Weekend Economists' 19th Nervous Breakdown April 6-8, 2012

[Demeter]

39. An angry priest scatters the money lenders

http://www.theage.com.au/world/an-angry-priest-scatters-the-money-lenders-20120406-1wgro.html#ixzz1rI7bDuyz

Father Robert Rien, of St Ignatius at Antioch, a Catholic church east of San Francisco, speaks with a crisp buoyant voice that belies his 65 years. When he is angry it fairly crackles. This Lenten season he is angry at America's big banks, so angry he has pulled all his parish's money out of the Bank of America and opened accounts at a small local bank. He has called on his flock to do the same and joined a nationwide interfaith movement dedicated to divesting from the major banks. They see Lent as the perfect time to spread the word...On Ash Wednesday this year a group of San Francisco clergy spilled ashes outside a Wells Fargo ATM and called for a foreclosure sabbatical, invoking the Biblical term for the ancient practice of forgiving debts...

''We have a mandate from the gospels to act,'' says Father Rien.

''Jesus went to the temple and he challenged the banking system of his day. He said, 'you are thieves and marauders, you are wrong in what you are doing'.''

It is hard to exaggerate how poorly America's banks have treated their customers throughout the financial crisis that saw about 4 million homes being foreclosed upon, and Father Rien's voice crackles away as he discusses it. The banks helped precipitate the financial collapse by selling mortgages to people who could never afford them. When the financial system collapsed they accepted a $US205 billion ($199.2 billion) bailout from taxpayers, but once refinanced they refused to help homeowners by modifying their mortgages.

''I actually went to a meeting in Washington and I said to Tim Geithner that he had to make them help, but he said there was nothing he could do. I was astounded,'' says Father Rien.

But it was the outright fraud by America's big banks that finally made Father Rien an activist for the first time since he was ordained 40 years ago. As the crisis snowballed through 2007 and 2008, parishioners started coming to Father Rien for help, saying they had dutifully filled out and filed mortgage modification applications with the Bank of America, only to be suddenly evicted. Time and again the bank, equipped with their own legal documents, said their customers' paperwork had been lost and their applications were too late...When Father Rien approached the Bank of America to plead his parishioners' cases the bank told him he had no connection to the families and no right to speak on their behalf. He did not know it then but Father Rien was seeing early signs of what became known as the robo-signing scandal, in which four American banks admitted forging signatures on untold thousands of documents to speed up foreclosures. In February this year they came to a $US26 billion legal settlement over the issue, but Father Rien says they are still failing to help many of their struggling customers. The priest seems stunned by what he says is the corporate and personal greed that has led to this situation.

''Look at how much money some of these people [in finance] earn; no one needs to be that rich, no one.'' So Father Rien joined PICO (Pacific Institute for Community Organisation), the faith-based network that launched the bank divestment campaign. ''I am angry,'' he says.

NOW THE FAT IS IN THE FIRE...THE RELIGIOUS WILL BE MOVING THEIR MONEY!