Home > BEAR STEARNS PROTEST WEDNESDAY: THE PRESS RELEASE

BEAR STEARNS PROTEST WEDNESDAY: THE PRESS RELEASE

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 26 March 2008
9 comments

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BEAR STEARNS PROTEST WEDNESDAY: THE PRESS RELEASE

HOMEOWNERS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST TAXPAYER BAILOUT OF WALL STREET WHILE THE GOVERNMENT ABANDONS AT-RISK HOMEOWNERS

(Jamaica Plain, MA)

On Wednesday March 26th at 12:00 noon in front of JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns corporate offices at 47th and Park Avenue, hundreds of homeowners will take to the streets of New York. The demonstration organized by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) will protest the taxpayer bailout of Bear Stearns to benefit JPMorgan Chase and refusal of the government and Federal Reserve to provide real solutions for the millions of homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

The government and JPMorgan Chase can provide real solutions for homeowners at risk of foreclosure without a taxpayer bailout. NACA, along with the hundreds of thousands of homeowners we represent, demand that the following Homeowner Stabilization Initiative be implemented immediately for all owner-occupant homeowners:

1. Stop all the interest rate increases (i.e. resets);

2. Roll back the interest rate increases to the initial qualified rate;

3. Impose a moratorium on all foreclosures;

4. Require the mortgage servicers’ to pursue a loan restructure that reduces the interest rate and/or outstanding mortgage to a mortgage payment the homeowner can afford for the remaining term of the loan.

This solution relies on Main Street not Wall Street. It provides for the “stability of the financial system” as stated by Secretary Paulson. It is not a taxpayer bailout of the predators. By halting foreclosures and restructuring mortgages into conventional affordable terms, this initiative directly impacts the country’s financial stability since homes would not be abandoned, the tax base of cities and towns would not be eroded, and consumer confidence would be restored.

We will be in New York City this Wednesday March 26th to protest this corporate bailout and to assist homeowners. We are doing intakes from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon at the Park Avenue Christian Church at 85th street and Park Avenue. At 12 noon we will protest the taxpayer bailout of these predators. We will be demanding assistance for homeowners with unaffordable mortgages. Your participation is crucial in getting the Government to stop the interest rate increases, stop the foreclosures, and make mortgages affordable. Please plan on taking part in this important action.

Click on the Action Link here to participate or to have a NACA representative;

https://www.naca.com/index_main.jsp

Forum posts

  • Anybody that bought a house they can not afford should not be helped. Mortgage holders should take responsibility for not reading their contract. Bear Stearns being bought by Chase is necessary in order to recover from the credit crunch. Get educated and get to work to pay for the obligations you agreed to.

    • But the banks who took those "bad loans" and leveraged themselves up to almost 40x are just fine. This is not a credit crisis it is and will continue to be a solvency issue. That people still call it based on credit goes a long way to the power of these banks to consistently avoid telling any truth.

      If you also think that write downs are done then I feel sorry for your inability to even read a 10-k

      FACE IT....THIS IS A SOLVENCY ISSUE AND THE BANKS ARE COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL OF IT.

      Greed sucks and the banking system is full of greed and constant calls for bailouts...which they are getting thorough the FED.

      MAKE NO MISTAKE.......THE STEPS TAKEN BY THE FED ARE DEPRESSION ERA POLICIES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN USED SINCE THAT TIME.

      IS it 1999 or 1929??

      I vote 29 unfortunatly

      Wake Up People

    • The entire financial system is at risk because too many people took out ARMs and now they can’t make their mortgage payments (that really is what it comes down to, isn’t it?). Yes, Bear and others were dumb to bet that they WOULD be able to make their payments, and now those companies are toast, with or without the bailout.

      I’m a prospective homeowner (hopefully soon), but if your terms were to be accepted, I’d never be able to get a home loan. The banks would all either be too broke or too scared to issue me one, no matter how qualified I am.

      Those interest rates you want to roll back to were TEASER RATES. As in, they were TEASING YOU. We all knew this, and we all knew this was going to happen. The web is full of articles from the past five years predicting this. See this CNN article from 2006 if you don’t believe me, or read this gem from 2004: "If you have to resort to interest-only loans to afford the monthly payments when rates for fully-amortizing hybrid ARMs are this low, you can’t afford the house."

      This was all there for everyone to read four years ago.

    • I think that’s Bull...you can’t blame it all on the banks...these people took out mortages and can’t meet their commitment...they need to take responsibility for their actions and stop putting the blame on others.....I don’t want to see anyone loose their home but you should have considered that prior to commiting yourself to something you could not pay.

    • Yeah the banks were/are greedy but so is the American consumer. why is it we are supposed to feel so sorry for people that bought more house than they can afford thinking they could sell it for more a year or two later. And why should we feel sorry for people that got interest only or teaser rate loans when the Fed was raising interest rates? Sure there was some predatory lending but not on a large enough scale to be responsible for the bust. People took risk when the speculated on more house than they could afford, why do they have more rights than the employees of Bear Stearns and the thousands of others that would be affected by a major financial institution. suck it up, you lived in more house than you could afford for two years, now you can’t stay - can’t feel sorry for you.

    • It always amazes me how in this debate people never mention 1) the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 1% of the population in this country AND 2) the immense wealth held by institutions such as Bear and Chase in their Offshore Holdings and Profit Retention schemes.

      1) This transfer of wealth has been occurring for the past 3 decades and is due to corporate-friendly government legislation and policy. This is one of the main reasons behind the shrinking middle class. Yes people AND institutions should not be making investment choices based on poorly calculated risk.

      2) It is estimated that multinational corporations have BILLIONS in their off-shore accounts and profit retention (where they don’t report all of their profit). If I could use these strategies, it would be a hell of a lot easier for me to buy a home.

      We ALL need to educate ourselves before making judgmental statements. If consumers have to pay for theirs, why shouldn’t banks? And if the middle class continues to shrink due to corporations hoarding profits due to their efforts, then EVERYONE writing on this website will find themselves in the same, treacherous boat. Recognize that the other person is you.

      If you really want to put your money where your mouth is and want to be sure you educated yourself and are making your statements on legitimate information,
      learn about the TRILLION DOLLAR income shift from working U.S. citizens to the top 1% and offshoring and profit retention at http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=57

      Also read on taxpayer bailouts:
      http://www.gregpalast.com/elliot-spitzer-gets-nailed/
      http://www.gregpalast.com/good-ants-in-the-pants-of-the-banking-system/

  • While I appeciate the NACA wanting to help home owners... this protest just reinforce the same ignorance that people showed when they agreed to loans that they could never afford. Here is a thought organize to renegotiate the terms of your loans from the mortgage brokers and lenders that actually ripped you off. While you are doing this imagine the collapse of the banking system that just may have been averted by the Fed taking action.
    The Feds action being just or not in your eyes may just have saved our economy as a whole.

    So if your not happy and the Bear Stearns Employees aren’t happy...then maybe this was the right thing.

    I feel bad about the stories I hear and I wish all of those who were ripped off the best in retaining their homes. Just remember home ownership is a large responsibility. So educate yourselves before you take such a large step in the future. I hope you can all see how the choices you make affect ALL those around you. God Bless.

    "The Duke"

  • NEW YORK — According to police, A handful of boisterous protestors got into the Midtown Manhattan offices of Bear Stearns during a spirited protest of the government’s bailout of the investment bank.

    About one hundred people started protesting outside the corporate headquarters of JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns at 383 Madison Avenue just after noon according to officials.

    They chanted "Shame Shame Shame" and demanded a meeting with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

    Some of the protestors managed to get into the granite lobby of the building, Bear’s global headquarters, prompting a large police mobilization.

    The protestors left the lobby peacefully after making a statement. No arrests were immediately reported.

    The demonstration, organized by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, is protesting government’s bailout of Bear Stearns to benefit JPMorgan Chase.

    The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America NACA is a national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization established in 1988.

    http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/business&id=6043291

  • George Carlin: Who Owns You Americans!
    You and I are not in the Big Club”

    There’s a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions.
    Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.
    Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.
    They’ve got you by the balls.
    They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
    They don’t want that, you know what they want?
    They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
    And now they’re coming for your social security money.
    They want your fucking retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you in the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
    The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged.
    Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about…give a fuck about you! They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.
    And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.
    That’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans are and will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
    by George Carlin (Forward by Mark Faulk)