growth. Indeed, banks have already aborted many sales because of concerns over documentation, costing would-be home buyers thousands of dollars each and leaving their families in limbo....
There are big lessons to be learned, especially about how mass securitization of poorly underwritten home loans may have swamped the states' antiquated, cumbersome property registration and foreclosure procedures. It is also true that the scandal underscores the failure of the Obama administration's efforts to prevent foreclosures....
The robo-signed affidavits at issue were part of a technical review of documents, not the actual determination of a borrower's delinquency. By the time robo-signers put pen to paper, default had been well established. An ironic consequence of diverting staff to fixing affidavits now is that it leaves fewer people to modify salvageable loans...
And Dean Baker comments:
Banks Can Hire More Workers: Tell the Post: The Washington Post apparently thinks that banks have a fixed number of employees. This is the only meaning that can be attached to their warning in an editorial arguing a foreclosure moratorium that: "An ironic consequence of diverting staff to fixing affidavits now is that it leaves fewer people to modify salvageable loans."
See, the way this would work is the banks would realize that they need more workers to handle the foreclosure process in a way that complies with the law. (You know, the law, what the rest of us have to obey.) The banks would run help wanted ads, maybe even in the Post, and employ some of the millions of people who have lost their jobs in the downturn. Hiring more workers would of course lower bank profits and dip into executive bonuses, but that is the way things are supposed to work in a market economy.
