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Senate Committee Votes To Fingerprint Lenders
tjstork recommends a blog post up at Openmarket.org on the passage by a Senate committee of a fingerprinting provision in a foreclosure assistance bill. The provision would require thousands of people connected with the mortgage industry, even tangentially — possibly including part-time and seasonal real estate agents — to send fingerprints to the feds for storage in a database. No explanation is in evidence as to how this would help the problem of loan fraud. The measure passed the Senate Banking Committee by a bipartisan majority of 19 to 2. "The measure the committee passed states that 'an individual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first... obtaining a unique identifier.' To obtain this 'identifier,' an individual is required to 'furnish to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry 'information concerning the applicant's identity, including fingerprints for submission' to the FBI and other government agencies."
I volunteer helping some of those folks that were "victimized" by the "evil" mortgage industry. In every case, folks just bought too much house than they can afford. And a few times, they bought a few houses. Folks don't leave any wiggle room in their budget - at all. So if they lose a job, or they get sick, or a divorce, or any combination thereof, they get behind in their payments. There's nothing in their budget for savings.
A lot of those folks bought a house with one of those interest only loans counting on the house price increasing dramatically in the first couple of years, sell it for a huge profit, and buy more. Folks pyramided their profits with the expectation that home prices can go only up. The mortgage industry went long because these folks were able to make the payments. now, the economy slows, folks lose their jobs, and now they can't make their payments - bankruptcy and this current crisis.
Here's the real problem: in America we have this budget by payments mentality. In other words, we can afford something as long as we can make the payments and of course that's counting on having a job that gives raises every year and asset prices always increasing. Some folks actually lied on their applications - FYI.
There's no evil entity here to blame and there are no victims: just some folks who don't know how to mange their money and were too optimistic about the economy and the real estate market.
Yeah the police don't like it when databasing is used to track them. The president of the California Police Chiefs association is petitioning the legislature for a law making sites like this illegal.
We are all just people.
This smacks of the same tactics Microsoft used to force IE on everyone. When they were ordered to un-bundle IE from the OS, they responded by doing so, but then making IE a requirement for everything... want to use Platform Builder? You need IE. Want to use Visual Studio? You need IE. Want to play Al Unser Jr Racing, and read the Help? You need IE.
This sounds like the establishment wanting the FBI to have fingerprints on everybody (you're all potential criminals, after all), but knowing it will never fly. So instead... you want to lend somebody money? That's a fingerprintin'. Next, it will be "Want to borrow money from a fingerprinted lender? Well you need to be fingerprinted too, or there's a security gap."
Next it will be buying a gun, car, getting a US passport (even if you're native-born). Then it will be your health insurers before giving you coverage.... before you know it, bingo, everybody's on file.
And then it will be, well, everybody's on file, so when your new baby is born, we'd better get them fingerprinted, chipped, tagged, whatever, or else there'll be in danger of being kidnapped, sold to the Far East, ground up for medicine, etc. You don't your child to be the only one not being tracked do you? That will make him a target!
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
Umm, in America you normally have mortgage insurance unless you put 20% down.