In 2008 2.3 million families faced foreclosure proceedings, the highest number since the Great Depression. Though the cost to individual families is hard to measure, the cost to our economy is staggering: using the Joint Economic Committee estimate of $78,000 per foreclosure, the cost to the US economy was at least $156 billion in 2008.
If we do not take any action, Credit Suisse predicts that there will be between 8 and 9 million foreclosures in the next four years, at a potential cost to the economy of $702 billion. Simply put, addressing the foreclosure crisis must be at the heart of any economic recovery plan.
The mortgage foreclosure crisis touches all aspects of our economic meltdown and as such requires a comprehensive solution.
We are escalating our efforts, both to help save individual families' homes, and also to win a foreclosure moratorium - some needed breathing room - while we push for a truly comprehensive solution to this crisis.
The goal of this action is to ensure that hard-hit families can stay in their homes until a common-sense solution to the crisis is put in place can use to join in. In the meantime, please sign our petition to the Obama Administration in order to fight back against Wall Street interests blocking the urgently needed reform from being enacted.
Due to lack of appropriate government sanctions, subprime mortgage loans have been run through an intricate, intertwined system of loan brokers, mortgage lenders, Wall Street trusts, hedge funds, offshore tax havens and other predators.
American homeowners have been entrapped by an arsenal of arcane financial devices and maneuvers known by such exotic names as "exploding ARMs," YSPs, teaser rates, low-doc mortgages, loan flipping and equity stripping. Ultimately extracting high payments from the families, and sucking out any equity they might build up and finally stealing their homes.
PLEASE TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
- Lift the ban on judicial foreclosure modifications
- Implement the Bair proposal to spend bailout money to facilitate affordable mortgage modifications
- Require TARP recipients to engage in sensible foreclosure prevention policies, like the FDIC did with IndyMac
- Use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's power to modify home mortgages to affordable terms
- Create meaningful economic sanctions against predatory lending practices and institute a viable regulatory system for the 21st century
