Dear President Obama: My New Year's Wish

This is not a fan letter. Neither is it hate mail. It's a wish, a hope, a dream for the next three years of the Obama Administration.

It's no easy job you took on. It's complicated by an uneasy legacy from the past administration, one which has weakened our international reputation, increased the mistrust Americans have of our politicians.

You campaigned on change. It was the centerpiece of your platform. Simply by being who you are, being a very different style of president, you've delivered.
But not the way many of us who supported you hoped for.

You promised to bring our soldiers home. Instead, you're moving them to Afghanistan. Is it a strategically logical move? Perhaps, in traditional thinking. But it's no change. Change would have been to put a small, well funded group of covert ops experts to work on the terrorist problem, and divert the rest of the massive funds we spend on computerized warfare to humanitarian aid.

Shore up the education system. Rebuild the countries. Establish reliable food and water systems. Be the good guys. Make it impossible to argue we're not. Win hearts and minds in a real way, not with a few half-hearted efforts to understand the culture. Despite the enormity of the job, I'm betting it would still cost a fraction of what we're spending on our wars and it would be a godsend for our own country; allowing the thousands of our own soldiers whose lives we're maiming to instead believe in the possibility of their own futures again.

Your first months in office have been a big disappointment to me and many others who hoped for real health care reform.

You're accomplishing something - yes. Is it better than nothing? I have my doubts.
It discriminates against women, against gays. It doesn't offer health care to all. It gives the bloated health insurance industry what IT wants. It doesn't give us what WE wanted.

Sadly, it appears this half-assed health care is what you envisioned all along. That isn't what you told us. We didn't make up the promise of the National Health Insurance Exchange. You told us you intended to create it.

You promised you'd open the doors to prescription drugs from other countries, lowering the cost of medication for millions. That door is shut tight.

The winners here are the establishment - the insurance industry, the pharmceutical companies. The American people lose again. Because we allow ourselves to be ignored.

You took office in a financial crisis. You bailed out your administration's cronies on Wall Street, bailed out the firms that created the crisis, bailed out the auto industry. A bailout for Americans losing their homes? Lip service.
Loan servicers make more money if they pursue foreclosure. So they say they're participating in HAMP, but in truth they far prefer to foreclose.

I've been in the midst of that process, taking that proactive position we were all told to pursue. Staying current on my payments, watching my savings disappear, filing form after form, mailing file after file to IndyMac bank in hopes of getting a loan modification. It's been well over a year. They're still asking for more paperwork, pretending they don't have forms they've had on file for months.

Meanwhile, they got bailed out by the feds and bought out by OneWest. Fannie Mae, which owns my mortgage, is a bottomless pit of fiscal mismanagement which has a limitless budget of bailouts from the taxpayers. That would be me.

I've given up. There will be no cushion for me and for millions of others who are selling their homes, short selling, losing them.

Where is comprehensive financial reform? Where is the oversight?

I live in New York. My state is slashing funding, delaying payments to localities, and they're forced to try to make up the difference. Who will pay for this? I will. My neighbors will. We are the source of all the funding that government demands. Don't you see it? And yet jobs are disappearing, salaries have been flat for years while costs have risen so quickly that our dreams of a home of our own, a car that has fewer than 150 thousand miles on it, our hope of retirement are gone.

My children must borrow money to go to college. I cannot afford to pay their tuition. They will graduate with massive debts, which I will only be able to pay for them by winning the lottery.

We spend billions on a war that we cannot win. We will spend billions to bail out businesses that have cheated their way into near-bankruptcy. We will spend billions on a health care plan that won't cover everyone. And the next generation is lining up at community colleges, hoping to get a seat at the only affordable higher education opportunity there is, knowing that a four year degree means borrowing tens of thousands of dollars.


Don't you see how backwards this is?

Is America truly leading the way in developing sustainable energy? Is it developing a sustainable, growing economy? Are we moving forward or backwards?

There is a deep well of righteous indignation all over this country but you don't see it. You may find it swallows you whole in the next election.


Mr. Obama, I haven't given up on you. I think you're a decent man. I think you really want to create a legacy of positive change. You need to reconsider your course.

Your advisors are Washington insiders; the very people who've created the corrupt, old-boy network that's given us every abuse of power for the past twenty years or more. Their loyalty is to America's corporations. They're the wrong people at the helm.

You don't need them. You need to surround yourselves with great minds, open minds, people with ideals who refuse to accept the cynical "business as usual" and "it can't be done" mentality that sucks Washington DC down like quicksand.

You had us. You had our support. You are squandering that incredible privilege and for what - influence? Influence comes from grassroots support. Mobilize the American people and no amount of lobbying can compete. A second term? Look at your poll numbers. No amount of campaign funding is going to get you into office a second time if we don't believe in you.

The Republicans are unifying. They all see a clear threat to their philosophy of government and they will whip their voters into a solid voting bloc. Your base is disintegrating with each disappointment, each wrong turn.

Yours is a young presidency. There is time to change, time to set a new course.

We want to support you. We want to help. And we desperately need your help. We need an advocate in the Oval Office, not an adversary.

You work for us, Mr. President. And I know you know that. That should be the bottom line of every decision you make. Every single one. "Does this make a real, positive difference for the American people?" And coupled with this question should be a second one: "Is there a better way?"

I wish you the very best for the coming year. And I'm hoping you do the same for us.

Very sincerely,

Susan Barnett

Ring Around the Foreclosure, We All Fall Down

If you've been checking in occasionally, you know that I've been in the middle of the loan modification process for a year. The simple version is that, bottom line, I should not have been given a mortgage...I just didn't have the income. But the banks were anxious to lend and I was confident that we had a plan that would make it work. Then the recession hit.

I haven't missed a payment. I haven't even been late. I was raised to pay my bills in full, on time, and not be part of the chain of delinquencies that cause trouble for everyone down the line. But I'm peddling hard and slipping backwards.

The local foreclosure prevention office encouraged anyone who was having trouble, who foresaw trouble down the road, to start talking to their banks before they hit a crisis point. I did.

We sent all the papers to IndyMac, only to be told that they needed more; they didn't have a program for people who weren't delinquent; they were being sold to One West; they needed us to apply all over again, they needed more. The president announced the HAMP program. I got turned down because they were transitioning to the new program. Please apply again. We did.

The latest word is that they're sorry, they're not yet participating in HAMP after all. They have no program for customers who haven't missed a payment. They'll let me know if they do decide to get on board.

This is, remember, the former IndyMac FEDERAL bank. They got rescued as they sank under the weight of their own greed and were snapped up by OneWest, which has adopted aggressive tactics to make sure customers are paying, including repeated calls demanding payment before the grace period is up.

So I've hit the wall. There is no light at the end of the long tunnel and I'm not even emotional about it. Many people have lost as much or more than I stand to lose.

But I am angry that despite compassionate words from the White House and our elected representatives, what's really happening is business as usual. Banks are seeing the recession as a terrific business opportunity and the Obama administration has backed off on demands for regulation, for common sense, for control of not only salaries, but size. There is no serious talk of reinstating the Glass-Stiegel Act. There is a stirring call from the president for business to regulate itself. That hasn't worked yet and there's no reason to believe it will in the future.

Money, big money, wins.

I have spent a morning with people who are living in low-income housing, trying to find work, lining up at the food pantries for the week's groceries. I'm lucky and I know it.

But the greed of this society, the unbridled lust for more, is destroying our foundation. The middle class is being taxed into extinction yet the burden for caring for the destitute, paying for services and trying to help the poorest among us get jobs, get an education and get on the road to self sufficiency falls on those of us who aren't much better off than they are. Taxes, insurance, the cost of living - they're skyrocketing while salaries are flat and jobs are disappearing.

We're in trouble but the people making the decisions are the ones who are benefiting from this situation.

I'm one of millions. And let me say it loud and clear: This System Is Wrong. Shame on us. It exists because we allow it to exist.

The Sharks Are Circling

I'm hot on the trail of a story that's making my blood boil. Mortgage servicers, the banks that handle the investments of mortgage lenders, are acting like collection agencies.

You've never missed a payment on your house. You've never even been late. But you do have an application in for a loan modification. Are you a target?

If your loan servicer is IndyMac/OneWest, I was told that you and everyone else whose loan is serviced by them can now expect a phone call within a day or two after the first of the month.

"When can we expect that payment? How will you be making it? Will you be sending a check or paying online? Would you like to pay now by credit card? Can I please make a note of when you expect to pay it?"

The money isn't due yet. There's a two week grace period and you're well within it. But the phone calls will come every month and if you ask why - is it because you've applied for a loan modification?"

"Oh no - it's not just you. We're calling everyone."

Really.

I got in touch with IndyMac/OneWest's spokesperson - or I should say I got in touch with her secretary. How do you reach her? It's not easy. The website doesn't offer any options except for a circular route through an automated system if you don't know the name of the person you want. And since OneWest is currently trying to hire a communications person to replace the last one (who went to Fannie Mae), what name can you use? I reverted to research - tracking down the name of a corporate VP through professional websites and asking her to get me in touch. It worked. But I didn't get a call back. Yet.

But officials at a local foreclosure counseling service say they're hearing this a lot. And it's not just mortgages. If you've got a large outstanding debt of any type - mortgage or credit card - companies are apparently being far more aggressive in trying to ensure payment.

The phone calls are regular and they're intimidating.
If you hang up on them today, they'll call back tomorrow.

And remember, these are calls to people who pay their bills on time.

It's pretty nasty, especially since these servicers are the ones that we now know are holding up processing of loan modification applications because their fees are better if borrowers default.

**UPDATE** Spoke with OneWest today - they are looking into it, but these phone calls were news to the person I spoke with. Curiouser and curiouser.



http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/2706/0/1539626/WAMC.News/Foreclosures.Rising..Loan.Servicers.Drag.Their.Feet

Who Is Driving This Bus?

What is going on, exactly? Can you tell me?

I voted for our president and I like him. It's nice to have a Nerd-In-Chief for a change. But this latest government stimulus is illustrating a disturbing trend that I have to admit has me baffled.

The Cash for Clunkers program ran out of money - two months ahead of expectations. It left my best friend high and dry - she turned in her car, was given a loaner while "inspections" were done on her new federally subsidized purchase, then was told that the program was out of money and all sales were "suspended". She, understandably, flipped out. Later in the day, after I helped her get some reporters calling on her behalf, she was assured that she'd get her car delivered to her driveway as soon as the program was refunded. It appears that's happening.

But nobody knows where the money went. No one knows how much went where. Reports indicate that the incentive aimed at helping US automakers was spent more with foreign car dealers.

So we've injected two billion dollars into another corporate bailout, we've created an artificial consumer spending spree, and now we've got to pump more money in without monitoring how it's spent.

Sound familiar?

Taxpayers have been propping up business for months now with no system in place to trace where it went or how it was used. My mortgage servicer, IndyMac, was bailed out and was, for a short time, IndyMac Federal Bank. Then it was bought by West One. My mortgage lender, Fannie Mae, is up to its ears in bad loans. It's still functioning, thanks to me and my fellow taxpayers.

But I've been trying to get IndyMac and Fannie Mae to consider me for a loan modification for eight months. I haven't missed a payment but my payment is almost 70% of my monthly income. I'm struggling to keep up, applying for programs only to find they've been revised, that I no longer qualify, or that I have to apply all over again. I'm on my last attempt...this time, going straight for the presidential program. If they turn me down again, my bank and my lender, both of which were saved by me, will continue on with hardly a stutter step while I either sell or give up my house.

I'm working with a local non-profit that's got a staff devoted to averting foreclosures. Their advice? Call every week. Find out the status of your application. I have my doubts that it matters whether I call or not, but I can tell you it's not easy to even figure out what number I should call. IndyMac/IndyMacFederal/WestOne really doesn't want to hear from me.

Yet I've gotten four letters from them, asking if it's getting harder to pay for my house and wouldn't I like to refinance?

You bet I would. Except with my current income level, I wouldn't qualify for a loan anymore.

Is this just all so complicated that no one can figure out how to fix it?

Then there's the health care reform debate. I'm for reform. I'll make that clear up front. But when I see the president having to reassure seniors that they're not going to, as they've heard they will, ward off federal reps who come up to the door asking them "how they'd like to die", it just seems completely hopeless. Seniors think the reform plan is to euthanize them all? Is this country that lost?

I've heard this administration isn't small business friendly - that they're adding taxes and fees on small business to maintain big business. If that's true, it's a mistake. Or maybe it's a scare tactic that's tacked on to the "Let's kill all the old folks" whopper.

The Great Big Bus of the United States of America is still way off course and it's picking up speed. And I begin to think there's still nobody at the wheel. Or maybe the problem is there are too many hands on that wheel.

Fasten your seatbelts.