Following Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Jay Nixon in Missouri,
the state of Maine will be using money from the foreclosure fraud
settlement not to help suffering homeowners, but instead to pump up the
state's general fund--patching budget holes blown by those states'
right-wing governors.
Dave Dayen at FireDogLake notes:
There’s nothing illegal about this; the new executive summary posted at the National Mortgage Settlement site says this about payments to the states:
Payments to the StatesThe remaining settlement funds, approximately $2.5 billion, will be paid to the participating states. The funds may be distributed by the attorneys general to foreclosure relief and housing programs, including housing counseling, legal assistance, foreclosure prevention hotlines, foreclosure mediation, and community blight remediation. A portion of the funds may also be designated as civil penalties for the banks robo-signing misconduct.
That’s
essentially a license for states to take the money as a “penalty” and
put it into their general funds. Three out of 50 have already done so.
We’ll continue to track who else will engage in this, and clearly there
will be more. You honestly think Rick Scott or Rick Perry won’t use this
money to plug their budget holes? READ MORE
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