Trumka: Foreclosure Settlement ‘First Step’ to Housing Crisis Solution
The $25 billion foreclosure settlement with five of the nation’s biggest banks, announced this morning by federal and state officials, is a “step in addressing the housing and foreclosure crisis that plagues our country,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
The banks broke the law by railroading homeowners through the foreclosure process. Today’s settlement provides compensation for foreclosure victims without requiring individuals to waive their legal claims. While banks must be made to pay more to help homeowners, the settlement includes needed principal write-downs so homeowners can stay in their homes.
The deal with the five banks settles potential charges against the banks for fraudulent practices, including improper foreclosures by “robo-signing” foreclosure documents. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the settlement moves toward “righting the wrongs that led to our nation’s housing-market collapse and economic crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »
Demand Strong Mortgage Abuse Settlement with Big Banks
Tell your state attorney general to demand real accountability from the Big Banks for the collapse of the housing market by clicking here. The action, sponsored by the AFL-CIO community affiliate, Working America, comes as state and federal officials are negotiating a settlement with the Big Banks for their role in driving the U.S. economy into a ditch and often recklessly defrauding consumers seeking mortgages.
The wreckage in the wake of the banks’ actions includes 7.5 million home foreclosures with another 4.8 million teetering on the brink.
It’s time hold those banks accountable, but news reports say the proposed settlement may amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist. California’s attorney general withdrew from the negotiations in September because he said the proposed terms failed to provide sufficient relief to the state’s homeowners and released the banks from too many claims.
Any settlement must reflect the harm done to homeowners and provide large-scale relief for homeowners.
Housing Bust Caused Deficits, Not Public-Sector Contracts, Study Finds
When housing prices began to take a dive, revenues to state and local governments plummeted. Housing construction shuddered to a halt, creating ranks of unemployed workers who began drawing unemployment benefits rather than paying local taxes on their previously middle-class salaries. The businesses of suppliers and service-providers to contractors were forced into downturn. And many states continued to cut taxes, causing a perfect storm of budget woes for the states.
Yet who got the blame for this economic morass? Public-sector employees and their unions, who have been made the scapegoats for a budget crisis that had nothing to do with them—convenient targets for the right-wing forces that seek an end to unionization in all sectors.
“The Wrong Target: Public Sector Unions and State Budget Deficits,” a new study released today by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California,Berkeley, makes clear the real causes of the state- and local-government budget crisis. Using data compiled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, authors Sylvia Allegretto, Ken Jacobs and Laurel Lucia show that when the impact of the housing bust is added into tables that purport to link public-sector labor contracts with state-level budget crises, public workers’ compensation becomes statistically insignificant. (Study is available here in PDF format.)
Working America Takes Us to Main Street
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Take a stroll down Working America’s new Main Street…Main Street Blog that is.
The just-launched blog by the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate for workers who don’t have a union, features news and information about the issues that Working America’s 2.5 million members say they are most concerned about—the economy, health care, jobs, education, retirement security, the mortgage and housing crisis and other issues.
Obama Housing Plan ‘Aims Straight at the Heartland’
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As many as 9 million homeowners who are facing foreclosure or struggling with skyrocketing monthly mortgage payments could save their homes under the terms of a home rescue plan President Obama unveiled yesterday.
When the Bush economy began to tank more than a year ago with banks failing and jobs vanishing, foreclosure signs and abandoned houses began sprouting in working and middle class and even up-scale neighborhoods around the nation. The AFL-CIO first called for a homeowners’ lifeline in late 2007. But the Bush administration preferred to bailout Wall Street instead of throwing a lifeline to Main Street. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
The swift action by the Obama administration to address the housing crisis is a welcome and refreshing change.
For more than a year, the Bush administration ignored calls from the AFL-CIO and others to address a coming foreclosure tsunami. Tragically, in the months that followed, the deepening housing debacle turned millions of families’ lives upside down and strengthened its chokehold on our economy
