well people jumped out of windows on Wall Street in 1929, did they not? There are all sorts of financial disasters, and this housing mess is a disaster for many. Suicide is of course murder of oneself and did not Freud posit that it was deflected murder usually. that is, she really wanted to murder her mortgage servicer, but deflected her impulses on herself.
No, you said something that is, in the context of the post, rather stupid. You need to provide some evidence for the 1929 window-jumping myth, not simply repeat it.
Had your comment been truly ugly in my sole discretion, it would no longer be visible to you.
I hope the police are treating the husband as a supsect. I'm not saying he killed his wife for insurance money, but someone should at least look into it.
Clearly, either the husband or wife had a money problem. Possibly gambling or drugs is where the money went.
Thanks for the additional research and clear thinking, Tanta.
Very sad. What was going on? Why couldn't they pay their seemingly reasonable debts? If there was a gambling problem, compulsive spending you would think that it would show up in the BK filings?
It seems like the real lesson has nothing to do with "predatory lending" or the real estate crisis but the lack of comprehensive mental health care in this country.
The reports say the police arrived an hour after the fax. Does anyone when when the company called the police?
Surely you aren't going to suggest that the possibility that a fax sat on the printer for a half hour before anyone at PHH got a chance to read it makes them responsible here? They are a mortgage servicer, not a suicide hotline.
Sadly, the scenario painted in the article is the same for a family member of mine. Though it didn't end it suicide, it did end a marriage and many, many deep regrets.
Well said, researched and written, Tanta. Thanks a lot!
Almost all news articles tend to have the same type of story-arch and smattering of quotes. You were really able to call the truth of the narrative into question, when culturally we take it as a given.
The cop, reporter and others are really expressing their own fears and projecting them into the media. The media is not objective and never has been, I don't care what the college media class 101 teaches.
One of the most telling of the lessons from history in Galbraith's excellent book concerns the sturdiness of our refusal to learn the lessons of history. Take the myth that the crash of 1929 provoked a bout of suicides: Galbraith exhumes the figures and discovers that the death rate did not climb: all that changed was the newspaper coverage. Before 1929 suicides did not rate a mention; afterwards they were "crash victims". If the image of ruined brokers leaping from windows has endured longer than Galbraith's patient refutation of it, that is partly because we love melodrama, but mainly because we do not often look back, as it were, in anger.
This is the psychology of the bubble. Just as there was no rationality behind the upswing, we now start to see stories that are negatively biased. I believe there is also a panic phase, I wonder if we're in that phase yet.
I think the reporters start with a story in mind. Then they pick and choose their facts and fill in the rest to round out "the story." Checking facts, confirming details, leaving aside personal biases... Such journalistic responsibilities are merely a nuisance that can't be dealt with in the pursuit of that juicy story that will get the reader shouting "Those damn mortgage companies!"
If anybody can explain to me how this series of reports on Carlene Balderrama's suicide are anything other than exploitation of her tragedy in order to support an overwrought rhetoric that sees every foreclosure that has occurred in the last year or so as "predatory" and "unnecessary,"
That's exactly what it is, and unfortunately, the many and various supporters of the bailout legislation would have the masses believe that foreclosures are unjustified or unnecessary without actually examining whether either of those assumptions are true.
My mother always kept financial information form our dad. I have no idea what the dynamic is about. But she would apply for, get, and over-use credit cards...and then would go to these elaborate schemes (intiating us, the kids into the schemes) to make sure he never EVER got the mail from the mailbox before she could "edit out"the mail from the creditors. I get anxious just thinking about it (and this is thirty five years ago).
I suppose it might be some kind of control thing. My brother inherited it. He once almost lost a house for back payments of town utility bills. It was devastating to his wife as she knew absolutely nothing about it, and there were options they could have used to deal with it if only he had told her about the unpaid balance. I guess he thought ignoring it meant it would go away.
IN these personal instances, it was apparent that there was some magical thinking that they would "figure something out" to keep the secret debts from being exposed.
I don't have any answers, and only write this to say that there may be some kind of elaborate deception going on within the family itself. I certainly think it is devastating to the family under whatever causes.
BTW i hope that your scraping of the surface will cause the ignorant detective and his ilk to do some investigating about why a man, his 20 yr best friend and the po-po say John didn't know yet had the three BK's...
Looks like a forensic accountant should be called in.
You glossed over the most pathetic fact: Balderrama left a note for her family, saying they should "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house," O'Berg said.
Don't all life insurance policies exclude suicides?
You're right the media makes way too much about anecdotes. But the way most educated people deal with it is to ignore these types of stories. It's hard to see this as any more cause for a lot of whinging than the other 50% of "news" stories that consist of the same type of thing.
Yes, most people believe there were mass suicides in 1929. They also believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And a hefty minority believe the moon landing was faked. I won't even mention the Rapture.
We live in a country easily mislead morons and they need to be fed a constant supply of easily digested stories and anecdotes.
Most of us pretty much figured that out by adulthood.
I had a family member that ran a business and the associated factoey based in the Tautan/Fall River area. Always seemed like a nice blue collar kind of town.
I agree that this is tragic that a family would come to this, but I am having a hard time understanding how. If I am reading the post correctly he had a monthly income of over 10k, so he was making $120k a year. They had a reasonable mortgage relative to their income, and a reasonable car payment. Am I missing something here?
I can tell you that the story says (unknown if true) that she used her husbands high powered rifle...
I am 6'4 with a hell of a wingspan and couldn't do it without using my toes..
i wonder how she pulled it off, again. very, very skeptical. And also is it normal for the people to still be in their house when they schedule a FC auction?
"Mr. Balderrama filed two bankruptcies during the last 42 months. But he had no idea his mortgage payments were in arrears? Are we supposed to believe that Carlene Balderrama forged her husband's signature on the BK filings and suborned the perjury of at least one attorney?"
It would not be unique. I was once consulted by a gentleman escorted out of his house by a sheriff that morning. His wife was handed his paycheck and handled all the bills. She hid all of the foreclosure notices and had filed at least one Petition on their behalf. Her attorney susbsequently faced ethics proceedings.
There are several issues brought up by the stories covering this news and your excellent post.
The most distressing is that it is reflective of societal discourse as a whole that journalists will use any evidence -- real, imagined and in some cases manufactured -- that advances the story that they are trying to tell.
Alas, while singular events are not in themselves, relevant to larger trends, they areuseful in weaving into a "mythology" that is constructed to support a predetermined outcome.
Tanta, thanks for your detective work. Somethings doesn't add up here, and the first person to cross examine would be the husband. I don't believe she could find an attorney for a false bankruptcy filing who risks his job for the money she could pay. Maybe charlie is right, and they pissed away money for gambling or drugs, and the foreclosure was just the moment they couldn't hide it any longer.
Great work, Tanta. I hope the reporter gets this info and crucifies the husband in print.
It would be nice if the reporter was then crucified by the editor, and the editor then resigned in shame, but I dream.
It always amazes me what you can find in the court records. After I got a PACER account (I was a John Doe defendant in a case brought, and later dropped, by a company that didn't like my critical comments on a message board), I used it to check the management teams of various heavily-promoted penny stocks. Between PACER and SEC records, there was a fairly high hit rate on the names.
And you thought Bush brought death and destruction to the MidEast only? This is a perfect example of the end result of the borrow and spend republican engineered ownership society. Enslavement of citizens to banks is the aim of supply side. Not ownership, certainly not "free markets".
Now I'm waiting for some right wing nutjob apologist here to blame the deceased.
My mother always kept financial information form our dad.
That isn't necessarily an uncommon phenomenon, and mortgage servicers deal with it fairly regularly. But sadly, that sort of thing went on many years before this bust and will undoubtedly go on long after it's over. It's turing this kind of case, if that's actually what it is, into a poster child for the majority of Americans facing FC that has me wound up.
One reason I wanted to look at the land records, btw, was to see if Carlene's name is even on the mortgage or deed. I'm not enough of an expert in BK law to know why, if she was a joint debtor, she wasn't also on the BK filings.
Very sad. As far as I can tell, a personal tragedy that is only tangentially connected with the financial mess. I do fear that suicides will be rising in upcoming months, however; "it never rains but it pours", and right now for a great many people it is pouring.
In 2005, there were 17,002 suicides by friearm in the US. 2,086 of them were women. How many used hunting rifles? I don't have the stat, but I'm guessing very few women could have pulled that trigger.
But even that is beside the point. Most suicides do not have so clear of a cause--they are usually associated with mental disorders, sometimes compounded by substance abuse.
also, she is smart enough to handle the finances, file 3 bankruptcies that the husband doesnt know about , yet , has no clue that life insurance will not pay on a suicide...
remarkable.. i recommend rereading and looking at things you missed the first time..
And Freud's proof of this is... oh, yeah, he had none. It's entirely conjecture, and not very good conjecture at that
Well Freud may be mythology or maybe not. His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved." It has become faddish to diss him and his ideas. In any case he has been a very powerful cultural influence and I find it odd that people hate him and it so much. People who "hate" Freud may in fact fear his insights. I think those are undeniable. And blame for all sorts of things can be laid upon him conveniently.
"Surely you aren't going to suggest that the possibility that a fax sat on the printer for a half hour before anyone at PHH got a chance to read it makes them responsible here?"
No, I am asking a factual question about a missing hour.
I also would like to know why police "believe" that Balderramas had an ARM. Do MA police file faith-based death reports?
WMBZ, you've lost touch blaming Bush and republicans... i hope thats misplaced sarcasm... you caznt blame a particular politacl person for this death...
Those of you who want to keep saying that the husband "should be a suspect" are, I guess, free to do so.
But I will delete any comment, as I just did, that flatly claims he's guilty. This blog is not here to libel anyone, and if you "know" what happened, you need to be talking to the Taunton police, not to us, about it.
In India a similar story pans out as farmer suicides in a place called Vidarbha where people supposedly commit suicide for debt (from loan sharks and banks) of sums as low as $250. (Rs. 10,000) The government decided to provide "compensation" for such families - of the order of $2,500 per such incident.
Later, some investigators found that certain "suicides" were potentially committed for that reward, and not voluntarily either.
It is easy to blame debt which did consume a few people unfortunately; but specific incidents seem to show that the mask of the "overwrought rhetoric" is often abused to hide something less "exciting".
She off'ed herself with a gun, right. Nice choice of words, BG. Could you have used a more ignorant and insensitive ohoice of words to describe his surprise?
I hesitate to wade into this, but am parking good sense on this side of the scene and am going to give it a shot.
First, off, I utterly despise the voyeristic and exploitative behavior the media (and more importantly, its readers) are exhibiting with this story. I get kind of sick at the armchair psychologists (must be one hell of a police chief out there in Danvers, an expert in both mental health matters and the financial markets, kinda of a renaissance guy. But what really sets me off is the fact that these stories are published because they get good readership. People who wouldn't dream of going to a bullfight because of the cruelty to the bull indulge themselves in the bathos of a situation to which they are a mere spectator.
All that said, I've got to throw up a counter to the Galbraith quote about the myth of suicides in 1929. In a passage in The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, Paul Johnson rather matter-of-factly notes a correlation between suicide rates and the economic cycle, and, if I recall correctly, postulates that, at least as far as heads of households are concerned, it may be explainable in terms of the complete lack of a social safety net in the European states with which he was mainly concerned.
On the other hand for every Ivor Krueger (the Swedish match king who shot himself in the Depression) there was at least one Samuel Insull (who was arrested off his yacht in the Aegean and brought back for trial--he beat the rap, but what he did led to new laws that most certainly would have kept him off the boat and in the slammer for the rest of his days).
Tanta, maybe you were wanting to head discussion toward a broader level than the specifics of the case, and if so I ask forgiveness, but the specifics of the story really are odd. Women are somewhat unlikely to use high powered guns to kill themselves, and few people use rifles to kill themselves (unwieldy). BUt more than anything, there is no real evidence the woman was particularly stressed about her situation--she hadn't been making payments in how long? She'd become quite accustomed to not making payments, it seems, so payments themselves couldn't be a stressor. It's all fishy.
That said, I do wonder if we're in for a sharp increase in escapism (more drinking, more drugs, etc). It would be interesting to know if there were any significant changes in US drug use during the Great Depression. Anyone out there have stats?
A good example of why I read this blog. I can understand reporters not having the time or expertize to dig as deeply into a story as Tanta, but what is annoying is that the contradictions or things that don't make sense don't get dealt with. Plus the whole "story" angle - if it had happened on St Patricks day I'm sure the reporter would have worked green beer into it.
From Macro Man :
"While it has yet to garner too many substantial headlines, the news that National Australia Bank (NAB) has written down its US RMBS portfolio to 10 cents on the dollar could send shockwaves through the financial system."
I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?
Hmmm. So many things do not sound right here. The income growth really jumped out as did the hunting rifle.
I think other news will gradually come out. The problem is will anyone be reading the back pages of whatever local paper publishes it.
For a media person with a black hole for a heart this is a great story. "If it bleeds; it leads" comes to mind here.
I don't know. Tanta, people like you are rare. They also burn out before their time and endup with their own set of problems. It is a mindset that is very much needed but the cost comes high.
I think that this is one of those cases where a police investigation could be useful. It's possible that it really was a suicide and the guy really was clueless. I've certainly seen couples that don't communicate about money. Heck, a buddy of mine has his wife convinced that he makes 20k/year less than he does which he is stashing away in preparation for divorcing her (he's been doing it for about 10 years now). It's also possible that the guy killed her and is covering it up.
The other thing I want to point out is that newspaper accounts of most things are usually wrong. This is at least what I've observed when I've been involved in news stories and have actual knowledge of what's going on.
"I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?"
The sad morals on this story, and many others, are the same.
There are actually stupid people out there, making payments on their houses, paying down debt and all.
There's just something that we don't understand going on here: drugs, gambling, an Imelda Marcos like shoe addiction. The paychecks were going SOMEWHERE if it wasn't to the mortgage and car payment. It might well be something off the books, but it's there. I mean it's a tragedy, but the facts don't seem to support the idea that predatory lending is at fault.
As for the difficulty of shooting oneself with a rifle, that's just silly. String, a spatula, a toe, it's just not difficult if you're motivated.
What I find astounding in Tantas post is not the media lies but that there is still this underlying assumption that the media should be telling the truth. This quaint notion that the media are engaged in a altruistic campaign of keeping American citizens well informed. But surely everybody knows by now that this goal is not in the medias real mission statement. They do not exist to enrich our minds but instead the media are deployed to crystallize public opinion into the shape suitable to their wealthy sponsors.
So while it is fun to see their lies taken apart, this type of criticism still serves to keep people watching since it reinforced the underlying myth of an objective, fair-minded media that is just a fingertip away if only we keep a close eye on it.
In fact the people who sponsor the media are seriously threatened by the housing crisis. The best solution for them would be to socialize all their foolishness on the backs of the America taxpayers. They instruct their media tools to start laying the emotional groundwork for the coming bailout. Thus the suicide stories. They serve a much higher purpose than simply being true or false.
Personally I think the more effective strategy to counter the media is to humiliate as a moron anyone who consumes mainstream media. But I find many people get very uncomfortable with that concept.
His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved."
Some of them can in fact be proved or disproved. For instance, Freud contended that sons identified with fathers because of an abiding fear of the father. In fact, from numerous studies we know that children identify more closely with parents who are warm and loving. And I don't diss Freud, I actually spend a lot of time defending him in the psych department I'm in. However, it amazes me that some people so mindlessly repeat aspects of his work that demonstrate so little truth. A colleague works with suicidal youths and I guarantee he'd scratch his head at the idea that these kids are displacing homicidal impulses. They're sad. They don't know how to deal with problems that they incorrectly view as insurmountable, but they're not homicidal. Lastly, Freud deserves a little dissing. He froze out anyone who didn't abide by his ideas. Jung was cast out for his questioning the authenticity of what were entirely theoretical constructs.
"Was the husband stashing their wealth at a go-go bar? The money had to go somewhere, either charity or illegal trades."
Or for an addiction: gambling, drugs, something like that. Nothing soaks up money like an addiction. And if one partner chooses to enable the other, it can go on a long time. And it's very common.
Not saying that it's the case, but this kind of issue is often the 800-pound elephant in the room for respectable households who inexplicably and habitually have money trouble.
"I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?"
Others might know for sure but perhaps the bankruptcy filings stayed foreclosure.
I would not be shocked to find out somebody has a coke habit. I mention coke because no drug can destroy a fortune like cocaine. It's amazing the amount of money one can go through with that stuff. That's why I've never touched it.
I am 6'4 with a hell of a wingspan and couldn't do it without using my toes..
First off, that would be an issue. But surely the police would have picked up on that?
Also, my life ins. policy covers suicide after 1 yr., so that may not be an issue.
As for anything else, there needs to be a full investigation before we can come to any conclusions. With a sociology background, I can guess marital issues, anger issues, maybe mental illness issues, but without a full investigation, how could any of us know?
I would just turn the page on that article with a "hmmm" and figure the legal system will get to the bottom of that one.
You need to provide some evidence for the 1929 window-jumping myth, not simply repeat it.
Several well-publicized suicides did fulfill the stereotype. Winston Churchill, visiting New York, was awakened the day after Black Tuesday by the noise of a crowd outside the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. "Under my very window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade," he wrote.
Don't all life insurance policies exclude suicides?
No. There is a period - usually a year or six months - after initially signing the contract excluding suicide but no blanket outright prohibition or exclusion.
There are other prohibitions & exclusions for murder of the insured by the person who would benefit (or agent of the benefit recipient or a sponsored co-conspirator)...
Other than that the insurance company must pay off.
Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?
It certainly doesn't happen very often.
I suspect that the 42-month claim is not quite accurate.
It may well have been 42 months since the account was "current." But with at least two BK stays in there of many months each, plus the possibility that PHH put them on a repayment plan after the last dismissal, it's really hard to make any generalizations about what went down when.
Massachusetts is, certainly, a long FC state. On the other hand, it appears that the last BK was dismissed in October of 2006. If for some reason PHH had to start from scratch at that point with a new FC filing, it's not that hard to believe that the sale wasn't until this month.
If the BK filings are any guide to reality, these folks may have had some equity and should have had the ability to repay. If that's true, you can possibly see why PHH would have been willing to try to work things out or even come up with some forbearance period before finally giving up and foreclosing.
from numerous studies we know that children identify more closely with parents who are warm and loving...
Well these studies make claims that cannot be "proved" as can lab experiments...any more than one can "prove" or "disprove" Freud. Psychology is not a "science" like Math or Physics, etc., however many "studies" are done.
I believe that you are reading too much into this. John had multiple BK filings because once you BK filing is dismissed, you have to wait six months before you can file again to achieve the coveted "Automatic Stay" privelege allowing you to stay in your house. It may take six months or longer for the bank to get relief from the automatic stay.
Both Carlene and John knew the game. I was once in a CRE deal where the debots flip-flopped BK filings every six months to get th automatis stay.
This went on for almost THREE years. They never made a payment in that subsequent time frame. One would have to be entirely naive to believe John's story.
Once an individual files a BK, Chapter 7 or 13, I generally want absolutley nothing to do with that person. They know the system and can milk it for all its worth. With an indiviual like that, every transaction is like a drug deal. A cash on the table type situation no matter how small the denominations.
jim, I don't want to make this into a psychology blog, but your comments describe well a defensive strategy of Freud's apologetics. You write:
Well Freud may be mythology or maybe not. His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved."
Many of his ideas have been tested in field studies and have indeed been disproved.
People who "hate" Freud may in fact fear his insights. I think those are undeniable.
That is an ad hominem argument, to discuss the critic instead of the critique. From there it seems only a short way to call Freud's insights undeniable - didn't you first agreed upon that Freud may be mythology and his ideas could not proven? The worst with Freud's apologist is the inconsistency of their various statements, but maybe that is not surprising, considering their source and his inconsistencies.
In any case he (Freud) has been a very powerful cultural influence
I agree. Considering the actual falseness of many of his statements, I hope his influence will decrease further.
Now that people are killing themselves over bad mortgages and each day another horrific story comes out about foreclosure ghost towns, how can it be that:
"Builders trade higher following new-home sales data"
Galbraith Shmalbraith. I doubt he had access to better information than we do now, and as I pointed out in a comment last week -- the government department that collects and publishes suicide stats is still stuck in 2005.
People need to talk to their parents about their problems. Samueli did, and voila, he came back from the dead.
linear algebra: In a passage in The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, Paul Johnson rather matter-of-factly notes a correlation between suicide rates and the economic cycle...
Actually, I believe Galbraith notes that suicides did rise some as the depression got going. The myth he disputes is specific to the stock market crash in October 1929. Most of the household losses came only later. So there's no real conflict there.
Peter, I know he's fallen out of fashion, but can you provide evidence that his ideas have been disproved in field studies? The important ideas, I mean, not the ones that try to convince me that my cigar is a choo-choo train.
the actual falseness of many of his statements (re Freud).
This is just as much the opinion of those who claim his statements are false as are his statements in the first place. You can't prove Freud "false" any more than you can "prove" him correct.
the Globe is not going to retract a tear jerker like this even if you prove they are 180 degrees off base. As Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters "but the kids love us"
Taunton is ground zero for Rep Barney Frank. I find this waaay too much of a coincidience that this came out as the final push for his bailout bill was happening.
There are a lot of uneducated laborers in Taunton/Fall River/New Bedford and they do have the highest foreclosure rate in Mass, but the timing on this is just fishy.
The husband's statements that the wife handled the finances, and he had no idea, really pegs the BS meter. I hate to add to the speculation, but here goes: I think hubby was somehow making money dissappear and the wife couldn't cope and couldn't make herself assert herself or leave.
Tanta, thank you once again. It has come to the point where when I see one of your ubernerd pieces appear on the website, I stop, get a cup coffee, and come back to enjoy it.
I'm especially glad that you chose this situation to investigate. I read this article in the Boston Globe myself, and was struck by a few of the things that other posters here have mentioned -- the three bankruptcies, the high-powered rifle, and the assumption by the cops that this was an adjustable rate mortgage gone bad.
I suspect in the end we will find out that it was more mental illness than financial distress. But I do hope that someone will follow up -- The Herald?-- and let us know what has been going on.
The seamy stories are probably just starting. Relationships that have money problems are often less than happy (understatement).
I am sure we will see stories in the next few years involving other eddifying topics but based on the same reason. The mom who had to become a prostitute to save her home. The kid who sold her toys. Various murder for money schemes.
Good times and money clothe a lot of borderline people. Take that away and what is revealed is never very pretty.
Wow, Tanta, hell of a job researching this tragedy. Glad I forwarded you the link.
One point worthy of further scrutiny is was the family, individually or together, regulars at the nearby Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun casinos. There has been a surge in reported fallout in Southeren New England from problem gamblers - suicides, embezzlement, petty crimes, foreclosures.
It would be nice if reporters would "report" instead of simply pushing an agenda or story line
While this story certainly seems to be some sort of tragedy, the most salient thing to me is that the reporting on this story (if it can be called that) is perfectly representative of the decline in journalism in this country. The willingness to avoid asking extremely obvious questions in order to maintain the pre-determined "narrative" is just par for the course, irrespective of whether the subject is crime, law, business, sports, economics, or politics. I've said this before here and I'll say it again: the large majority of so-called "journalists" today are amazingly lazy, incurious, sloppy, and uninformed, and this is dramatically accentuated in broadcast journalism. Bloggers like Tanta and CR put in more real work in a given day than your average "professional journalist" does in a week, and we're mightily better off for it.
Her death has not been officially ruled a suicide yet, per this.
Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol District Attorneys Office, said, We might look at finances if we thought there was foul play, but all signs point to it being a suicide. Well see where the investigation takes us.
So, they are still investigating. And yes, I do find it strange that a person committing suicide would bother to write a note instructing their mortgage servicer to use life insurance proceeds to payoff a mortgage.
Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated. And I've run across a number of instances where a borrower has, in fact offed himself. Still, never a fax. I have, been told vagueish threats in the course of collection calls. Never thought to report them to police, though. I probably should have. Bravo to PHH for taking this one seriously.
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow I see on the front page of New York Times: "Dennis Kucinich calls for an immediate investigation of the Bush Administration in the death of ..."
How would you "test" a question of "parental" identification? You can't run "experiments" as you do with Physics and Chemistry.
jim | 07.25.08 - 12:55 pm | #
So... you can't run psych experiments? Wow. I'll have to tell the psych department to stop. Jim says it's a waste of time.
The couple's income sounds high - with the foreclosure and economic problems in that area, plumbers and other local tradespeople are finding it difficult to get work since prospective customers don't have any money to spend on their own homes. Also, this area faced similar problems when the 'Massachusetts Miracle' blew up in their faces [late 80's-early 90's] so they've seen this before. Thanks, Tanta, the story doesn't 'hang,' although the local zeitgeist has fully incorporated hard times.
The desire to find victimized borrowers of this nature reminds me of those "perils of Pauline" serials. The villain and victim are stereotyped in a such a ham fisted way that there's no room for the pertinent details. There's a fundamental misunderstanding of how borrowers were "victimized" and how behaviours for both borrower and lenders created this crisis.
Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated.
I want to make it clear that I do not deny that. I do not deny that people in terrible financial troubles killed themselves in the Great Depression, or that it is happening now.
My problem is that PHH is being outright called a "predator." Maybe they are, but this case doesn't prove that.
My guess is that someone at PHH erred on the side of caution, and probably spent the next hour waiting to be embarassed when the cops called back to say there was no suicide and that the borrower was just being a drama queen. Good on that person for taking the risk of being wrong.
I have posted before on the "inductive" press, taking one salacious "anecdote" and spinning a pre-determined yarn, and I have usually tried to state my disapproval of the technique with some (small) attempt at humor ... but this one just isn't funny.
I agree with the poster above, who compared the current clime with bullfighting, or some other "bloodsport."
Someone post a link to Don Henley's song, "Dirty Laundry."
As it is friday, I would like to thank the many of you who have decided to bash or support Freud. It is nice for a change not to have to read or listen to Olberman-Orielly, McCain- Obama, Bush-Everyone that reads Kos, AGW- Global cooling arguements....
Freud.... Thanks for inspriring us...you momma's boy!
With the income levels involved here, I would posit that there was no inability to pay, but a sheer unwillingness to do so, unless there was some off-the-books drain on this income, like drug use or gambling.
I'm sure some intrepid reporter will find out and splash it all over the front page just in time for the wake and funeral.
And those who do are about a third as likely to do it with a gun: 404 - Sonke Gender Justice Network
(article says 12% vs 88%, but you have to recalculate for joint probability, since women are less likely to commit suicide.)
But more directly to your point, yes, it is amazing how little due diligence is done by mainstream media.
A friend of mine with a good managerial income and a husband whose cocaine addiction she enables has gone through 2 bankruptcies and 2 foreclosures.
It's devastating to a family and to a family's wealth. The way additional income was disappearing in this story suggests that some addiction may well have been involved.
maybe this will be a "good" urban legend. Maybe enough people will look at this story and say,"I'd try to do something else, instead of suicide." So that when in fact they do face the same dilemma, they'll take a different path.
BTW- the comment about someone hiding income from their wife for 10 years to prepare for a divorce,...10 years?
This is exactly the typical journalistic vampirism that drives the near universal disgust for the MSM. Stick a microphone and a camera in any tragedy, make up some trash quotes, anything goes as long as it gets in the paper/on the 'news' first. We don't really know if there is a cop, we won't get anything about the real circumstances, but I guarantee you there are six or ten blow-dried dickheads rehearsing the wrap line in front of cameras already:
"We may never know exactly went through Mrs. Balderama's mind, however this much is certain: stories about companies causing misery for people makes our advertisers very happy."
I hope they're bringing in a forensic accountant. I also hope the police don't rule out murder and that they look at everyone both the husband and wife owed money to. Especially if someone shows up on the door step and says "Sorry to hear about the wife..but I heard you came into a little insurance money...how about that $6 grand you owe me?"
did i read it right that John was/is a mortgage broker and his income kept rising? I imagine now or this last year he has had very little income, it does sound as if they played the BK system as Quincy stated to at least some degree. But it would seem that maybe fate and fortune collided, and the system he played turned on them both. As they actually may have had no real income lately to pay regular bills. It also doesnt sound like an ARM 1) if he was a broker 2) the arrears of not paying and readjustments did not increase the 2nd and 3rd BK arreears payments enough. Seems like it added minisuly to the amaounts that and the increase in salary over the years to , what, 06? 280 dollar a month 4-5 year note is a 10K car with mediocre interest rate. 1700 a month mortage what does that come out to on a 30 yr fixed...he also put 13K into the house as a down payment, knowing they were gonna scam the system? Maybe he bought the house then became a broker , where he learned the systems..
In defense of the cop who was "making claims about the terms of the mortgage loan," the actual quote is:
The chief said he did not know, however, if the family would be able to collect on the policy in the event of a suicide.
It may well have been that the journalist asked "could the family collect on the policy in the event of the suicide?" And the cop said "how the &*$@ should I know?!" Yet this is how it gets reported. So I wouldn't beat up on him about playing lawyer. I think the other complaints are more valid, however.
It should be recognized that while a media frenzy cannot transform anecdote into data, U.S. Census longitudinal numbers on death rates by cause do show increases in deaths by self-inflicted injury at periods associated with recessions, with the exception of the tech-bubble led recession in the earlier part of the decade. I'm certain any statisticians in the house can tell us how significant the association is.
I am in fact curious about the social changes that take place under changing economic conditions (like increasing numbers of foreclosures, for example).
Are these changes primarily marked by people committing suicide? Seems unlikely.
However, it does not seem implausible to me that an increase in the number of adult suicides could be a consequence of personal or social upheavals due to things like rising foreclosures.
If the question is, "What is really happening out there in America?"
Then, obviously, "Everyone is committing suicide!" is the wrong answer.
A right answer, however, might be: "A rising number of foreclosures is exacting a personal and social cost, in some cases resulting in suicide."
But, really, reading the newspapers, I rarely recognize anything that resembles the experience that I have as a person living in this society.
Mortages Ltd. Chairman Scott Cole's death has been ruled a suicide by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner, a death that sent the family company founded by his father, Charles, into bankruptcy.
Coles overdosed on a combination of alcohol, opiate Oxycodone and the sleep prescription drug Ambien, according to the report. His blood alcohol level was 0.24 percent.
Coles, 48, was found in the master bedroom of his home in the Arcadia-area of Phoenix during the afternoon of Monday, June 2. He was found lying in bed, wearing a black tuxedo complete with cufflinks, a white tie, black socks but no shoes, a watch and his wedding ring. He had a cardboard picture of his wife Ashley Coles next to him. There was also a copy of an email with a Shakespeare quote found on the bed.
In total, the company said its assets are worth about $352 million, and lists liabilities of almost $334 million.
Is this banking accounting where the liabilities is what they've taken in and the assets are what they've lent out?
"In the first BK, filed just over a year and half after the purchase of the home and a year after the first foreclosure attempt, Balderrama's debt-to-income ratio as a mortgage lender (new line) would calculate it was 41%, including the Chapter 13 payment.
A bit macabre, but if people are genuinely interested in mortgage related deaths and suicide, I think the most effective way of tracking this is by creating a google news alert with the requisite keywords.
the story from the editor point of view is the " foreclosure pain" the story is not about the finances of this family and what level their checking account happens to be.
Most of not all the comments getting out via the editor regarding this story then will be focused on foreclsosure pain with the underlying message that YOU may be next.
A bit macabre, but if people are genuinely interested in mortgage related deaths and suicide, I think the most effective way of tracking this is by creating a google news alert with the requisite keywords.
But what would that tell us?
We might get some data on how many news reports there are.
We might get some evidence that people who are facing FC kill themselves. We might get some evidence that people with long-term psychological difficulties end up killing themselves after a terrible stress, which could be FC or getting fired or getting divorced or any number of things.
Even if we had evidence that, if not for the FC these folks would still be alive, that tells us nothing about the cupability or lack thereof of the lender.
I guess I'm the only person (besides Shnaps) willing to be a shill for PHH today, but the problem I am having is not with the idea that people in FC sometimes commit suicide. The problem I am having is that these reporters never questioned the implication that IT IS PHH'S FAULT. Both Marks of NACA and this babbling cop were both allowed to imply that Balderrama was the victim of a predatory loan. And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case.
barely writes:
When this goes to court Mr Greenspan should be a defendant.
you are so right
re reading greenspans testimony before congress about surpluses beyond what the eye can see and the justifications for deficit spending makes me puke.
the absurdly low, and erring long duration of low interest rates, really, when you think about it, was an act of treason...specifically designed to weaken the federal government and it's oversight and regulatory capacity.
all these neo-con -Rand followers believed what grover norquist said..."i want to shrink gov till it is so small i can drown it in my bathtub..."
Funny, MER off limits for neked shrts but still getting clobbered, only more consistent drag lower. Maybe less inclined to cover since getting the shorts is becoming more of a hassle. I guess Mr Cox gets a more consistent downdraft instead of waves of selling. Picking poison flavors...
I would not trust any stats on suicide from the 20's 30's or 40's. Suicide was a taboo subject back then. If you were Roman Catholic, a double no no. The police were more friendly back then especially in the smaller towns. Coroners were know to falsify death certificates for the benefit of the family.
Tanta:
I admire you for your moral stances,increasingly rare in our times.
The entwining of news and entertainment in our media is all but complete. And misery of all types but especially novel miseries seem to entertain most of all.
Then there is the 15 seconds of fame via a sound-bite of witnesses or "experts" (like the cop.)
We are a nation of persons who are to quote TS Eliot "Hollow Men". Empty inside we try to fill it with material proofs of our worth. Misery of others is a vehicle for feeling better about oneself.
If I said that trust in self begins with trust in God I suppose I would be going too far So
'nuf said
It's entirely possible that the wife filed a pro se bankruptcy in the husband's name and therefore bypassed the need for an attorney. That would account for the failure of the putative debtor's failure to show up at the hearings. The bankruptcy clerks will usually catch the multiple filings and alert the court. Dismissal will quickly follow a motion by the trustee.
Insurance usually pays in the event of the insured's suicide if the policy has been in effect for two years.
Tanta, this is a fine bit of investigative reporting so far, but I'll bet you a martini there's more to it than has so far surfaced. A sad story.
"My guess is that someone at PHH erred on the side of caution, and probably spent the next hour waiting to be embarassed when the cops called back to say there was no suicide and that the borrower was just being a drama queen."
I'll agree. I handle short sales in a bubble market and I have seen hardship letters that read like a suicide note. One I believe will be if the property goes back to the bank.
I have seen this story play out 5 years ago where the wife hid the creditor problems from the husband to cover a gambling debt, while at the same time embexxling from her employer, a relative of mine. She died of a heart attack and it all came to light. The doctor attributed the heart attack to the stress of hiding everything and the fear of getting caught.
With this story though, blaming the lender is absurd.
One question maybe someone could clarify for me - am I misreading the bk filings? Was the husband in the mortgage biz?
Before blogs, I used to read the papers, watch the news on TV etc, and assume I was being told the truth. Or at least something closely approximating the truth.
Now I'm liberated. I only read/watch the MSM for entertainment value. If I want news, I know where to look in the blogosphere. And who to trust for the facts, and the real story.
I wonder how long it will be before the grand fromages in the MSM wake up and realize that their business model is dead because no-one trusts them anymore. Taking the example of the music industry, it'll probably be a very long time. And most of the industry will have disappeared already.
All of our news is delivered by "Journalism" majors -- i.e., people with a degree in nothing. They do not even how to write particularly well... But I expect them to make some minuscule effort to do what they are paid for; i.e., investigate.
At least, I used to. It strains credibility that Tanta can sit at a computer for an hour and present more relevant facts about this story than the entire U.S. media can in days. What a horrible statement about that profession... And what a credit to Tanta's skills.
Tanta --
Thank you. This is one of your best yet. (I hope you accept my statements as a compliment, despite their source.)
Tanta writes: "And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case."
Completely agree.
I'm curious about the reporter who reported on it, Michael Levenson. He covers almost everything, from tragedy to sports to Mitt Romney. Lots of Mitt Romney.
Did Carlene have a job? Her lack of employment might explain the free time she has to shop, gamble, buy drugs, or whatever she was spending the money on. With that income and mortgage payment, there's no reason they shouldn't have been able to keep up.
Thanks you for posting, Tanta. It means my Tanta-health-o-meter goes to ++
The story is unfortunate but a complete mash up. As others have commented, there's so much that doesn't ad up, any comment I'd make would only add to the mud.
Suicides are covered after a specified period stated in the policy; 6mo, 1yr, 2yrs. After the period, it's assumed that the suicide was caused by recent events, and the policy wasn't taken out with suicide in mind. I know this because I've asked.
"High-powered" rifles are anything larger than a .22 in most people's minds. Some (carbines) are indeed short enough to place under the chin and activate with the thumb. This too is not conjecture.
The one hypothesis I haven't read in all this speculation is the most obvious to me. Three years is a very long time, measured a day at a time. (My first impression was that she had no idea they were at the end of the line until Mr.B told her the foreclosure was THAT afternoon.) But that didn't make enough sense on further consideration. The end of the line was just that. Three years of machinations (plotted together with Mr.B) came to naught. She broke down and killed herself.
The "predatory lenders" meme a good hook for the reporter. Sells papers. The full story (clarifying the hundreds of speculations posted above) will be lost in Section C, Page 12, IF it EVER gets written.
VT socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has been telling this story for months:
"I have heard from families where both mom and dad are working, and because of the price of home heating oil they were unable to adequately heat their home last winter and their child ended up in the hospital with pneumonia."
Except, as medical science has known since the 19th Century, cold does not cause pneumonia.
It appears from the paper that the husband was self-employed and if the wife did forge his name to the BK petition, the income information contained in it was probably false as well.
Tanta writes:
A Shnaps) willing to be a shill for PHH today, but the problem I am having is not with the idea that people in FC sometimes commit suicide. The problem I am having is that these reporters never questioned the implication that IT IS PHH'S FAULT. Both Marks of NACA and this babbling cop were both allowed to imply that Balderrama was the victim of a predatory loan. And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case.
The role of newspapers/media outlets is not to be objective, or tell the whole truth, its only to sell ad space. Its called a story, they develop and create stories for the sheeple to feel angry, sad, happy and have some kind of strong reaction with the intent of selling more media/newspapers. In this case the story is middle class pain caused by foreclosure.
Media is a business.
What I find ironic is that with modern information technologies it's so much easier for a reporter to do factual digging sitting at a desk than it ever was in the past, yet there seems to be no real effort to use those resources. If Tanta can spend the time to look at the court records from her remote perch (in the sense that she's nowhere near the Massachusetts bankruptcy court), is it too much to ask a reporter to move a mouse across a desk to retrieve some actual evidence? This kind of event (Tanta, or some other non-reporter, doing the reporter's job) is becoming increasingly common. As others have noted, the truth may be out there, but you're sure not likely to find it in a newspaper or a mainstream medial outlet. Which is why I read blogs before I look at newspaper sites.
Another sad statistic soon forgotten and deserves a place in the blindingly glossy new Bush library at SMU. Personally, I could never kill myself while living in Massachusetts. The lobster is too good. Tanta will like this one...
I didn't make it clear that the husband might not have been aware of the filings.
I'm not in the mood to back through all those BK filings, but at least one of them was not pro se. There is at least one response to the trustee's motion to dismiss from an attorney representing Mr. B (begging for another extension).
I guess Mr. B could have been unaware of these BKs back in 2004-2006. But he couldn't have been unaware of them yesterday, when it was all over the newspapers. Is it really possible that no reporter has asked him for a comment on that?
And now we're told Mrs. B had a POA? Why? That makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.
You get a POA if the party in question is overseas or sick or mentally incompetent. Unless Mr. B hasn't seen his wife in years and lives in Timbuktu, why would he need to give her a POA?
And he would, indeed, need to grant one. I can't wait to hear his explanation for that.
The POA thing really seals it for me. If the DA's office doesn't investigate this as a financial crime, they're nuts.
Pity it's Bristol County; masslandrecords.com provides free access to mortgage docs for most other counties in the state. I assume you tried that site first?
The Globe has been circling the bowl since the NYTimes bought it. It is notorious for concocting stories and seeking out "facts" only for "color." Conservatives think it's a liberal bias, of course, but it's not. It's a paternalistic bias: "Here's what we've decided you should believe."
You should read the tripe the Globe choose to print today on its Op-Ed page in the column that quotes local blogs. "Soccer Mom" writes about the threat of "homelessness," as if the only choice of housing is a SFH or a refrigerator box.
Oh, and the Globe is known for being one of the few newspapers still shilling for the REIC. Some local bloggers have published their correspondence with various editors, who "stand by" their stories about towns immune to the downturn--based entirely on misreported numbers corrected by the bloggers.
For many reasons, reading this story filled me with hate. Sorry, but there it is.
Tanta, just be honest and admit you're a miserable bitch and you love to defend banks and lenders over people. You don't give a shit about that woman who committed suicide.
If the wife was listed on the deed, she would need to be a party to the bk proceeding. If she was on the deed, and was not a party, the debt could not be discharged.
The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party.
Tanta I'm shocked. Look at that video again. The sound bite from Marks only speaks in generalities and could be in reply to any question of predatory lending.
Yes, I believe he would be comfortable blaming PHH, but that's beside the point, you're slamming him on this clip?
I've watched that part three times because I can't belive it was not my carelessness.
Sorry about that. But don't worry. I'm sure another idiotic RE estate story will come out of the Globe soon, giving you an opportunity to retrieve mortgage docs from a less pathetic county registry.
I have one for my wife and she has one for me. Those things can come in mighty handy.
They can come in mighty handy in an emergency. They are a touch of a problem when they are used to enable one person to never have to look at his own bank statements for six years.
I do not actually believe that a fairly reputable servicer like PHH would have failed to ever, over all those years, place a single collection call to Mr. B. at work. They were not getting anywhere with Mrs. B, after all. I do not believe they would have agreed to make no collection efforts against a co-borrower just because the other borrower claims to have a POA.
Yeah, POAs are not uncommon within a family (including my own). They allow you to be certain who will make medical and financial decisions for you should you suddenly become incapacitated.
I have acquaintances who work in the trades as electriciana and plumbers who feel that they married up, and their wives are better equipped to handle all the financial complications in their lives. They're very trusting and probably correct in their assumptions. If you can't trust your spouse, why bother being married? I'm sure it would have been simple for the wife to convince him to sign a POA so he didn't have to deal with the paperwork.
The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party.
So since PHH doesn't seem to have done that, can I conclude that she probably wasn't on the deed?
If she wasn't on the deed, she did not execute the mortgage either (she might have signed to waive dower rights, but not as a mortgagor).
If she wasn't on the mortgage, I doubt she was ever on the note. It sounds like she was a homemaker with no income. Why obligate her on the note if she doesn't own the house?
So, then, if she wasn't on the note, PHH could not have been collecting against her. They would HAVE TO have made an effort to talk to Mr. B; he would have been the only one good for the debt.
Actually the Cat in the Hat is the blueprint for Bernanke and the Fed - well, actually "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" - the Cat keeps pulling alphabet soup out of his hat (sound familiar yet?) which only results in spreading the problem he is trying to solve more widely, until..."VOOM!"
There are accounts in 1929/30 of various bankers shooting themselves (not jumping out of windows) etc. I have no idea how common it was. Given the state of journalism in the 30s, I'd say either claims of mass suicides or Galbraith's revisionism both remains unproven.
That said, the suicide rate increased substantially during the Great Depression. I think it's safe to guess that some of these were people who lost their farm/house.
i should have been a little more careful - her name on the deed is irrelevant. the issue is if her name is on the note, because that's the debt instrument... but the point is essentially the same.
also, on the POA issue. if, the very first time that the bank/servicer/collection agent called, she picked up the phone, and said that she has POA over her husband's debts (and provided a copy of the legal documents), they would probably deal with her exclusively from that point on. they wouldn't necessarily know whether the husband was, at that time, incapacitated, but it would be easier for them to keep interacting with the party who has legal POA.
Can you imagine any reason why he would want to lie?
Sure I can. This whole story makes it all his wife's fault for not telling him what was going on. For not making any plans for what they would do when the FC sale happened. For leaving her alone in the house on the day of the FC sale to deal with it all by herself. He gets to blame all the financial troubles of the family on his wife.
Did anyone notice there was also a 24-year-old son living in the house who I guess didn't catch on to any of the FC stuff or collection calls either?
I noticed that, since the news article says the kid has a job but for some reason the BK filings claim him as a dependent, beginning in 2004 when he was 20. That was actually why I looked at the documents to see if there was any sign of disability or medical issues there. Nope.
I really don't care to try to speculate too much about what went on in that household. I do, though, think that even if it all went down as Mr. B and his friend and the cop claim it did, this is not typical of how most American households experience FC.
Tanta, explain something to me, why exactly are you digging through the public records of a dead woman? I know, I know, you want to prove that she committed suicide because she was "mentally ill" or just another "degenerate debtor". And yes I know you love to defend banks, because banks are more important than people, in your mind...
But do us all a favor and drop the fucking pretense that you give a shit about anyone, or that woman, her family, her problems and her suicide. You're a ghoul and a bank defender, hell you're probably a republican as well.
All she would have had to do is say, "This is his wife". She could have also sent the POA to them and they would have spoken to her.
Really?
I cannot imagine any even marginally competent mortgage servicer agreeing to refrain from contacting the debtor directly just because the wife has a POA. I would have to look into that--if the guy were incapacitated or missing, that would eff up my foreclosure pretty thoroughly. You haven't lived til you've had to FC against a conservatorship or an estate. The servicer would be crazy not to find out why the POA is being used. And the obvious thing to do is call Mr. B at work. And if there's a plumber without a cell phone these days, I'll be a touch surprised.
Don't have time to read the zillion worthy comments on the thread right now, but this sounds to me like somebody had a drug or gambling problem. Otherwise, where did the money go?
None of you know the details relating to anything and comments here about a person and a suicide, are out of place and at this point, taking a morbid story and sensationalism a bunch of retarded banter -- you should all be ashamed to be here and it would not shock me to see this retardation expand to 600 comments on total bullshit -- just like mine...please move on ASAP!!
Standard & Poors put some of its ratings on Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) on watch for a possible downgrade Friday, saying that the bailout bill pending in Congress could increase the risks facing holders of the mortgage giants subordinated debt and preferred stock.
Although there is still ambiguity on the part of regulatory authority as it applies to how nonsenior creditors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be treated if the U.S. Treasury ever acted on its three-point liquidity plan, the language in HR 3221 increases the likelihood that subordinated debtholders and
preferred stockholders would face greater subordination risk, analyst Victoria Wagner wrote. That is to say, investors in the companies could find themselves wiped out in the event of a bailout - a fear that drove shares in Fannie and Freddie to 17-year lows earlier this month.
S&P affirmed the firms triple-A senior unsecured debt ratings while putting their double-A minus preferred stock, subordinated debt and risk-to-the-government ratings on watch for a possible downgrade.
PoA or no PoA, do you actually believe that her husband, who lives in the same house, really had "no idea" that they were behind on payments?
He never answered the telephone?
never asked "who called, Honey?"
never opened the mail?
never got the mail from the mailbox?
never had an 'investor' show up at the door who was shown the road o riches in buying 'distressed' real estate by the likes of Alexis McGee?
Carlton Sheets?
Robert fucking Lee?
or the other ten thousand 'Guru's?
I lived not so far away Taunton and my plumber was an old-fashioned independent type and he didn't have a cell phone. His wife/daughter handled all the calls. He might be the last of his breed, but, yes, there are plumbers without cellphones.
I read this story at one of the MSM outlets and the message it conveyed was nothing but exploitation. THe story here is well written and apparently well supported.
In my opinion your rants should be to Congress and the MSM.
By the way did you see the hidden memo to all the bloggers at the LA Times not the mention the Edwards event at the Beverly Hilton the other night. http://www.slate.com/id/2195914/#latedict
In my opinion the story does not defend anyone but rather questions the media's reporting of the events!!
OK as a guy whose wife handles the bills... my name is on, and they wont talkk to the wife till i tell them they can, but they all still ask for me..
And let me tell you my Cap one auto finance due to them on the 15th, the 16th the phone starts ringing even if i made the payment on line or with a check...
in a world of caller ID he didnt know, for 3 years?
I think the most likely thing going on here is that the husband sent the fax, wrote the suicide note, then drugged and shot the wife.
The most odd part of the story is the use of the fax machine. Maybe it's because I don't have a personal fax machine, but it seems like an odd and removed way to send a message. Even more removed than sending an email --which could also be done by the husband. Though it might be easier for the husband to sneek a fax around his wife, than send an email on her account.
Well, okay maybe most odd is that the husband claims to be in the dark about the finances, yet was the one named in the bankruptcy filings.
Maybe I've watched a few too many of those 20/20 real life murder mysteries. But this happens all the time on those shows. It'll probably come out that he had a younger mistress somewhere.
man, the man, always holding us down... its that damn war, all bush's fault...and church goers... and cub scouts are future republican nazi's... and Al Gore is truth man! The truth...word.... oh man my tin foil just ripped, gotta run..
" have acquaintances who work in the trades as electriciana and plumbers who feel that they married up, and their wives are better equipped to handle all the financial complications in their lives"
I have a SIL who is more intellectually more capable than her husband, and less risk averse. She is botching their finances beyond repair (own a lot of investmentment properties) and yet is afraid to tell him about it as their financial condition deteriorates, because she's afraid he'll dump her (obese) ass. She's a basket case, not sleeping etc etc while she keeps him in the dark...
I have not looked at the PACER filings, but I really doubt that she somehow filed the bankruptcy cases without his knowledge, and I am pretty certain that no bankruptcy court would accept a petition signed by someone other than the individual debtor regardless of the POA. One clear indicator of whether he did or did not know about the bankruptcy filings would be whether the meeting of creditors (the "Section 341" meeting) ever happened, as he'd have to show up for that. If he never showed up for anything, well, then maybe it was all her doing...but I doubt it.
As to why he alone would file, I don't think that's all that unusual even where the house is in both names, as the filing creates an automatic stay as to the property, even as if affects the non-debtor spouse. In other words, by not filing a "joint petition" (i.e., husband and wife), they get the benefit of the bankruptcy without subjecting her to the process. The jointly-owned property would be included in the bankruptcy estate. What I do find odd is that the schedules stated that he had no other debts. If the guy really made that kind of money (or anything like it) he would either have had some substantial credit card debt (this being America in the early 21st century....) or access to credit lines which could easily have cured the mortgage. Either he was lying about his credit card debt in the bankruptcy cases (not that unusual as folks want to keep the lines open) or she had run up some balances and hid those under the mattress with the mortgage statements.
All in all, I agree that nothing about this situation really adds up, but I'm not sure I'm at the point of seeing a grand criminal scheme. Just a plumber and his wife hopelessly incapable of managing finances and other life stresses. Frankly, I've often wondered whether it makes all that much sense to force every working person and their spouse to become amateur CFO's of the family "business," trying to manage multiple layers of secured debt, unsecured debt, retirement accounts, mindnumbing tax issues etc. I guess it's good for some folks, and really great for Suzy Orman, but I don't see it as much of a lifestyle enhancer for most folks.
If servicers don't participate, ``then next year we'll have to change the law to reduce the role of servicers,'' Frank told reporters after the hearing.
If they have a fax machine at home, it's likely that the plumbing business runs from there also. If she handled the office work for the business, she'd intercept the calls from the lender.
I am pretty certain that no bankruptcy court would accept a petition signed by someone other than the individual debtor regardless of the POA.
I didn't read through all the eleventy-jillion docs to see if there was ever any time where the guy showed up in person.
But I did look at all the filings by the debtor and they are signed "John W. Balderrama." If Mrs. B signed them she forged his signature rather than signing as AIF.
Just a plumber and his wife hopelessly incapable of managing finances and other life stresses.
That's as good a theory as any other. But again, that's my problem with these news reports trying to blame the lender.
it's true that reporters often start with a preconceived idea about the topic at hand, then find anecdotal information that appears to support that viewpoint.
bloggers, even good ones, sometimes do the same thing. this blog does a great job of gathering and analyzing data about its subject area. but mixed in are numerous stand-alone posts that imo only serve to cloud the issues, by making it appear that the data needs to be padded:
I've got the same limited set of facts as the rest of you. I just find a confluence of suspicious things, is all.
Like,
Mrs.B writes a note mentioning life insurance and paying the mortgage off w/it.
Someone remarked that despite failing to pay the mortgage, the life insurance premiums were ostensibly paid on time.
Seems like an awful lot of life ins coverage for someone who provided little or no income to the household (OBJECTION! speculation! / ok, fine -withdrawn.)
The PoA
and the Pièce de Résistance: Mr.B claims total ignorance to their arrearages over a 42-month period.
Thanks I didn't have an idea either..
very sad...It would be more cost efficient for us to bring home all military from Iraq, give them jobs guarding the border, a raise by 20K and wipe out their debt..
Why don't the stinkin politicians do that...No lets reward deadbeats instead of our brave men and women...
"Mr.B claims total ignorance to their arrearages over a 42-month period."
If the MA State Police get involved, they'll compare the collection agency's phone log to the husband's cell phone location. That would help establish whether he was around during any collection calls.
lama - it ain't even that hard. They could just subpoena the collection notes.
Anyway, I can only hope that that lie eventually gets exposed as openly as Mr.B's batty crease whilst fixing a sink.
Not that it would necessarily mean their was any foul play. I'm just saying he's was full of it when he said he knew nothing about the mortgage situation.
Call a lender workout dept and there is little real verification that takes place. Fax in a 3rd party authorization letter presumably signed by the debtor and you are off to the races.
Giving them a different cell or work number and if the wife talks to them when they call, that will become the default contact number. They would only hunt the husband down if no one talks to them.
You are also overlooking the obvious reason why the husband would not get calls and that would be a cease and desist from the attorney.
"Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated.
I want to make it clear that I do not deny that. I do not deny that people in terrible financial troubles killed themselves in the Great Depression, or that it is happening now."
I find it interesting that the initial quote above that uses the term "correlated" and is testable was actually tested in one of the first works that is associated with Sociology.
Although Wikipedia does not mention it, I vaguely recall Durkheim specifically looked at the relationship between economic factors and suicide and rejected any simple correlation early in the book. That was the rationale for the book -- that suicide is primarily a social fact, as it were, even though (obviously) it is done by individuals. If anyone cared, they could actually read it.
As far as the press/journalism go, everyone has their own opinions, but a lot of publications actually employ fact checkers. And to some degree, the mainstream media is not monolithic and there is always a story in an widely but incorrectly reported sensational story. I wouldn't be surprised to see one here -- if the speculation in the comments has any merit. Nancy Grace could fill up a week of air time with this.
Call a lender workout dept and there is little real verification that takes place.
Quite possibly so. But we are talking about collection calls and process service. In most states you can successfully stop or reverse a foreclosure if you can show that the debtor was not notified/served as per law. I am not saying PHH or anyone else can't screw this up. I am just observing that it's a lot harder to not know you're being foreclosed on an owner-occupied property than people seem to think.
You are also overlooking the obvious reason why the husband would not get calls and that would be a cease and desist from the attorney.
He asked his attorney to issue a C&D for calls he didn't know were being made?
sounds like the "reporter" heard the words mortgage and suicide and took a monster swing. none of the details seem to fit very well, and while the financial disaster and subsequent death are very sad, it sounds like somebody has been describing a cat while calling it a dog.
My point is that the loss mit dept for most banks are not that bright.
This account wasn't in loss mit. Hadn't been there for a long time.
It was in the FC department. PHH had legal counsel handling the FC.
I believe that MA, like most states, also requires the notice of sale to be published in the newspaper for three consecutive weeks prior to the sale date. I don't know what the rules are on process service, but really. There's only so much a lender can do, here. All you're doing is convincing me that if the claims in the newspaper are true, you can hardly blame PHH. Somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to not deal fairly with the lender.
WMBZ: "This is a perfect example of the end result of the borrow and spend republican engineered ownership society. Enslavement of citizens to banks is the aim of supply side. Not ownership, certainly not "free markets" Now I'm waiting for some right wing nutjob apologist here to blame the deceased."
What does Bush have to do with the tragedy of Mrs. Balderrama? And how is that related to some kind of right wing conspiracy?
Let's set aside for one moment the tragic story of Mrs. Balderrama and address a broader issue. Whether Democratic or Republican, the Government is nothing more than an intellectual construct. We, all, are the Government; some of us contribute to it by paying taxes, others by actually working for the government in paid or sometimes elected positions. The Government is not however an all-knowing, all-powerful entity that can turn dust into gold, and rain clouds into sunshine. Let's keep that in mind as we replace 'government' with 'us' in what follows.
If you play soccer and you fall down and break your leg, it is not the our collective fault. If you sleep in and you show up late at your job and you get fired, it is not our collective fault. If you spend more than you earn only to find that you have aged and have no savings, we are not to blame. If you sign on the dotted line to purchase a property, in full knowledge of what you're committing to, and then cannot make the monthly mortgage payments, it is not our collective responsibility. If you bought a home that went down in price, it is not our fault, simply because some elected politicians choose to talk up the benefits of home ownership; you made your decision exercising your free will, not they; no one held a gun to your head; you could have just as easily rented.
Why should all of us owe anything to borrowers that cannot afford their payments? They do not represent the only constituency out there. What about the people that are actually lending the money (Wall Street not withstanding - they are mostly an intermediary)? The vast majority of them are retiree's pension funds and working people's savings. Why should we override the rights of the thrifty to give away to the less responsible? What about people that are neither lenders nor borrowers, for example renters. Why should we all prop up home prices for the benefit of current home owners and to the detriment of the poor and the young that cannot yet afford a home?
I personally do not claim to have answers to all these questions. But I sure as hell know what I do not know. And I see no reason to yield to the most vociferous simply because they can scream the loudest.
js wrote: "The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party."
Not. Never seen it happen. Not even when I was clerking and saw many hundreds of Chapter 13 cases. Besides, you can't be forced into a 13, that little thing called the 13th Amendment gets in the way.
You are assuming that the lender continued to contact them. The story has the wife contacting the lender.
No, I am "assuming" that the lender tried to collect on this debt one way or the other for six years. That two FC cases were filed and that at minimum PHH performed its statutory duty to let the homeowner know he was about to lose his house. I am damned sure assuming that PHH called up each time the BK was dismissed to reinstate collection efforts. That's what lenders do the minute the stay is lifted.
This isn't about what Mr. B may have found out this week. The man says the account was in arrears for 42 months and at no time ever did he know that.
Ziggurat - I wasn't referring to 'economic factors' such as unemployment rates, or the DJIA, or HPA rates, or those sort of easily-obtained benchmarks. But I'm not talking Freakonomics-shit either.
I was referring to the relationship between incidence of suicidal thoughts and those people who have just suffered major financial setbacks (things like: layoffs, uninsured medical expenses, lawsuits, business failures, incarceration, etc.) They are, in my decidedly unscientific estimation, a lot more likely to contemplate suicide than the general population. I don't think Durkheim tested that relationship.
Yet we do see studies that suggest that Seattlites, which because of the weather suffer from a marginally higher incidence of SAD, are more likely to commit suicide.
C'mon - which would make "Goodbye, cruel world" more of a consideration for you? A string of rainy days? Or a string of days where you felt compelled to toss your telephone into your dishwasher to avoid calls from people you owed money to but were unable to pay?
"I believe that MA, like most states, also requires the notice of sale to be published in the newspaper for three consecutive weeks prior to the sale date."
I can't believe anybody reads the foreclosure notices looking for their own house to show up 'just in case' they didn't get the memo otherwise.
Maybe they should, but given newspaper subscription numbers, it seems unlikely that anyone reads those except creditors and bargain hunters.
"This isn't about what Mr. B may have found out this week. The man says the account was in arrears for 42 months and at no time ever did he know that."
Tanta, obviously you dont have teen or pre-teen kids where "I thought you meant this week" is a pretty standard answer to "did you ever..."
Will someone please ask Mr. B if he ever was aware that his name was on 3 bk filings? If he did, then he lied. If he didn't, then at least one bk lawyer somewhere out there is going to look pretty stupid.
Declaring bankruptcy is not something honest people take lightly. Since one or both Balderramas filed repeatedly, I can only conclude they were working the system to get out of their obligations.
I can't believe anybody reads the foreclosure notices looking for their own house to show up 'just in case' they didn't get the memo otherwise.
Of course they don't. But that is not the point.
State laws provide for this public notice of FC to establish some threshold of reasonable notice. Every state I am familiar with also requires personal process service, too, in addition to all the other kinds of notice.
If you don't answer your phone and you don't open your mail and you don't talk to the inspector that the servicer will likely be sending out prior to the FC sale to verify occupancy and you hide from the process server and you don't read the paper, well, what can be done for you?
Most people just answer the phone, rather than relying on the local rag to tell them their home is being sold.
This whole conversation is just beginning to sound surreal to me. Most times when I post on a story having to do with debt collection, I get horror stories of people getting phone calls all hours of the day and night, and having their employers and neighbors called, etc. etc.
Suddenly, today, we think it's plausible that none of the forms of communication--calls, letters, personal process service, newspaper notices, copies of filings stuck to the door--ever got through to two out of three people in that house.
I think some people are so invested in seeing lenders as the bad guys that they don't care which end they fire from: either servicers harrass people with endless calls or they make so little effort to contact borrowers that it's easy to not know you're facing FC in a house you live in for 42 months.
Not to seem too heartless, but I do wonder if the police have conclusively ruled this a suicide.
Seems to me as if the husband knew all about the financial problems, and would perhaps have a motive (insurance) to take his wife's life...his hunting rifle, faxed suicide note...
Tanta, I spend most of day on the phone with lenders and dealing with homeowners in default, with some in denial beyond belief.
I can tell you that both ends of the spectrum exist. Yesterday I asked for a 2nd postponement on a trustee sale while the lender worked on a workout approval. She asked me why we needed to postpone when the approval had been granted 30 days earlier. The problem was that they moved this file to a new negotiator 31 days ago, but never forwarded the approval to the new guy.
One the other hand, we had to go to court to stop a trustee sale that would have occurred the next day where the borrower had brought the loan current 14 days prior, but the lender failed to cancel the sale or rescind the NOD.
As I stated earlier, I have actual knowledge of one joint Chapter 13 filed by a spouse hiding a foreclosure. The husband was literally escorted from the house during breakfast after their 13 was dismissed, the house sold, and redemption period ended. There was a divorce. There were disciplinary actions taken against the wifes attorney.
It has happened. It is capable of repetition, especially if the working husband puts fiances in the hands of a stay at home wife who gets the mail, etc. It cant be common though.
Gazillions of calls sounds like unsecured creditors, not mortgage holders. I can't recall clients complaining about calls from the mortgage company. They almost all complain about calls from collection agencies.
Life insurance will pay in the event of a suicide provided that it has been in force for more than 2 years. I know that is the case in Ohio, and am pretty sure it is the case in most other states.
Also, when you go into foreclosure 60 zillion people who want to loan you money, or want to defraud you or want something or other send you letters and notices, which typically have the word foreclosure printed in violent colors on the outside. He never, in 42 months picked up the mail?
Isn't it true that wannbe suicides do something to alert somebody that something is going on? But sending a fax? Never heard of that. Don't women start more suicides, but fail to succeed in actually killing themselves more often than men? I like someone far upthread want to know if this fax was typed or hand written.
Also all this the lender has no fault stuff is nonsense. Yes the borrows are all morons but make no mistake about it - alt-A, zero down ARMs and other easy money loans got us into this situation. The lenders made a ton of fictious profits peddling this crap.
Well, this seems like a fun group of speculators of a different kind! Let me try a crazy one:
The husband might have found out about the financial troubles and the forgeries on the BKs and then got even... forging the suicide notes being a clever payback.
karen: "The most odd part of the story is the use of the fax machine. Maybe it's because I don't have a personal fax machine, but it seems like an odd and removed way to send a message. Even more removed than sending an email --which could also be done by the husband. Though it might be easier for the husband to sneek a fax around his wife, than send an email on her account."
Ah, but there's the beauty of a fax. A fax can be handwritten and the signature verified. You learn this in Committing Suicide for Dummies. No... but more seriously, a handwritten with a verifiable signature is a way to kill yourself without placing any possible suspicion on other parties.
Jes: "It would be interesting to know if there were any significant changes in US drug use during the Great Depression. Anyone out there have stats?"
No stats. But Prohibition was repealed in December of 1933 so stats of alcohol consumption for the decade might not be so valuable.
Here's what gets me: There have been NUMEROUS complaints to the labeling of PHH as a "predatory lender" in the Globe article. There have also been NUMEROUS labels of John Balderrama as a "suspect" (if not more!). How are these any different?
Granted, the Globe is a newspaper and has a responsibility to the public (readers, subscribers), whereas the posters here are mostly anonymous and have no responsibility to anyone. On the other hand, the reporter has a deadline for a story (and needs that story to get paid), whereas there is no deadline requirement for any of the posters here who are rushing to label.
Now, I love this blog post. It's the first and only post I've read of yours. (So good that I might read more.) But I'm sorry Tanta, I still have a little sympathy here for the reporter and newspaper side. He made a mistake and called PHH predatory. He's human. Just like the many posters here who (without a deadline) are quick to label suspects in a case where all the facts are likely not known.
Did you send him your blog post and ask if he would comment or investigate further? It might give him a headstart on his next deadline!
To Terry Moore -- I sent a link to the post to the reporter. No reply, at least not to me. I'm sorry, but I don't have the sympathy that you seem to have for this reporter. He's now written two articles on this, and deadline or not, he has a responsibility to check the facts. And even if he doesn't do it, his editors should. Meanwhile, Tanta, without the backup the reporter has, or the power of the Globe, was able to gather all the information necessary.
"Also all this the lender has no fault stuff is nonsense."
That doesn't appear to be the case in this instance. With a loan payment of @ $1700 on this property, there is nothing that points to this being a risky loan given the income and debt ratio stated in the bk filings.
I just went back and read the entire post again, the more I think about it - what is even the point of it. This woman wrote a note saying she is killing herself because of foreclosure.
Tanta calling the media and police to task for stating what was said in the woman's note doesn't make sense. Tanta is not bringing any new information out. She is just saying the police and media don't know what they are talking about. And they may not BUT they are minicing a note. PERIOD it's that simple.
If you want to dispute who wrote the note then that is great but its also silly. I would bet that its handwritten.
I wouldn't put all of the blame of journalistic malpractice on the reporter.
In cases such as this, in which it appears that a reporter is merely filling in fresh details to a pre-set narrative, you should suspect the editor.
Most editors were mediocre or bad reporters but good ass-kissers. They get promoted into editing positions. They're the people who pre-write the headline after they've heard a few details; they're the ones who decide to place a story atop Page One when the don't know what the story is really about.
I suspect that the reporter who wrote this article is a little less credulous, and a little more cynical, than you think. When the reporter told the editor that a woman killed herself shortly before a foreclosure auction, that was all the editor needed to know before deciding that the story was Page One material and that the mortgage company was responsible for the death. These aren't decisions that the reporter makes; they are decisions that the editor makes.
The reporter quoted the police chief as not knowing whether the life insurance policy would pay out. To me, a longtime reporter, that paragraph positively screams that it's the product of an editor's intervention. Editors are fond of asking stupid questions with unknowable answers. They make the reporters ask them, and to report the eye-rolling replies from exasperated sources.
In other words, the reporter probably wrote the story, and the pinhead editor said, "Well, will the insurance policy pay off?" And the reporter silently thought, "How the fuck should I or anyone else know? We'll find that out next week." But the reporter dutifully called the police chief, who gave a politely worded answer that amounts to, "How the fuck should I know? We'll find that out next week."
Aside from the argument that the media love to run articles about Evil Corporations because those articles please their advertisers, those same Evil Corporations, I think much of the media criticism here has merit. But I do want to make it clear that the truly stupid, bad person behind this particular story is likely the editor, not the reporter.
One final thought: The editor decided that the story was banner-headline material, but didn't think the story warranted an extra staffer or two to look at court documents. It's easy to criticize the reporter for not combing through the court records in addition to interviewing people, writing the story, and dealing with the idiotic editors, on top of the already high workload that comes with covering the cop shop. Something had to give, and that something was a close review of the court records. There are only so many hours in a day, and there's always a follow-up story to fill in missing information.
Also, it's kinda funny to see people complaining that the media exploit suicide to further their own agendas. To me, that looks like these commenters are exploiting a suicide to further their own agendas about how terrible the media are.
Tanta, you have a lot of humanity. If you didn't, you wouldn't have bothered with this story. We don't know all of the facts and may never know them. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that anyone will ever get to the bottom of it without spending a lot of time and money.
A lot of merit to what you say, and thank you for a closer look at the rolls of reporters and editors.
Are you a journalist yourself?
One thing I'd love to know is how the story and the paper got together to begin with. Do the papers have people who go over the police crime blotters to attempt to dig out a juicy story? Do the reporters themselves do this? It would be interesting to know how the relationship developed.
BW, you said you reread the article. One thing that Tanta has pointed out time and again is to use some critical thinking when reading an article like.
One example that you read:
"John Balderrama did, however, file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy three times from 2004 to 2006, but the courts dismissed the petitions."
Note that it said the husband. Not her and no mention of POA. Yet we are to believe that after three filings he was still unaware of the mortgage being in arrears.
There are other red flags that just don't scan. It doesn't take much to wonder what the heck is really going on.
Until we do know, all statements, including so it seems that PHH is predatory, are speculative.
Tanta. You don't get it. The prevailing attitude is anti-lender. Forget your deeper diggings. This is the face of it and lenders are the bad guys.
All of the nit-picking whether based in fact or fiction does not help a lender in today's political climate and this is fuel to the already raging fire of anger that is directed at lenders. Whether you agree or not is not important. The tide is against you here. If you do not adjust your position you will be swept out to sea...
Well Freud may be mythology or maybe not. His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved." It has become faddish to diss him and his ideas. In any case he has been a very powerful cultural influence and I find it odd that people hate him and it so much. People who "hate" Freud may in fact fear his insights. I think those are undeniable. And blame for all sorts of things can be laid upon him conveniently.
Hear, hear.
Erich Fromm observes in his "The Sane Society" that a hallmark of Freud's thinking is "the courage to defy common sense and public opinion."
In a deeply authoritarian culture like ours is today, that kind of intellectual nonconformity is asking a bit much. We didn't get Bushism or the housing bubble by being brave!
Fromm, by the way, is an intriguing guide to the shared pathologies -- which he calls the pathology of normalcy -- that have led to historically high levels of suicide in Western culture. There may be no single cause in suicides, but there are social and cultural forces that appear to make them likelier.
In short, while poor Mrs. B.'s death can't be laid only or even significantly at the feet of the mortgage servicer, we can look to the culture of the mortgage screwjob, the for-profit war, the catastrophically long work week, mountainous debt and related forms of what everyone agrees is "normal behavior" for an answer to why there are so many Mrs. Bs, so much wasted human life.
This view can also help us understand why the newspaper is so busy mythologizing her. Like the forces that want housing to continue to be an economic vehicle for penurious debt for most and vast wealth for a few, the corporate news media -- itself a great swiller at the bubble's trough -- wants above all to return us to the conditions that only recently prevailed.
Turning Mrs. B. into a mortgage martyr is a very devious yet all-too-predictable manipulation. The goal is to make people stop thinking about what has gone wrong and get them to do it again.
Mac, I know that it said he filed 3 times. The filings also listed the house debt. With no other debt other than a car loan, the filing was clearly to stave off foreclosure.
Either he was part and parcel to the bk filings and lied about not knowing about the mortgage issues, or the wife pulled off quite a scam.
Proving what he knew is easy. My point was that it is possible for the wife to have done this without her husband's knowledge. While it may not seem probable, it is possible.
This isn't about PHH. it's about a woman who had some serious issues. A sad event, regardless.
The real question though, is how much do you think the family is being offered for made for TV movie rights?
Gambling or drugs, addiction or shiftlessness, crime or bankruptcy--whatever it was, something very sad happened in that home. And whatever it was, some poor woman surely didn't deserve to die for it. Requiscat in pace.
Tanta is near dead last on the list of anyone who might have missed the essential human sadness at the bottom of all this. Tanta, that's why we love you. On the other hand, CNN's desk editor is pretty much near the top of that list.
Posts like this are why I come to CR. A commitment to the truth, even knowing the tomfoolery it will invite.
"Well, John Kenneth Galbraith labelled that "rash of suicides" a "myth" in 1955, and if anyone has more recent hard data that says otherwise, I'd like to see it"
Funny, Edward Chancellor, in his book, Devil take the Hindmost, quotes Churchill as writing the day after the Great Depression: "Under my window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade."
Whether or not that ancedote confirms or denies anything about the Great Depression is another matter.
Send in the forensics! (Full disclosure: I am one).
From the news story: "All the bankruptcies were dismissed due to either failure to make payments to the trustee or failure to attend hearings or creditors' meetings." So (1) the bankruptcy filings were accepted by the bankruptcy court, (2) the only debts were the house and the car, and (3) the income is obviously adequate to pay the debts, whether structured & supervised through the bankruptcy court, or not. Yet the mortgage debt is in arrears and the arrearage continues to increase? Huh. Where is the obviously adequate income actually going?
The goal is to make people stop thinking about what has gone wrong and get them to do it again.
HC
That's fool's goal there. Everybody alive now will have to die for this to happen again - just as everbody alive in 1929-1941 had to die for this to happen.
Uncle Billy,
Yes, I'm a reporter and have been one for lo these 22 years. I write about mortgages for Bankrate.com and in the past, working for the AP and the Toledo Blade, I've reported just about every type of story, from crime to courts to college sports to light features to education.
Do the papers have people who go over the police crime blotters to attempt to dig out a juicy story? Do the reporters themselves do this?
After I answer, I'd like you to reply to this question: How did you think reporters got crime stories? I worry that a lot of our media critics have a similar lack of knowledge.
In a metro area such as Boston's, big newspapers typically have several reporters who cover what's called the "cop shop." Big-city police departments often have a tiny office in the main police station where reporters write their stories.
When I worked for a newspaper, the paper was unstaffed from about 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. or so. The first reporter scheduled to come in in the morning was the cop shop reporter. The first thing that reporter does is to go to the police station and scan through all of the police reports going back to the previous afternoon. Not looking for "juicy," looking for newsworthy. I mean, if you're looking through the police report and you see that vandals slashed 20 tires in two blocks of a residential street, that's not juicy, but it'll go in the paper.
Through the day and deep into the night, cop shop reporters hang out at the police station, talk to cops, always ready to jump in a car and go to the scene if a big fire breaks out or a dead body is found somewhere.
Crime reporters get most of their info from cops. So if someone kills herself with a shotgun, but the article says it was a rifle, don't assume the reporter got it wrong first. Maybe the cops got it wrong, and the reporter merely passed it along.
Thus ends the primer. Sorry to go far afield, but at least I'm not jabbering about Freud.
stock_regulator writes:I would bet that its handwritten.
Look, d00d, FWIW, I wasn't trying to play 'Horatio' here. But that proves zero to me. As long as we're at it...
I think somewhere in chapter 14 of "How to Murder Someone and Frame the Killing as a Suicide for Dummies" they talk about "best practices" of getting your mark to hand-write their own "suicide note" if possible by creating "duress" in the form of pointing a high-powered rifle at your mark's skull. It's amazingly effective in getting them to write all kinds of shit in their own handwriting.
Not sayin' that's the case here. Occams Razor would prolly say that Mr.B just lied about "not knowin' nothin' about no late mortgage payments" simply to save face in the bright light of the national media machine. Nothing more.
One thing is for sure, now that major news outlets are reporting this, it's more likely that someone will read and get the idea that hey! suicide is a resolution to all of my problems!
I find it refreshing and valuable to add the perspective of a journalist.
I guess what I find troubling here is that it seems like the journalist didn't vet out the overall story by consulting anyone outside of the "cop shop." Although "pouring over court documents" may have described the practice in the past, in this day and age it would take about 20 minutes to download the court records from a website and email them to someone who may have some expertise. Perhaps I'm just totally clueless, but I just assume that at an outfit like the Boston Globe they might have sources/authorities they could use as a quick sounding board to check to see if the story makes sense. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that the reporter covering the police beat wouldn't have a deep knowledge of mortgages, bankruptcy, and the credit situation, but I would think that if this had run by a financial reporter or some external expert, the questions Tanta raised would have come up immediately. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight, but, hey, there's a lot of brilliant hindsight going around in all areas these days.
Tanta, thanks for this substantive analysis. Every day, I read the NYT & WSJ on the assumption that they fundamentally know what they are talking about.
However, when you drill down on specific stories, it seems the coverage is often misleading, misinformed or biased. It makes me wonder about reporting in other areas. Perhaps the impending death of the newspapers isn't such a threat to transparency after all.
Is PHH the note holder, the servicer or both in this case? No one knows until the records are pulled from Bristol County.
Tanta mentioned that FC actions need to be advertised in "local" papers for, I believe, three weeks in MA. When I looked Wednesday, and again just now, Public Notices had no record of any foreclosure sale occurring at 103 Duffy being advertised at all - period. Did the notice appear in print anywhere? Was the notice pulled from online for some reason?
Mr. Balderrama states that Mrs. Balderrama hadn't made a payment in 42 months. Where is he getting that information? Was he told by someone (PHH or Harmon perhaps?) that the mortgage was 42 months in arrears or that a payment had not been received in 42 months? The language makes all the difference in the world.
The question of "Where was all the money going?" was asked. Depending on the servicer that you're dealing with, all it takes is for payment ONE to be late. If the servicer decides that payment one is late (as opposed to actually BEING late, the next 41 payments may show up as late. I have experienced being labeled as late despite being current first hand. I've also posted proof on my site that a payment made before the grace period expired was held for an additional 12 days before being processed thereby being recorded as "late".
"All of the money" may very well have been paid to the servicer of the loan. But if payment ONE was called late by the servicer, any future payments would have the arrearage from payment ONE taken off the top, thereby making each and every payment following less than the full amount due - at least on the servicer's books - and making each and every following payment "late" as well.
This removes any incentive for anyone at either the foreclosure mill or the auction house to even attempt to deal fairly with the homeowner, because if they do then the foreclosure mill and/or the auction house may end up losing out on fees and cutting their own bottom lines. HLO has also had two class actions filed against them and settled out for FDCPA violations. Mark Harmon and Realty Funding have had a verdict rendered against them for FDCPA violations in NH as well. Forgive me, Tanta, I cannot find a link to the latter case law. For one of the former: Sorry. Page not found.
For the other, I believe the case was Allen et al. v. Harmon Law Offices. I'll have to see if I can dig up my opt out letter somewhere.
If Mrs. Balderrama had spent the last 42 months attempting to straighten out a screwed up accounting of their mortgage, she may very well have become mentally unsound. It only took me 24 months (36 months?) before I was diagnosed with and treated for depression and anxiety because of what Fairbanks/SPS did to my loan. Have I mentioned that I was awarded permanent injunctions and contempt orders against Fairbanks/SPS as a result of what they did to my loan?
If the only assets declared in the BKs were the house and the car I would tend to agree that it was safe to ASSume that the BKs were filed in order to halt the foreclosure process. Guess what, if you call or walk in to an attorney's office and tell them that you've made your mortgage payments and yet, the servicer is STILL foreclosing on you, at the very least they most likely will not take the case and if you're REALLY lucky, they'll call you a deadbeat and tell you to shut up and go pay your mortgage. Ask me - PLEASE someone ask me - how I know that... I spoke with upwards of 150 law firms before I found one that believed me enough to take a closer look at my case.
Something is definitely not right with this case. Could be Mr., could be Mrs., could be both, could be the servicer. No one knows until the various forensics teams are done. Hopefully the team will include a accountant.
In addition to Harmon Law Offices and Commonwealth Auction Associates, Mark Harmon also owns Northeast Title Abstract and Realty Funding.
Oh, I forgot to mention that, in the interest of full disclosure, Harmon Law Offices is a named defendant in my $13.5 million racketeering action filed in US District NH.
And before you say it, Tanta, yes it's "only one case". Cut me some slack, it's 2 am and I wasn't really looking for things like this right now. If you need additional case law I'll look for more later. But all it really takes is one...
Perhaps I'm just totally clueless, but I just assume that at an outfit like the Boston Globe they might have sources/authorities they could use as a quick sounding board to check to see if the story makes sense.
I find it really sad that I need to read the blogs to find the research that should be done by the billion dollar a year news enterprises.
The newspaper business is dying. Reporters are being laid off by the hundreds. They don't have the staffs to do the depth of work that you want, as quickly as you want. The fault lies more with Craig Newmark and with newspaper managers than with the reporters themselves.
could have been worse...
That's very sad.
For a number of reasons, I wouldn't bid on this house.
well people jumped out of windows on Wall Street in 1929, did they not? There are all sorts of financial disasters, and this housing mess is a disaster for many. Suicide is of course murder of oneself and did not Freud posit that it was deflected murder usually. that is, she really wanted to murder her mortgage servicer, but deflected her impulses on herself.
WARNING:
I am not going to put up with ugliness or cheap shots or tasteless cretinous humor in the comments to this post.
I will delete anything out of line and I will ban your ass.
Did I say anything "ugly". I don't think so.
well people jumped out of windows on Wall Street in 1929, did they not?
Would you mind reading the post before you comment, jim?
The whole thing sounds dubious to me. Are they absolutely sure it was a suicide?
The reports say the police arrived an hour after the fax. Does anyone when when the company called the police?
Did I say anything "ugly". I don't think so.
No, you said something that is, in the context of the post, rather stupid. You need to provide some evidence for the 1929 window-jumping myth, not simply repeat it.
Had your comment been truly ugly in my sole discretion, it would no longer be visible to you.
I hope the police are treating the husband as a supsect. I'm not saying he killed his wife for insurance money, but someone should at least look into it.
Clearly, either the husband or wife had a money problem. Possibly gambling or drugs is where the money went.
Thanks for the additional research and clear thinking, Tanta.
Very sad. What was going on? Why couldn't they pay their seemingly reasonable debts? If there was a gambling problem, compulsive spending you would think that it would show up in the BK filings?
It seems like the real lesson has nothing to do with "predatory lending" or the real estate crisis but the lack of comprehensive mental health care in this country.
The reports say the police arrived an hour after the fax. Does anyone when when the company called the police?
Surely you aren't going to suggest that the possibility that a fax sat on the printer for a half hour before anyone at PHH got a chance to read it makes them responsible here? They are a mortgage servicer, not a suicide hotline.
Sadly, the scenario painted in the article is the same for a family member of mine. Though it didn't end it suicide, it did end a marriage and many, many deep regrets.
Well said, researched and written, Tanta. Thanks a lot!
Almost all news articles tend to have the same type of story-arch and smattering of quotes. You were really able to call the truth of the narrative into question, when culturally we take it as a given.
"Suicide is of course murder of oneself and did not Freud posit that it was deflected murder usually."
And Freud's proof of this is... oh, yeah, he had none. It's entirely conjecture, and not very good conjecture at that.
The cop, reporter and others are really expressing their own fears and projecting them into the media. The media is not objective and never has been, I don't care what the college media class 101 teaches.
Thank you for correcting my mythological memory:
One of the most telling of the lessons from history in Galbraith's excellent book concerns the sturdiness of our refusal to learn the lessons of history. Take the myth that the crash of 1929 provoked a bout of suicides: Galbraith exhumes the figures and discovers that the death rate did not climb: all that changed was the newspaper coverage. Before 1929 suicides did not rate a mention; afterwards they were "crash victims". If the image of ruined brokers leaping from windows has endured longer than Galbraith's patient refutation of it, that is partly because we love melodrama, but mainly because we do not often look back, as it were, in anger.
Jim
This is the psychology of the bubble. Just as there was no rationality behind the upswing, we now start to see stories that are negatively biased. I believe there is also a panic phase, I wonder if we're in that phase yet.
I think the reporters start with a story in mind. Then they pick and choose their facts and fill in the rest to round out "the story." Checking facts, confirming details, leaving aside personal biases... Such journalistic responsibilities are merely a nuisance that can't be dealt with in the pursuit of that juicy story that will get the reader shouting "Those damn mortgage companies!"
If anybody can explain to me how this series of reports on Carlene Balderrama's suicide are anything other than exploitation of her tragedy in order to support an overwrought rhetoric that sees every foreclosure that has occurred in the last year or so as "predatory" and "unnecessary,"
That's exactly what it is, and unfortunately, the many and various supporters of the bailout legislation would have the masses believe that foreclosures are unjustified or unnecessary without actually examining whether either of those assumptions are true.
ice Jim! More people need to say "my bad, occasionally...
The real story, is that there are no reporters anymore, just TMZ gossips, poparazzi without the camera's...
no journalism any more , yet THEY have the gall to call talk show hacks, hacks...
go figure....
Was the husband stashing their wealth at a go-go bar? The money had to go somewhere, either charity or illegal trades.
I find the situation suspicious, and I hope the police check for fingerprints on the original of that faxed suicide note.
My mother always kept financial information form our dad. I have no idea what the dynamic is about. But she would apply for, get, and over-use credit cards...and then would go to these elaborate schemes (intiating us, the kids into the schemes) to make sure he never EVER got the mail from the mailbox before she could "edit out"the mail from the creditors. I get anxious just thinking about it (and this is thirty five years ago).
I suppose it might be some kind of control thing. My brother inherited it. He once almost lost a house for back payments of town utility bills. It was devastating to his wife as she knew absolutely nothing about it, and there were options they could have used to deal with it if only he had told her about the unpaid balance. I guess he thought ignoring it meant it would go away.
IN these personal instances, it was apparent that there was some magical thinking that they would "figure something out" to keep the secret debts from being exposed.
I don't have any answers, and only write this to say that there may be some kind of elaborate deception going on within the family itself. I certainly think it is devastating to the family under whatever causes.
Tanta,
BTW i hope that your scraping of the surface will cause the ignorant detective and his ilk to do some investigating about why a man, his 20 yr best friend and the po-po say John didn't know yet had the three BK's...
Looks like a forensic accountant should be called in.
Sounds like the husband should be a suspect...
You glossed over the most pathetic fact: Balderrama left a note for her family, saying they should "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house," O'Berg said.
Don't all life insurance policies exclude suicides?
You're right the media makes way too much about anecdotes. But the way most educated people deal with it is to ignore these types of stories. It's hard to see this as any more cause for a lot of whinging than the other 50% of "news" stories that consist of the same type of thing.
Yes, most people believe there were mass suicides in 1929. They also believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And a hefty minority believe the moon landing was faked. I won't even mention the Rapture.
We live in a country easily mislead morons and they need to be fed a constant supply of easily digested stories and anecdotes.
Most of us pretty much figured that out by adulthood.
Looks like a forensic accountant should be called in.
I agree.
I had a family member that ran a business and the associated factoey based in the Tautan/Fall River area. Always seemed like a nice blue collar kind of town.
I agree that this is tragic that a family would come to this, but I am having a hard time understanding how. If I am reading the post correctly he had a monthly income of over 10k, so he was making $120k a year. They had a reasonable mortgage relative to their income, and a reasonable car payment. Am I missing something here?
As a collector and shooter of guns...
I can tell you that the story says (unknown if true) that she used her husbands high powered rifle...
I am 6'4 with a hell of a wingspan and couldn't do it without using my toes..
i wonder how she pulled it off, again. very, very skeptical. And also is it normal for the people to still be in their house when they schedule a FC auction?
"Mr. Balderrama filed two bankruptcies during the last 42 months. But he had no idea his mortgage payments were in arrears? Are we supposed to believe that Carlene Balderrama forged her husband's signature on the BK filings and suborned the perjury of at least one attorney?"
It would not be unique. I was once consulted by a gentleman escorted out of his house by a sheriff that morning. His wife was handed his paycheck and handled all the bills. She hid all of the foreclosure notices and had filed at least one Petition on their behalf. Her attorney susbsequently faced ethics proceedings.
There are several issues brought up by the stories covering this news and your excellent post.
The most distressing is that it is reflective of societal discourse as a whole that journalists will use any evidence -- real, imagined and in some cases manufactured -- that advances the story that they are trying to tell.
Alas, while singular events are not in themselves, relevant to larger trends, they areuseful in weaving into a "mythology" that is constructed to support a predetermined outcome.
Tanta, thanks for your detective work. Somethings doesn't add up here, and the first person to cross examine would be the husband. I don't believe she could find an attorney for a false bankruptcy filing who risks his job for the money she could pay. Maybe charlie is right, and they pissed away money for gambling or drugs, and the foreclosure was just the moment they couldn't hide it any longer.
Great work, Tanta. I hope the reporter gets this info and crucifies the husband in print.
It would be nice if the reporter was then crucified by the editor, and the editor then resigned in shame, but I dream.
It always amazes me what you can find in the court records. After I got a PACER account (I was a John Doe defendant in a case brought, and later dropped, by a company that didn't like my critical comments on a message board), I used it to check the management teams of various heavily-promoted penny stocks. Between PACER and SEC records, there was a fairly high hit rate on the names.
And you thought Bush brought death and destruction to the MidEast only? This is a perfect example of the end result of the borrow and spend republican engineered ownership society. Enslavement of citizens to banks is the aim of supply side. Not ownership, certainly not "free markets".
Now I'm waiting for some right wing nutjob apologist here to blame the deceased.
My mother always kept financial information form our dad.
That isn't necessarily an uncommon phenomenon, and mortgage servicers deal with it fairly regularly. But sadly, that sort of thing went on many years before this bust and will undoubtedly go on long after it's over. It's turing this kind of case, if that's actually what it is, into a poster child for the majority of Americans facing FC that has me wound up.
One reason I wanted to look at the land records, btw, was to see if Carlene's name is even on the mortgage or deed. I'm not enough of an expert in BK law to know why, if she was a joint debtor, she wasn't also on the BK filings.
Maybe one of our generous attorney friends knows?
Very sad. As far as I can tell, a personal tragedy that is only tangentially connected with the financial mess. I do fear that suicides will be rising in upcoming months, however; "it never rains but it pours", and right now for a great many people it is pouring.
In 2005, there were 17,002 suicides by friearm in the US. 2,086 of them were women. How many used hunting rifles? I don't have the stat, but I'm guessing very few women could have pulled that trigger.
But even that is beside the point. Most suicides do not have so clear of a cause--they are usually associated with mental disorders, sometimes compounded by substance abuse.
The Globe is just sellin' ink here.
also, she is smart enough to handle the finances, file 3 bankruptcies that the husband doesnt know about , yet , has no clue that life insurance will not pay on a suicide...
remarkable.. i recommend rereading and looking at things you missed the first time..
And Freud's proof of this is... oh, yeah, he had none. It's entirely conjecture, and not very good conjecture at that
Well Freud may be mythology or maybe not. His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved." It has become faddish to diss him and his ideas. In any case he has been a very powerful cultural influence and I find it odd that people hate him and it so much. People who "hate" Freud may in fact fear his insights. I think those are undeniable. And blame for all sorts of things can be laid upon him conveniently.
"Surely you aren't going to suggest that the possibility that a fax sat on the printer for a half hour before anyone at PHH got a chance to read it makes them responsible here?"
No, I am asking a factual question about a missing hour.
I also would like to know why police "believe" that Balderramas had an ARM. Do MA police file faith-based death reports?
IMHO ,
WMBZ, you've lost touch blaming Bush and republicans... i hope thats misplaced sarcasm... you caznt blame a particular politacl person for this death...
lord!
Those of you who want to keep saying that the husband "should be a suspect" are, I guess, free to do so.
But I will delete any comment, as I just did, that flatly claims he's guilty. This blog is not here to libel anyone, and if you "know" what happened, you need to be talking to the Taunton police, not to us, about it.
It doesn't make sense to dwell on the foreclosure/suicide part.
Tanta's detective work shows the husband is probably lying, and is an obvious suspect.
That no one covers this angle is kind of incredible.
In India a similar story pans out as farmer suicides in a place called Vidarbha where people supposedly commit suicide for debt (from loan sharks and banks) of sums as low as $250. (Rs. 10,000) The government decided to provide "compensation" for such families - of the order of $2,500 per such incident.
Later, some investigators found that certain "suicides" were potentially committed for that reward, and not voluntarily either.
It is easy to blame debt which did consume a few people unfortunately; but specific incidents seem to show that the mask of the "overwrought rhetoric" is often abused to hide something less "exciting".
Mary Baker Eddy created Christian Science and Freud created "Jewish Science". I think Freud's science was better than Eddy's.
Sorry Schoolhouse but the suicide is not the issue. It's the system that led us all here and Mrs. Balderrama to suicide.
No, only in the first time of the policy, like one or two years. After that, suicide is sometimes treated as the fatal illness that is often is.
"That's why John was blown away"
She off'ed herself with a gun, right. Nice choice of words, BG. Could you have used a more ignorant and insensitive ohoice of words to describe his surprise?
Wow Peter, suicide an illness? I didnt know that. I thought it was more associated as the outcome of an illness....
I hesitate to wade into this, but am parking good sense on this side of the scene and am going to give it a shot.
First, off, I utterly despise the voyeristic and exploitative behavior the media (and more importantly, its readers) are exhibiting with this story. I get kind of sick at the armchair psychologists (must be one hell of a police chief out there in Danvers, an expert in both mental health matters and the financial markets, kinda of a renaissance guy. But what really sets me off is the fact that these stories are published because they get good readership. People who wouldn't dream of going to a bullfight because of the cruelty to the bull indulge themselves in the bathos of a situation to which they are a mere spectator.
All that said, I've got to throw up a counter to the Galbraith quote about the myth of suicides in 1929. In a passage in The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, Paul Johnson rather matter-of-factly notes a correlation between suicide rates and the economic cycle, and, if I recall correctly, postulates that, at least as far as heads of households are concerned, it may be explainable in terms of the complete lack of a social safety net in the European states with which he was mainly concerned.
On the other hand for every Ivor Krueger (the Swedish match king who shot himself in the Depression) there was at least one Samuel Insull (who was arrested off his yacht in the Aegean and brought back for trial--he beat the rap, but what he did led to new laws that most certainly would have kept him off the boat and in the slammer for the rest of his days).
Tanta, maybe you were wanting to head discussion toward a broader level than the specifics of the case, and if so I ask forgiveness, but the specifics of the story really are odd. Women are somewhat unlikely to use high powered guns to kill themselves, and few people use rifles to kill themselves (unwieldy). BUt more than anything, there is no real evidence the woman was particularly stressed about her situation--she hadn't been making payments in how long? She'd become quite accustomed to not making payments, it seems, so payments themselves couldn't be a stressor. It's all fishy.
That said, I do wonder if we're in for a sharp increase in escapism (more drinking, more drugs, etc). It would be interesting to know if there were any significant changes in US drug use during the Great Depression. Anyone out there have stats?
The cop should be shutting his mouth. I wonder if the reporter is attaching quotes to his name that aren't his.
The reason I say this is because I'm not yet 100% convinced this was a suicide.
A good example of why I read this blog. I can understand reporters not having the time or expertize to dig as deeply into a story as Tanta, but what is annoying is that the contradictions or things that don't make sense don't get dealt with. Plus the whole "story" angle - if it had happened on St Patricks day I'm sure the reporter would have worked green beer into it.
I wonder if the reporter is attaching quotes to his name that aren't his.
Most who have dealt with reporters will tell you that you are lucky if 50% of the words in quotation marks actually came out of your mouth.
From Macro Man :
"While it has yet to garner too many substantial headlines, the news that National Australia Bank (NAB) has written down its US RMBS portfolio to 10 cents on the dollar could send shockwaves through the financial system."
Any thoughts on this?
That's why we should nationalise the banking sistem. Even better, we should nationalise everything.
P.S. I have tenure.
"Any thoughts on this?"
That probably was suicide. Buying them, I mean.
I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?
Bob_in_MA: Don't all life insurance policies exclude suicides?
Life insurance is paid in nearly all suicides occurring 2 years or longer after the policy goes in effect.
"That said, I do wonder if we're in for a sharp increase in escapism (more drinking, more drugs, etc)."
Or the internet.
Hmmm. So many things do not sound right here. The income growth really jumped out as did the hunting rifle.
I think other news will gradually come out. The problem is will anyone be reading the back pages of whatever local paper publishes it.
For a media person with a black hole for a heart this is a great story. "If it bleeds; it leads" comes to mind here.
I don't know. Tanta, people like you are rare. They also burn out before their time and endup with their own set of problems. It is a mindset that is very much needed but the cost comes high.
I think that this is one of those cases where a police investigation could be useful. It's possible that it really was a suicide and the guy really was clueless. I've certainly seen couples that don't communicate about money. Heck, a buddy of mine has his wife convinced that he makes 20k/year less than he does which he is stashing away in preparation for divorcing her (he's been doing it for about 10 years now). It's also possible that the guy killed her and is covering it up.
The other thing I want to point out is that newspaper accounts of most things are usually wrong. This is at least what I've observed when I've been involved in news stories and have actual knowledge of what's going on.
"I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?"
The sad morals on this story, and many others, are the same.
Can you believe that?
There's just something that we don't understand going on here: drugs, gambling, an Imelda Marcos like shoe addiction. The paychecks were going SOMEWHERE if it wasn't to the mortgage and car payment. It might well be something off the books, but it's there. I mean it's a tragedy, but the facts don't seem to support the idea that predatory lending is at fault.
As for the difficulty of shooting oneself with a rifle, that's just silly. String, a spatula, a toe, it's just not difficult if you're motivated.
What I find astounding in Tantas post is not the media lies but that there is still this underlying assumption that the media should be telling the truth. This quaint notion that the media are engaged in a altruistic campaign of keeping American citizens well informed. But surely everybody knows by now that this goal is not in the medias real mission statement. They do not exist to enrich our minds but instead the media are deployed to crystallize public opinion into the shape suitable to their wealthy sponsors.
So while it is fun to see their lies taken apart, this type of criticism still serves to keep people watching since it reinforced the underlying myth of an objective, fair-minded media that is just a fingertip away if only we keep a close eye on it.
In fact the people who sponsor the media are seriously threatened by the housing crisis. The best solution for them would be to socialize all their foolishness on the backs of the America taxpayers. They instruct their media tools to start laying the emotional groundwork for the coming bailout. Thus the suicide stories. They serve a much higher purpose than simply being true or false.
Personally I think the more effective strategy to counter the media is to humiliate as a moron anyone who consumes mainstream media. But I find many people get very uncomfortable with that concept.
His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved."
Some of them can in fact be proved or disproved. For instance, Freud contended that sons identified with fathers because of an abiding fear of the father. In fact, from numerous studies we know that children identify more closely with parents who are warm and loving. And I don't diss Freud, I actually spend a lot of time defending him in the psych department I'm in. However, it amazes me that some people so mindlessly repeat aspects of his work that demonstrate so little truth. A colleague works with suicidal youths and I guarantee he'd scratch his head at the idea that these kids are displacing homicidal impulses. They're sad. They don't know how to deal with problems that they incorrectly view as insurmountable, but they're not homicidal. Lastly, Freud deserves a little dissing. He froze out anyone who didn't abide by his ideas. Jung was cast out for his questioning the authenticity of what were entirely theoretical constructs.
"Was the husband stashing their wealth at a go-go bar? The money had to go somewhere, either charity or illegal trades."
Or for an addiction: gambling, drugs, something like that. Nothing soaks up money like an addiction. And if one partner chooses to enable the other, it can go on a long time. And it's very common.
Not saying that it's the case, but this kind of issue is often the 800-pound elephant in the room for respectable households who inexplicably and habitually have money trouble.
"I don't mean to go away from the sadness of this story but I never would have thought you could miss 42(3 1/2 years) mortgage payments.Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?"
Others might know for sure but perhaps the bankruptcy filings stayed foreclosure.
Jim A.:
I would not be shocked to find out somebody has a coke habit. I mention coke because no drug can destroy a fortune like cocaine. It's amazing the amount of money one can go through with that stuff. That's why I've never touched it.
Tanta - wow. Great investigative work.
I am 6'4 with a hell of a wingspan and couldn't do it without using my toes..
First off, that would be an issue. But surely the police would have picked up on that?
Also, my life ins. policy covers suicide after 1 yr., so that may not be an issue.
As for anything else, there needs to be a full investigation before we can come to any conclusions. With a sociology background, I can guess marital issues, anger issues, maybe mental illness issues, but without a full investigation, how could any of us know?
I would just turn the page on that article with a "hmmm" and figure the legal system will get to the bottom of that one.
"Thanks for the additional research and clear thinking, Tanta."
Agreed.
You need to provide some evidence for the 1929 window-jumping myth, not simply repeat it.
Several well-publicized suicides did fulfill the stereotype. Winston Churchill, visiting New York, was awakened the day after Black Tuesday by the noise of a crowd outside the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. "Under my very window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade," he wrote.
Don't all life insurance policies exclude suicides?
No. There is a period - usually a year or six months - after initially signing the contract excluding suicide but no blanket outright prohibition or exclusion.
There are other prohibitions & exclusions for murder of the insured by the person who would benefit (or agent of the benefit recipient or a sponsored co-conspirator)...
Other than that the insurance company must pay off.
Is that many missed payments so extreme or does it happen often?
It certainly doesn't happen very often.
I suspect that the 42-month claim is not quite accurate.
It may well have been 42 months since the account was "current." But with at least two BK stays in there of many months each, plus the possibility that PHH put them on a repayment plan after the last dismissal, it's really hard to make any generalizations about what went down when.
Massachusetts is, certainly, a long FC state. On the other hand, it appears that the last BK was dismissed in October of 2006. If for some reason PHH had to start from scratch at that point with a new FC filing, it's not that hard to believe that the sale wasn't until this month.
If the BK filings are any guide to reality, these folks may have had some equity and should have had the ability to repay. If that's true, you can possibly see why PHH would have been willing to try to work things out or even come up with some forbearance period before finally giving up and foreclosing.
from numerous studies we know that children identify more closely with parents who are warm and loving...
Well these studies make claims that cannot be "proved" as can lab experiments...any more than one can "prove" or "disprove" Freud. Psychology is not a "science" like Math or Physics, etc., however many "studies" are done.
Tanta-
I believe that you are reading too much into this. John had multiple BK filings because once you BK filing is dismissed, you have to wait six months before you can file again to achieve the coveted "Automatic Stay" privelege allowing you to stay in your house. It may take six months or longer for the bank to get relief from the automatic stay.
Both Carlene and John knew the game. I was once in a CRE deal where the debots flip-flopped BK filings every six months to get th automatis stay.
This went on for almost THREE years. They never made a payment in that subsequent time frame. One would have to be entirely naive to believe John's story.
Once an individual files a BK, Chapter 7 or 13, I generally want absolutley nothing to do with that person. They know the system and can milk it for all its worth. With an indiviual like that, every transaction is like a drug deal. A cash on the table type situation no matter how small the denominations.
Can we have a pony story next?
jim, I don't want to make this into a psychology blog, but your comments describe well a defensive strategy of Freud's apologetics. You write:
Many of his ideas have been tested in field studies and have indeed been disproved.
That is an ad hominem argument, to discuss the critic instead of the critique. From there it seems only a short way to call Freud's insights undeniable - didn't you first agreed upon that Freud may be mythology and his ideas could not proven? The worst with Freud's apologist is the inconsistency of their various statements, but maybe that is not surprising, considering their source and his inconsistencies.
I agree. Considering the actual falseness of many of his statements, I hope his influence will decrease further.
Now that people are killing themselves over bad mortgages and each day another horrific story comes out about foreclosure ghost towns, how can it be that:
"Builders trade higher following new-home sales data"
HOW CAN IT BE?
Galbraith Shmalbraith. I doubt he had access to better information than we do now, and as I pointed out in a comment last week -- the government department that collects and publishes suicide stats is still stuck in 2005.
People need to talk to their parents about their problems. Samueli did, and voila, he came back from the dead.
Thanks for all of your research.
jo6pac
Is it possible the cop-quotes are deliberate misinformation fed to the media, and that the husband is, in fact, a suspect?
Many of his ideas have been tested in field studies and have indeed been disproved
"Tested" in "field studies"????
How would you "test" a question of "parental" identification? You can't run "experiments" as you do with Physics and Chemistry.
linear algebra: In a passage in The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, Paul Johnson rather matter-of-factly notes a correlation between suicide rates and the economic cycle...
Actually, I believe Galbraith notes that suicides did rise some as the depression got going. The myth he disputes is specific to the stock market crash in October 1929. Most of the household losses came only later. So there's no real conflict there.
YouTube
- Steely Dan - Only A Fool Would Say That
Steely Dan Only a fool would say that.
Peter, I know he's fallen out of fashion, but can you provide evidence that his ideas have been disproved in field studies? The important ideas, I mean, not the ones that try to convince me that my cigar is a choo-choo train.
the actual falseness of many of his statements (re Freud).
This is just as much the opinion of those who claim his statements are false as are his statements in the first place. You can't prove Freud "false" any more than you can "prove" him correct.
Is it possible the cop-quotes are deliberate misinformation fed to the media, and that the husband is, in fact, a suspect?
That sounds a little bit too much like a police procedural TV drama to me, but I guess it's possible.
Then the question becomes: will Bruce Marks apologize for his "predatory lender" comment?
We should keep in mind as well that if this is a small town, the husband might be well acquainted with the local law enforcement.
You folks are more naive than these 2.
There are a lot of uneducated laborers in Taunton/Fall River/New Bedford and they do have the highest foreclosure rate in Mass, but the timing on this is just fishy.
The husband's statements that the wife handled the finances, and he had no idea, really pegs the BS meter. I hate to add to the speculation, but here goes: I think hubby was somehow making money dissappear and the wife couldn't cope and couldn't make herself assert herself or leave.
Tanta, thank you once again. It has come to the point where when I see one of your ubernerd pieces appear on the website, I stop, get a cup coffee, and come back to enjoy it.
I'm especially glad that you chose this situation to investigate. I read this article in the Boston Globe myself, and was struck by a few of the things that other posters here have mentioned -- the three bankruptcies, the high-powered rifle, and the assumption by the cops that this was an adjustable rate mortgage gone bad.
I suspect in the end we will find out that it was more mental illness than financial distress. But I do hope that someone will follow up -- The Herald?-- and let us know what has been going on.
The seamy stories are probably just starting. Relationships that have money problems are often less than happy (understatement).
I am sure we will see stories in the next few years involving other eddifying topics but based on the same reason. The mom who had to become a prostitute to save her home. The kid who sold her toys. Various murder for money schemes.
Good times and money clothe a lot of borderline people. Take that away and what is revealed is never very pretty.
Tanta: "Been disproved"? It's "been disproven," right?
Wow, Tanta, hell of a job researching this tragedy. Glad I forwarded you the link.
One point worthy of further scrutiny is was the family, individually or together, regulars at the nearby Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun casinos. There has been a surge in reported fallout in Southeren New England from problem gamblers - suicides, embezzlement, petty crimes, foreclosures.
It would be nice if reporters would "report" instead of simply pushing an agenda or story line
While this story certainly seems to be some sort of tragedy, the most salient thing to me is that the reporting on this story (if it can be called that) is perfectly representative of the decline in journalism in this country. The willingness to avoid asking extremely obvious questions in order to maintain the pre-determined "narrative" is just par for the course, irrespective of whether the subject is crime, law, business, sports, economics, or politics. I've said this before here and I'll say it again: the large majority of so-called "journalists" today are amazingly lazy, incurious, sloppy, and uninformed, and this is dramatically accentuated in broadcast journalism. Bloggers like Tanta and CR put in more real work in a given day than your average "professional journalist" does in a week, and we're mightily better off for it.
Her death has not been officially ruled a suicide yet, per this.
Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol District Attorneys Office, said, We might look at finances if we thought there was foul play, but all signs point to it being a suicide. Well see where the investigation takes us.
So, they are still investigating. And yes, I do find it strange that a person committing suicide would bother to write a note instructing their mortgage servicer to use life insurance proceeds to payoff a mortgage.
Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated. And I've run across a number of instances where a borrower has, in fact offed himself. Still, never a fax. I have, been told vagueish threats in the course of collection calls. Never thought to report them to police, though. I probably should have. Bravo to PHH for taking this one seriously.
Mr Antibiotic and Miss Painkiller are getting to me. Purple ponies with fuzzy fur are the best. Naptime!
CSI Real Estate.
screenplay : Tanta
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow I see on the front page of New York Times: "Dennis Kucinich calls for an immediate investigation of the Bush Administration in the death of ..."
How would you "test" a question of "parental" identification? You can't run "experiments" as you do with Physics and Chemistry.
jim | 07.25.08 - 12:55 pm | #
So... you can't run psych experiments? Wow. I'll have to tell the psych department to stop. Jim says it's a waste of time.
The couple's income sounds high - with the foreclosure and economic problems in that area, plumbers and other local tradespeople are finding it difficult to get work since prospective customers don't have any money to spend on their own homes. Also, this area faced similar problems when the 'Massachusetts Miracle' blew up in their faces [late 80's-early 90's] so they've seen this before. Thanks, Tanta, the story doesn't 'hang,' although the local zeitgeist has fully incorporated hard times.
The desire to find victimized borrowers of this nature reminds me of those "perils of Pauline" serials. The villain and victim are stereotyped in a such a ham fisted way that there's no room for the pertinent details. There's a fundamental misunderstanding of how borrowers were "victimized" and how behaviours for both borrower and lenders created this crisis.
Where are the citations of field studies that disprove freud's ideas?
It's taking too long to find them.
How do they know she was the one that faxed the suicide note?
Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated.
I want to make it clear that I do not deny that. I do not deny that people in terrible financial troubles killed themselves in the Great Depression, or that it is happening now.
My problem is that PHH is being outright called a "predator." Maybe they are, but this case doesn't prove that.
My guess is that someone at PHH erred on the side of caution, and probably spent the next hour waiting to be embarassed when the cops called back to say there was no suicide and that the borrower was just being a drama queen. Good on that person for taking the risk of being wrong.
Good story, Tanta.
I have posted before on the "inductive" press, taking one salacious "anecdote" and spinning a pre-determined yarn, and I have usually tried to state my disapproval of the technique with some (small) attempt at humor ... but this one just isn't funny.
I agree with the poster above, who compared the current clime with bullfighting, or some other "bloodsport."
Someone post a link to Don Henley's song, "Dirty Laundry."
In any case he has been a very powerful cultural influence and I find it odd that people hate him (Freud) and it so much.
I don't hate Freud, but his nephew
was vermin who still holds far more influence over our lives than Siggy ever did.
As it is friday, I would like to thank the many of you who have decided to bash or support Freud. It is nice for a change not to have to read or listen to Olberman-Orielly, McCain- Obama, Bush-Everyone that reads Kos, AGW- Global cooling arguements....
Freud.... Thanks for inspriring us...you momma's boy!
I would have just held an open house and held the relitters hostage. Who am I kidding, relitters are no bargaining chip. Glad I rent.
With the income levels involved here, I would posit that there was no inability to pay, but a sheer unwillingness to do so, unless there was some off-the-books drain on this income, like drug use or gambling.
I'm sure some intrepid reporter will find out and splash it all over the front page just in time for the wake and funeral.
Tanta, et al.,
has anyone 'spoken' to the reporter for the boston globe?
he might be encouraged to be a better reporter.
Good post. Though you don't weigh in either way, one part of the situation is, if not suspicious, at least unlikely.
Women are half as likely to commit suicide as men:
Why Women Are Less Likely Than Men To Commit Suicide
And those who do are about a third as likely to do it with a gun:
404 - Sonke Gender Justice Network
(article says 12% vs 88%, but you have to recalculate for joint probability, since women are less likely to commit suicide.)
But more directly to your point, yes, it is amazing how little due diligence is done by mainstream media.
(sigh) Who owns the Boston Globe?
A friend of mine with a good managerial income and a husband whose cocaine addiction she enables has gone through 2 bankruptcies and 2 foreclosures.
It's devastating to a family and to a family's wealth. The way additional income was disappearing in this story suggests that some addiction may well have been involved.
maybe this will be a "good" urban legend. Maybe enough people will look at this story and say,"I'd try to do something else, instead of suicide." So that when in fact they do face the same dilemma, they'll take a different path.
BTW- the comment about someone hiding income from their wife for 10 years to prepare for a divorce,...10 years?
This is exactly the typical journalistic vampirism that drives the near universal disgust for the MSM. Stick a microphone and a camera in any tragedy, make up some trash quotes, anything goes as long as it gets in the paper/on the 'news' first. We don't really know if there is a cop, we won't get anything about the real circumstances, but I guarantee you there are six or ten blow-dried dickheads rehearsing the wrap line in front of cameras already:
"We may never know exactly went through Mrs. Balderama's mind, however this much is certain: stories about companies causing misery for people makes our advertisers very happy."
S&P Just put Fannie and Freddie on credit watch negative.
I hope they're bringing in a forensic accountant. I also hope the police don't rule out murder and that they look at everyone both the husband and wife owed money to. Especially if someone shows up on the door step and says "Sorry to hear about the wife..but I heard you came into a little insurance money...how about that $6 grand you owe me?"
did i read it right that John was/is a mortgage broker and his income kept rising? I imagine now or this last year he has had very little income, it does sound as if they played the BK system as Quincy stated to at least some degree. But it would seem that maybe fate and fortune collided, and the system he played turned on them both. As they actually may have had no real income lately to pay regular bills. It also doesnt sound like an ARM 1) if he was a broker 2) the arrears of not paying and readjustments did not increase the 2nd and 3rd BK arreears payments enough. Seems like it added minisuly to the amaounts that and the increase in salary over the years to , what, 06? 280 dollar a month 4-5 year note is a 10K car with mediocre interest rate. 1700 a month mortage what does that come out to on a 30 yr fixed...he also put 13K into the house as a down payment, knowing they were gonna scam the system? Maybe he bought the house then became a broker , where he learned the systems..
seems he may have been more predatory than PHH...
i dont know if the case of carline balderramad is suicide or murder, but
there were suicides related to the collapse of enron...
some by people who had lost their retirement savings...
others who held themselves responsible for the debacle..
to get a sense of how sad this is, and brace for more see the suicide letter of cliff baxter of enron infamy
(note, not graphic nor specific just a plea for forgiveness)
404 Error, No such article | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
these are gonna be hard times...lets not loose a grip on our humanity
My problem is that PHH is being outright called a "predator."
I wholeheartedly agree. PHH might end up feeling like Richard Jewell. Just shows that no good deed goes unpunished.
educated by SHR- RTFA. Widower John is a plumber.
When this goes to court Mr Greenspan should be a defendant.
did i read it right that John was/is a mortgage broker and his income kept rising?
No, you did not. John is a plumber.
In defense of the cop who was "making claims about the terms of the mortgage loan," the actual quote is:
The chief said he did not know, however, if the family would be able to collect on the policy in the event of a suicide.
It may well have been that the journalist asked "could the family collect on the policy in the event of the suicide?" And the cop said "how the &*$@ should I know?!" Yet this is how it gets reported. So I wouldn't beat up on him about playing lawyer. I think the other complaints are more valid, however.
It should be recognized that while a media frenzy cannot transform anecdote into data, U.S. Census longitudinal numbers on death rates by cause do show increases in deaths by self-inflicted injury at periods associated with recessions, with the exception of the tech-bubble led recession in the earlier part of the decade. I'm certain any statisticians in the house can tell us how significant the association is.
I am in fact curious about the social changes that take place under changing economic conditions (like increasing numbers of foreclosures, for example).
Are these changes primarily marked by people committing suicide? Seems unlikely.
However, it does not seem implausible to me that an increase in the number of adult suicides could be a consequence of personal or social upheavals due to things like rising foreclosures.
If the question is, "What is really happening out there in America?"
Then, obviously, "Everyone is committing suicide!" is the wrong answer.
A right answer, however, might be: "A rising number of foreclosures is exacting a personal and social cost, in some cases resulting in suicide."
But, really, reading the newspapers, I rarely recognize anything that resembles the experience that I have as a person living in this society.
Agreed that the whole thing stinks to high heaven, but I can't figure out why. For another suicide of a predatory lender...
Mortgages Ltd. CEO death ruled suicide
Mortages Ltd. Chairman Scott Cole's death has been ruled a suicide by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner, a death that sent the family company founded by his father, Charles, into bankruptcy.
Coles overdosed on a combination of alcohol, opiate Oxycodone and the sleep prescription drug Ambien, according to the report. His blood alcohol level was 0.24 percent.
Coles, 48, was found in the master bedroom of his home in the Arcadia-area of Phoenix during the afternoon of Monday, June 2. He was found lying in bed, wearing a black tuxedo complete with cufflinks, a white tie, black socks but no shoes, a watch and his wedding ring. He had a cardboard picture of his wife Ashley Coles next to him. There was also a copy of an email with a Shakespeare quote found on the bed.
In total, the company said its assets are worth about $352 million, and lists liabilities of almost $334 million.
Is this banking accounting where the liabilities is what they've taken in and the assets are what they've lent out?
my bad..
I misread this T.
"In the first BK, filed just over a year and half after the purchase of the home and a year after the first foreclosure attempt, Balderrama's debt-to-income ratio as a mortgage lender (new line) would calculate it was 41%, including the Chapter 13 payment.
i read it as "..N2D ratio as a ML.."
A bit macabre, but if people are genuinely interested in mortgage related deaths and suicide, I think the most effective way of tracking this is by creating a google news alert with the requisite keywords.
Does anyone have access to North Bristol Registry of Deeds?
We have near 400 visitors right now. Methinks one or two should have that access at least.
the years beginning the great depression saw about a 20% increase in suicide in America.
see Roosevelt historical website for data, go 4 para down
404 Error, No such article | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
CNN has picked up the story.
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
the story from the editor point of view is the " foreclosure pain" the story is not about the finances of this family and what level their checking account happens to be.
Most of not all the comments getting out via the editor regarding this story then will be focused on foreclsosure pain with the underlying message that YOU may be next.
A bit macabre, but if people are genuinely interested in mortgage related deaths and suicide, I think the most effective way of tracking this is by creating a google news alert with the requisite keywords.
But what would that tell us?
We might get some data on how many news reports there are.
We might get some evidence that people who are facing FC kill themselves. We might get some evidence that people with long-term psychological difficulties end up killing themselves after a terrible stress, which could be FC or getting fired or getting divorced or any number of things.
Even if we had evidence that, if not for the FC these folks would still be alive, that tells us nothing about the cupability or lack thereof of the lender.
I guess I'm the only person (besides Shnaps) willing to be a shill for PHH today, but the problem I am having is not with the idea that people in FC sometimes commit suicide. The problem I am having is that these reporters never questioned the implication that IT IS PHH'S FAULT. Both Marks of NACA and this babbling cop were both allowed to imply that Balderrama was the victim of a predatory loan. And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case.
barely writes:
When this goes to court Mr Greenspan should be a defendant.
you are so right
re reading greenspans testimony before congress about surpluses beyond what the eye can see and the justifications for deficit spending makes me puke.
the absurdly low, and erring long duration of low interest rates, really, when you think about it, was an act of treason...specifically designed to weaken the federal government and it's oversight and regulatory capacity.
all these neo-con -Rand followers believed what grover norquist said..."i want to shrink gov till it is so small i can drown it in my bathtub..."
this is what we get...damage to civil socienty
Grover Norquist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Funny, MER off limits for neked shrts but still getting clobbered, only more consistent drag lower. Maybe less inclined to cover since getting the shorts is becoming more of a hassle. I guess Mr Cox gets a more consistent downdraft instead of waves of selling. Picking poison flavors...
Both Marks of NACA and this babbling cop were both allowed to imply that Balderrama was the victim of a predatory loan.
Or both sources possible victims of the reporter's own bias? Leading questions, imaginative quote editing?
Oh my God.
That CNN report is a horror.
"Mr. Balderrama says he plans to stay in the house."
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
Or both sources possible victims of the reporter's own bias?
Watch the CNN video and then ask me if I think Marks just got led on by a reporter.
I hope we don't have to have 400 posts on this shit
Feeling aren't facts.
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
Nothin', I mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free
luxurious set hair
oh yeah?
suggestion
go
wash
rinse
repeat
Welcome to Bristol Registry of Deeds
to the deeds....
Suicide and the great depression..
I would not trust any stats on suicide from the 20's 30's or 40's. Suicide was a taboo subject back then. If you were Roman Catholic, a double no no. The police were more friendly back then especially in the smaller towns. Coroners were know to falsify death certificates for the benefit of the family.
Ross
good point
but i would guess the coroners and police were as they were up to...and a little after the GD so at least we could generalize a trend
but agreed the numbers are not solid.
I like to see Wall Street pigs to commite suicide not ordinary people.
this will win an investigative award for journalism from his peers i'm sure
Tanta:
I admire you for your moral stances,increasingly rare in our times.
The entwining of news and entertainment in our media is all but complete. And misery of all types but especially novel miseries seem to entertain most of all.
Then there is the 15 seconds of fame via a sound-bite of witnesses or "experts" (like the cop.)
We are a nation of persons who are to quote TS Eliot "Hollow Men". Empty inside we try to fill it with material proofs of our worth. Misery of others is a vehicle for feeling better about oneself.
If I said that trust in self begins with trust in God I suppose I would be going too far So
'nuf said
It's entirely possible that the wife filed a pro se bankruptcy in the husband's name and therefore bypassed the need for an attorney. That would account for the failure of the putative debtor's failure to show up at the hearings. The bankruptcy clerks will usually catch the multiple filings and alert the court. Dismissal will quickly follow a motion by the trustee.
Insurance usually pays in the event of the insured's suicide if the policy has been in effect for two years.
Tanta, this is a fine bit of investigative reporting so far, but I'll bet you a martini there's more to it than has so far surfaced. A sad story.
Damn, I'm defending PHH. This bites.
"My guess is that someone at PHH erred on the side of caution, and probably spent the next hour waiting to be embarassed when the cops called back to say there was no suicide and that the borrower was just being a drama queen."
I'll agree. I handle short sales in a bubble market and I have seen hardship letters that read like a suicide note. One I believe will be if the property goes back to the bank.
I have seen this story play out 5 years ago where the wife hid the creditor problems from the husband to cover a gambling debt, while at the same time embexxling from her employer, a relative of mine. She died of a heart attack and it all came to light. The doctor attributed the heart attack to the stress of hiding everything and the fear of getting caught.
With this story though, blaming the lender is absurd.
One question maybe someone could clarify for me - am I misreading the bk filings? Was the husband in the mortgage biz?
Gotta love Marks' shirt. And CNN does mention that the wife had power of attorney for her husband, so that is a useful tidbit of info.
If the BK papers are correct, and they were grossing 10k a month, then there is something else going on here.
I didn't make it clear that the husband might not have been aware of the filings.
Before blogs, I used to read the papers, watch the news on TV etc, and assume I was being told the truth. Or at least something closely approximating the truth.
Now I'm liberated. I only read/watch the MSM for entertainment value. If I want news, I know where to look in the blogosphere. And who to trust for the facts, and the real story.
I wonder how long it will be before the grand fromages in the MSM wake up and realize that their business model is dead because no-one trusts them anymore. Taking the example of the music industry, it'll probably be a very long time. And most of the industry will have disappeared already.
All of our news is delivered by "Journalism" majors -- i.e., people with a degree in nothing. They do not even how to write particularly well... But I expect them to make some minuscule effort to do what they are paid for; i.e., investigate.
At least, I used to. It strains credibility that Tanta can sit at a computer for an hour and present more relevant facts about this story than the entire U.S. media can in days. What a horrible statement about that profession... And what a credit to Tanta's skills.
Tanta --
Thank you. This is one of your best yet. (I hope you accept my statements as a compliment, despite their source.)
Tanta writes: "And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case."
Completely agree.
I'm curious about the reporter who reported on it, Michael Levenson. He covers almost everything, from tragedy to sports to Mitt Romney. Lots of Mitt Romney.
Bann-is-ster the barr-is-ter...go dude..
On the CR website ad says:
Fixed Rate Mortgage Loans
$200,000 for Only $1,232/Month Fixed Rate for Life at LendingTree
WOW for life i'm only 20 thats 60 years of payments? what kind of interest is that?
wait till nancy grace gets this case...
And wouldn't it be bizarre if the reporter, Michael Levenson, was related to the Head of Research at GimmeCredit, another Levenson?
Ok, too much coffee. Time to go.
Did Carlene have a job? Her lack of employment might explain the free time she has to shop, gamble, buy drugs, or whatever she was spending the money on. With that income and mortgage payment, there's no reason they shouldn't have been able to keep up.
There are so many unanswered questions here.
Thanks Tanta for exposing alot that doesn't quite add up. Thank God someone is doing their due diligence these days.
Sigh. Of course I meant "...know how to write particularly well" and "strains credulity".
But then, I am not paid to write.
maybe it was QVC
Thanks you for posting, Tanta. It means my Tanta-health-o-meter goes to ++
The story is unfortunate but a complete mash up. As others have commented, there's so much that doesn't ad up, any comment I'd make would only add to the mud.
Suicides are covered after a specified period stated in the policy; 6mo, 1yr, 2yrs. After the period, it's assumed that the suicide was caused by recent events, and the policy wasn't taken out with suicide in mind. I know this because I've asked.
"High-powered" rifles are anything larger than a .22 in most people's minds. Some (carbines) are indeed short enough to place under the chin and activate with the thumb. This too is not conjecture.
The one hypothesis I haven't read in all this speculation is the most obvious to me. Three years is a very long time, measured a day at a time. (My first impression was that she had no idea they were at the end of the line until Mr.B told her the foreclosure was THAT afternoon.) But that didn't make enough sense on further consideration. The end of the line was just that. Three years of machinations (plotted together with Mr.B) came to naught. She broke down and killed herself.
The "predatory lenders" meme a good hook for the reporter. Sells papers. The full story (clarifying the hundreds of speculations posted above) will be lost in Section C, Page 12, IF it EVER gets written.
Similar non sequitur frame:
VT socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has been telling this story for months:
"I have heard from families where both mom and dad are working, and because of the price of home heating oil they were unable to adequately heat their home last winter and their child ended up in the hospital with pneumonia."
Except, as medical science has known since the 19th Century, cold does not cause pneumonia.
Object not found!
One Simple Question
Show rundown for 7/25/2008 | Here and Now
It appears from the paper that the husband was self-employed and if the wife did forge his name to the BK petition, the income information contained in it was probably false as well.
Tanta writes:
A Shnaps) willing to be a shill for PHH today, but the problem I am having is not with the idea that people in FC sometimes commit suicide. The problem I am having is that these reporters never questioned the implication that IT IS PHH'S FAULT. Both Marks of NACA and this babbling cop were both allowed to imply that Balderrama was the victim of a predatory loan. And there is ZERO evidence presented that that is the case.
The role of newspapers/media outlets is not to be objective, or tell the whole truth, its only to sell ad space. Its called a story, they develop and create stories for the sheeple to feel angry, sad, happy and have some kind of strong reaction with the intent of selling more media/newspapers. In this case the story is middle class pain caused by foreclosure.
Media is a business.
What I find ironic is that with modern information technologies it's so much easier for a reporter to do factual digging sitting at a desk than it ever was in the past, yet there seems to be no real effort to use those resources. If Tanta can spend the time to look at the court records from her remote perch (in the sense that she's nowhere near the Massachusetts bankruptcy court), is it too much to ask a reporter to move a mouse across a desk to retrieve some actual evidence? This kind of event (Tanta, or some other non-reporter, doing the reporter's job) is becoming increasingly common. As others have noted, the truth may be out there, but you're sure not likely to find it in a newspaper or a mainstream medial outlet. Which is why I read blogs before I look at newspaper sites.
Another sad statistic soon forgotten and deserves a place in the blindingly glossy new Bush library at SMU. Personally, I could never kill myself while living in Massachusetts. The lobster is too good. Tanta will like this one...
Dallas Morning News
Numbers don't lie: Girls as good at math as boys, study finds
Numbers don't lie: Girls as good at math as boys, study finds |
News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News
| News: Education
I didn't make it clear that the husband might not have been aware of the filings.
I'm not in the mood to back through all those BK filings, but at least one of them was not pro se. There is at least one response to the trustee's motion to dismiss from an attorney representing Mr. B (begging for another extension).
I guess Mr. B could have been unaware of these BKs back in 2004-2006. But he couldn't have been unaware of them yesterday, when it was all over the newspapers. Is it really possible that no reporter has asked him for a comment on that?
And now we're told Mrs. B had a POA? Why? That makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.
You get a POA if the party in question is overseas or sick or mentally incompetent. Unless Mr. B hasn't seen his wife in years and lives in Timbuktu, why would he need to give her a POA?
And he would, indeed, need to grant one. I can't wait to hear his explanation for that.
The POA thing really seals it for me. If the DA's office doesn't investigate this as a financial crime, they're nuts.
A couple of random thoughts from Mass.:
For many reasons, reading this story filled me with hate. Sorry, but there it is.
Tanta, just be honest and admit you're a miserable bitch and you love to defend banks and lenders over people. You don't give a shit about that woman who committed suicide.
Thank you UB, that was a fine addition!
Re: Ok, too much coffee. Time to go.
Would be mighty suspicious if they've been neglecting their mortgage, their car payments, but making each and every life insurance premium.
I truly think this post ought to be forwarded to the applicable police dept, in terms of a "hey, if this helps..." kinda thing.
this is just outstanding research.
I assume you tried that site first?
I did. I spent nearly 45 minutes trying all kinds of ways to get to these records, until I gave up.
I believe that POA's are more common than you think. I have one for my wife and she has one for me. Those things can come in mighty handy.
Obviously it is a matter of who do you trust.
markel concur with #3 above, everyone, MSM and bloggers etc, say poor people that were tricked, where wilol they stay?
I say where did they come from?
Aaron,
Are you perplexed by the plotline of the Cat in the Hat series?
rtfp, over and over until you get it.
If the wife was listed on the deed, she would need to be a party to the bk proceeding. If she was on the deed, and was not a party, the debt could not be discharged.
The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party.
Tanta I'm shocked. Look at that video again. The sound bite from Marks only speaks in generalities and could be in reply to any question of predatory lending.
Yes, I believe he would be comfortable blaming PHH, but that's beside the point, you're slamming him on this clip?
I've watched that part three times because I can't belive it was not my carelessness.
lama,
hey wait a minute, i love suess... i learned a lot from him...
Sorry about that. But don't worry. I'm sure another idiotic RE estate story will come out of the Globe soon, giving you an opportunity to retrieve mortgage docs from a less pathetic county registry.
I have one for my wife and she has one for me. Those things can come in mighty handy.
They can come in mighty handy in an emergency. They are a touch of a problem when they are used to enable one person to never have to look at his own bank statements for six years.
I do not actually believe that a fairly reputable servicer like PHH would have failed to ever, over all those years, place a single collection call to Mr. B. at work. They were not getting anywhere with Mrs. B, after all. I do not believe they would have agreed to make no collection efforts against a co-borrower just because the other borrower claims to have a POA.
Yeah, POAs are not uncommon within a family (including my own). They allow you to be certain who will make medical and financial decisions for you should you suddenly become incapacitated.
That part is not suspicious. The rest of it is.
Tanta --
I do not believe they would have agreed to make no collection efforts against a co-borrower just because the other borrower claims to have a POA.
You are implying that you believe the husband is lying. Fair enough.
Can you imagine any reason why he would want to lie?
Agree, Tanta. A good old fashioned CPA could probably part the mist and let the sun shine.
Sorry for the interruption, but I just wanted to acknowledge the passing of this remarkable person.
Randy Pausch, Author
Of 'Last Lecture,' Dies at 47 (WSJ)
I have acquaintances who work in the trades as electriciana and plumbers who feel that they married up, and their wives are better equipped to handle all the financial complications in their lives. They're very trusting and probably correct in their assumptions. If you can't trust your spouse, why bother being married? I'm sure it would have been simple for the wife to convince him to sign a POA so he didn't have to deal with the paperwork.
The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party.
So since PHH doesn't seem to have done that, can I conclude that she probably wasn't on the deed?
If she wasn't on the deed, she did not execute the mortgage either (she might have signed to waive dower rights, but not as a mortgagor).
If she wasn't on the mortgage, I doubt she was ever on the note. It sounds like she was a homemaker with no income. Why obligate her on the note if she doesn't own the house?
So, then, if she wasn't on the note, PHH could not have been collecting against her. They would HAVE TO have made an effort to talk to Mr. B; he would have been the only one good for the debt.
Still makes no real sense to me.
lama,
Actually the Cat in the Hat is the blueprint for Bernanke and the Fed - well, actually "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" - the Cat keeps pulling alphabet soup out of his hat (sound familiar yet?) which only results in spreading the problem he is trying to solve more widely, until..."VOOM!"
There are accounts in 1929/30 of various bankers shooting themselves (not jumping out of windows) etc. I have no idea how common it was. Given the state of journalism in the 30s, I'd say either claims of mass suicides or Galbraith's revisionism both remains unproven.
That said, the suicide rate increased substantially during the Great Depression. I think it's safe to guess that some of these were people who lost their farm/house.
The Great Depression
Suicide: eMedicine Psychiatry
An interesting aside - govt. relief in the 30s is linked to a reduction in the suicide rate:
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~fishback/Births,%20Deaths%20and%20New%20Deal%20Relief%20working%20paper.pdf
"They would HAVE TO have made an effort to talk to Mr. B"
All she would have had to do is say, "This is his wife". She could have also sent the POA to them and they would have spoken to her.
Dirty Laundry
...it's interesting when people die...
...POAs are not uncommon within a family
Depends on what you mean by common. The presence of a POA when there is no obvious need for one is a red flag.
i should have been a little more careful - her name on the deed is irrelevant. the issue is if her name is on the note, because that's the debt instrument... but the point is essentially the same.
also, on the POA issue. if, the very first time that the bank/servicer/collection agent called, she picked up the phone, and said that she has POA over her husband's debts (and provided a copy of the legal documents), they would probably deal with her exclusively from that point on. they wouldn't necessarily know whether the husband was, at that time, incapacitated, but it would be easier for them to keep interacting with the party who has legal POA.
Can you imagine any reason why he would want to lie?
Sure I can. This whole story makes it all his wife's fault for not telling him what was going on. For not making any plans for what they would do when the FC sale happened. For leaving her alone in the house on the day of the FC sale to deal with it all by herself. He gets to blame all the financial troubles of the family on his wife.
Did anyone notice there was also a 24-year-old son living in the house who I guess didn't catch on to any of the FC stuff or collection calls either?
I noticed that, since the news article says the kid has a job but for some reason the BK filings claim him as a dependent, beginning in 2004 when he was 20. That was actually why I looked at the documents to see if there was any sign of disability or medical issues there. Nope.
I really don't care to try to speculate too much about what went on in that household. I do, though, think that even if it all went down as Mr. B and his friend and the cop claim it did, this is not typical of how most American households experience FC.
Tanta, explain something to me, why exactly are you digging through the public records of a dead woman? I know, I know, you want to prove that she committed suicide because she was "mentally ill" or just another "degenerate debtor". And yes I know you love to defend banks, because banks are more important than people, in your mind...
But do us all a favor and drop the fucking pretense that you give a shit about anyone, or that woman, her family, her problems and her suicide. You're a ghoul and a bank defender, hell you're probably a republican as well.
I just saw Bruce Marks on Bloomberg, flogging this story. Disgusting.
All she would have had to do is say, "This is his wife". She could have also sent the POA to them and they would have spoken to her.
Really?
I cannot imagine any even marginally competent mortgage servicer agreeing to refrain from contacting the debtor directly just because the wife has a POA. I would have to look into that--if the guy were incapacitated or missing, that would eff up my foreclosure pretty thoroughly. You haven't lived til you've had to FC against a conservatorship or an estate. The servicer would be crazy not to find out why the POA is being used. And the obvious thing to do is call Mr. B at work. And if there's a plumber without a cell phone these days, I'll be a touch surprised.
Could PHH be that dumb? In all those years?
Increased US drug use during the Depression? Best to ask how well bootleggers did during/after the crash. IIRC, they didn't suffer.
Don't have time to read the zillion worthy comments on the thread right now, but this sounds to me like somebody had a drug or gambling problem. Otherwise, where did the money go?
Look peeps,
None of you know the details relating to anything and comments here about a person and a suicide, are out of place and at this point, taking a morbid story and sensationalism a bunch of retarded banter -- you should all be ashamed to be here and it would not shock me to see this retardation expand to 600 comments on total bullshit -- just like mine...please move on ASAP!!
Standard & Poors put some of its ratings on Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) on watch for a possible downgrade Friday, saying that the bailout bill pending in Congress could increase the risks facing holders of the mortgage giants subordinated debt and preferred stock.
Although there is still ambiguity on the part of regulatory authority as it applies to how nonsenior creditors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be treated if the U.S. Treasury ever acted on its three-point liquidity plan, the language in HR 3221 increases the likelihood that subordinated debtholders and
preferred stockholders would face greater subordination risk, analyst Victoria Wagner wrote. That is to say, investors in the companies could find themselves wiped out in the event of a bailout - a fear that drove shares in Fannie and Freddie to 17-year lows earlier this month.
S&P affirmed the firms triple-A senior unsecured debt ratings while putting their double-A minus preferred stock, subordinated debt and risk-to-the-government ratings on watch for a possible downgrade.
guys, please.
PoA or no PoA, do you actually believe that her husband, who lives in the same house, really had "no idea" that they were behind on payments?
He never answered the telephone?
never asked "who called, Honey?"
never opened the mail?
never got the mail from the mailbox?
never had an 'investor' show up at the door who was shown the road o riches in buying 'distressed' real estate by the likes of Alexis McGee?
Carlton Sheets?
Robert fucking Lee?
or the other ten thousand 'Guru's?
I lived not so far away Taunton and my plumber was an old-fashioned independent type and he didn't have a cell phone. His wife/daughter handled all the calls. He might be the last of his breed, but, yes, there are plumbers without cellphones.
Shnaps, I honestly think it's possible if he's working all day while she's at home.
wow Aaron!
I read this story at one of the MSM outlets and the message it conveyed was nothing but exploitation. THe story here is well written and apparently well supported.
In my opinion your rants should be to Congress and the MSM.
By the way did you see the hidden memo to all the bloggers at the LA Times not the mention the Edwards event at the Beverly Hilton the other night.
http://www.slate.com/id/2195914/#latedict
In my opinion the story does not defend anyone but rather questions the media's reporting of the events!!
Shnaps, I honestly think it's possible if he's working all day while she's at home.
Most people do work all day. That's why collectors never limit themselves to the hours of 8-5.
OK as a guy whose wife handles the bills... my name is on, and they wont talkk to the wife till i tell them they can, but they all still ask for me..
And let me tell you my Cap one auto finance due to them on the 15th, the 16th the phone starts ringing even if i made the payment on line or with a check...
in a world of caller ID he didnt know, for 3 years?
Aaron, your a bitter F'er
I think the most likely thing going on here is that the husband sent the fax, wrote the suicide note, then drugged and shot the wife.
The most odd part of the story is the use of the fax machine. Maybe it's because I don't have a personal fax machine, but it seems like an odd and removed way to send a message. Even more removed than sending an email --which could also be done by the husband. Though it might be easier for the husband to sneek a fax around his wife, than send an email on her account.
Well, okay maybe most odd is that the husband claims to be in the dark about the finances, yet was the one named in the bankruptcy filings.
Maybe I've watched a few too many of those 20/20 real life murder mysteries. But this happens all the time on those shows. It'll probably come out that he had a younger mistress somewhere.
...You're a ghoul and a bank defender, hell you're probably a republican as well.
...not to mention countrywide shill. Who said you can't be all things to all people
Shnaps-I believe it happened to a now divorced couple that I know. Only it was the wife who got the shock. Some households run that way.
"THE USUAL SUSPECTS" just started on AMC.
More funner.
man, the man, always holding us down... its that damn war, all bush's fault...and church goers... and cub scouts are future republican nazi's... and Al Gore is truth man! The truth...word.... oh man my tin foil just ripped, gotta run..
cynicalgirl. Permissable calling hours are 8AM - 9PM, your local time, seven days a week. That's per FDCPA.
RacerX - please do not feed the troll.
Regrettably this does not pique my morbid interest nearly as much as predicting the next cataclysmic bank run
.
" have acquaintances who work in the trades as electriciana and plumbers who feel that they married up, and their wives are better equipped to handle all the financial complications in their lives"
I have a SIL who is more intellectually more capable than her husband, and less risk averse. She is botching their finances beyond repair (own a lot of investmentment properties) and yet is afraid to tell him about it as their financial condition deteriorates, because she's afraid he'll dump her (obese) ass. She's a basket case, not sleeping etc etc while she keeps him in the dark...
I have not looked at the PACER filings, but I really doubt that she somehow filed the bankruptcy cases without his knowledge, and I am pretty certain that no bankruptcy court would accept a petition signed by someone other than the individual debtor regardless of the POA. One clear indicator of whether he did or did not know about the bankruptcy filings would be whether the meeting of creditors (the "Section 341" meeting) ever happened, as he'd have to show up for that. If he never showed up for anything, well, then maybe it was all her doing...but I doubt it.
As to why he alone would file, I don't think that's all that unusual even where the house is in both names, as the filing creates an automatic stay as to the property, even as if affects the non-debtor spouse. In other words, by not filing a "joint petition" (i.e., husband and wife), they get the benefit of the bankruptcy without subjecting her to the process. The jointly-owned property would be included in the bankruptcy estate. What I do find odd is that the schedules stated that he had no other debts. If the guy really made that kind of money (or anything like it) he would either have had some substantial credit card debt (this being America in the early 21st century....) or access to credit lines which could easily have cured the mortgage. Either he was lying about his credit card debt in the bankruptcy cases (not that unusual as folks want to keep the lines open) or she had run up some balances and hid those under the mattress with the mortgage statements.
All in all, I agree that nothing about this situation really adds up, but I'm not sure I'm at the point of seeing a grand criminal scheme. Just a plumber and his wife hopelessly incapable of managing finances and other life stresses. Frankly, I've often wondered whether it makes all that much sense to force every working person and their spouse to become amateur CFO's of the family "business," trying to manage multiple layers of secured debt, unsecured debt, retirement accounts, mindnumbing tax issues etc. I guess it's good for some folks, and really great for Suzy Orman, but I don't see it as much of a lifestyle enhancer for most folks.
Two builder/developer types have commited suicide in the past ten days here in Bend Oregon.
OT-Students heading to food banks more and more
Yahoo! 404 - Page Not Found
More bad news about our state of the union...
G dub,
Maybe it was Cheny and they thought they were hunting...
Speaking of tards and republicans, anyone seen sebastian lately? I think he is writing the headlines at CNBC.com
cd-
no one seems to care too much that jr. enlisted service members have been having to do that for years..
Barney Frank-Responsible citizens number one enemy...
Bank of America, Wells Fargo Say Loan Changes Rising (Update3) - Bloomberg.com
If servicers don't participate, ``then next year we'll have to change the law to reduce the role of servicers,'' Frank told reporters after the hearing.
If they have a fax machine at home, it's likely that the plumbing business runs from there also. If she handled the office work for the business, she'd intercept the calls from the lender.
I am pretty certain that no bankruptcy court would accept a petition signed by someone other than the individual debtor regardless of the POA.
I didn't read through all the eleventy-jillion docs to see if there was ever any time where the guy showed up in person.
But I did look at all the filings by the debtor and they are signed "John W. Balderrama." If Mrs. B signed them she forged his signature rather than signing as AIF.
Just a plumber and his wife hopelessly incapable of managing finances and other life stresses.
That's as good a theory as any other. But again, that's my problem with these news reports trying to blame the lender.
it's true that reporters often start with a preconceived idea about the topic at hand, then find anecdotal information that appears to support that viewpoint.
bloggers, even good ones, sometimes do the same thing. this blog does a great job of gathering and analyzing data about its subject area. but mixed in are numerous stand-alone posts that imo only serve to cloud the issues, by making it appear that the data needs to be padded:
Calculated Risk: Report: Another Regional Retailer in Trouble
Calculated Risk: National City $1.8 Billion Loss
Calculated Risk: Downey's "Retention Mods" Performance
I've got the same limited set of facts as the rest of you. I just find a confluence of suspicious things, is all.
Like,
Mrs.B writes a note mentioning life insurance and paying the mortgage off w/it.
Someone remarked that despite failing to pay the mortgage, the life insurance premiums were ostensibly paid on time.
Seems like an awful lot of life ins coverage for someone who provided little or no income to the household (OBJECTION! speculation! / ok, fine -withdrawn.)
The PoA
and the Pièce de Résistance: Mr.B claims total ignorance to their arrearages over a 42-month period.
aaron-
Thanks I didn't have an idea either..
very sad...It would be more cost efficient for us to bring home all military from Iraq, give them jobs guarding the border, a raise by 20K and wipe out their debt..
Why don't the stinkin politicians do that...No lets reward deadbeats instead of our brave men and women...
Life insurance policy might have been whole life. In which case, they could lose the value built up if they missed even one payment.
"Mr.B claims total ignorance to their arrearages over a 42-month period."
If the MA State Police get involved, they'll compare the collection agency's phone log to the husband's cell phone location. That would help establish whether he was around during any collection calls.
don't foregt about me
We're very mindful of the
media coverage and blogs in controlling misinformation. All I can say is
were going to continue to stay on top of it . . . The misinformation that
came out over the weekend fed a lot of depositors' fears", Blair said
"It's all Contained" was TOTAL
MISinformation
A sad story with some strange facts. I certainly hope the police consider the possibility that this may not have been a suicide.
OT
Are there any hints of news being heard by you folks and your excellent sources regarding any of the "usual suspects" (banks) and the FDIC today?
lama - it ain't even that hard. They could just subpoena the collection notes.
Anyway, I can only hope that that lie eventually gets exposed as openly as Mr.B's batty crease whilst fixing a sink.
Not that it would necessarily mean their was any foul play. I'm just saying he's was full of it when he said he knew nothing about the mortgage situation.
term life insurance is dirt cheap.
"Could PHH be that dumb? In all those years?"
Call a lender workout dept and there is little real verification that takes place. Fax in a 3rd party authorization letter presumably signed by the debtor and you are off to the races.
Giving them a different cell or work number and if the wife talks to them when they call, that will become the default contact number. They would only hunt the husband down if no one talks to them.
You are also overlooking the obvious reason why the husband would not get calls and that would be a cease and desist from the attorney.
"Suicidal tendencies and financial troubles are very positively correlated.
I want to make it clear that I do not deny that. I do not deny that people in terrible financial troubles killed themselves in the Great Depression, or that it is happening now."
I find it interesting that the initial quote above that uses the term "correlated" and is testable was actually tested in one of the first works that is associated with Sociology.
Suicide (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although Wikipedia does not mention it, I vaguely recall Durkheim specifically looked at the relationship between economic factors and suicide and rejected any simple correlation early in the book. That was the rationale for the book -- that suicide is primarily a social fact, as it were, even though (obviously) it is done by individuals. If anyone cared, they could actually read it.
As far as the press/journalism go, everyone has their own opinions, but a lot of publications actually employ fact checkers. And to some degree, the mainstream media is not monolithic and there is always a story in an widely but incorrectly reported sensational story. I wouldn't be surprised to see one here -- if the speculation in the comments has any merit. Nancy Grace could fill up a week of air time with this.
term life insurance is dirt cheap.
Whole life insurance isn't.
The one reported element that seems truly bizarre is the fax.
It is so weird that its weirdness lends it a degree of credibility.
Call a lender workout dept and there is little real verification that takes place.
Quite possibly so. But we are talking about collection calls and process service. In most states you can successfully stop or reverse a foreclosure if you can show that the debtor was not notified/served as per law. I am not saying PHH or anyone else can't screw this up. I am just observing that it's a lot harder to not know you're being foreclosed on an owner-occupied property than people seem to think.
You are also overlooking the obvious reason why the husband would not get calls and that would be a cease and desist from the attorney.
He asked his attorney to issue a C&D for calls he didn't know were being made?
Shnaps, Yes, I guess if he were around, he might get involved in a phone call at some point, even if it's to her cell phone.
This sure is a weird one.
c&d could have been issued during one of the bk filiongs
"The one reported element that seems truly bizarre is the fax."
Gender-neutral. I wonder if it was handwritten.
"I am just observing that it's a lot harder to not know you're being foreclosed on an owner-occupied property than people seem to think."
Agreed, but for someone trying to hide something, it's doable. My point is that the loss mit dept for most banks are not that bright.
c&d could have been issued during one of the bk filiongs
BK by definition places a stay on a lender's collection efforts.
And all the BKs were dismissed.
Why would any attorney agree to write a C&D letter that says the debtor cannot be contacted but the debtor's wife can? I am truly curious about that.
I would give some time for all the dust to settle and for concrete facts to come out.
It's a tragedy nevertheless and some people cannot talk coherently or behave consistently in such a tough time for their families.
MA cops may be corrupt, but they are not dumb. Let them do their jobs.
You are assuming that the lender continued to contact them. The story has the wife contacting the lender.
sounds like the "reporter" heard the words mortgage and suicide and took a monster swing. none of the details seem to fit very well, and while the financial disaster and subsequent death are very sad, it sounds like somebody has been describing a cat while calling it a dog.
My point is that the loss mit dept for most banks are not that bright.
This account wasn't in loss mit. Hadn't been there for a long time.
It was in the FC department. PHH had legal counsel handling the FC.
I believe that MA, like most states, also requires the notice of sale to be published in the newspaper for three consecutive weeks prior to the sale date. I don't know what the rules are on process service, but really. There's only so much a lender can do, here. All you're doing is convincing me that if the claims in the newspaper are true, you can hardly blame PHH. Somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to not deal fairly with the lender.
WMBZ: "This is a perfect example of the end result of the borrow and spend republican engineered ownership society. Enslavement of citizens to banks is the aim of supply side. Not ownership, certainly not "free markets" Now I'm waiting for some right wing nutjob apologist here to blame the deceased."
What does Bush have to do with the tragedy of Mrs. Balderrama? And how is that related to some kind of right wing conspiracy?
Let's set aside for one moment the tragic story of Mrs. Balderrama and address a broader issue. Whether Democratic or Republican, the Government is nothing more than an intellectual construct. We, all, are the Government; some of us contribute to it by paying taxes, others by actually working for the government in paid or sometimes elected positions. The Government is not however an all-knowing, all-powerful entity that can turn dust into gold, and rain clouds into sunshine. Let's keep that in mind as we replace 'government' with 'us' in what follows.
If you play soccer and you fall down and break your leg, it is not the our collective fault. If you sleep in and you show up late at your job and you get fired, it is not our collective fault. If you spend more than you earn only to find that you have aged and have no savings, we are not to blame. If you sign on the dotted line to purchase a property, in full knowledge of what you're committing to, and then cannot make the monthly mortgage payments, it is not our collective responsibility. If you bought a home that went down in price, it is not our fault, simply because some elected politicians choose to talk up the benefits of home ownership; you made your decision exercising your free will, not they; no one held a gun to your head; you could have just as easily rented.
Why should all of us owe anything to borrowers that cannot afford their payments? They do not represent the only constituency out there. What about the people that are actually lending the money (Wall Street not withstanding - they are mostly an intermediary)? The vast majority of them are retiree's pension funds and working people's savings. Why should we override the rights of the thrifty to give away to the less responsible? What about people that are neither lenders nor borrowers, for example renters. Why should we all prop up home prices for the benefit of current home owners and to the detriment of the poor and the young that cannot yet afford a home?
I personally do not claim to have answers to all these questions. But I sure as hell know what I do not know. And I see no reason to yield to the most vociferous simply because they can scream the loudest.
Term insurance could easily have been obtain via his employer. It's really cheap and would have been deducted from his pay.
js wrote: "The first thing the creditors would have done after the petition was filed is move to join the wife as an indispensable party."
Not. Never seen it happen. Not even when I was clerking and saw many hundreds of Chapter 13 cases. Besides, you can't be forced into a 13, that little thing called the 13th Amendment gets in the way.
BAPCPA comes close though.
You are assuming that the lender continued to contact them. The story has the wife contacting the lender.
No, I am "assuming" that the lender tried to collect on this debt one way or the other for six years. That two FC cases were filed and that at minimum PHH performed its statutory duty to let the homeowner know he was about to lose his house. I am damned sure assuming that PHH called up each time the BK was dismissed to reinstate collection efforts. That's what lenders do the minute the stay is lifted.
This isn't about what Mr. B may have found out this week. The man says the account was in arrears for 42 months and at no time ever did he know that.
Ziggurat - I wasn't referring to 'economic factors' such as unemployment rates, or the DJIA, or HPA rates, or those sort of easily-obtained benchmarks. But I'm not talking Freakonomics-shit either.
I was referring to the relationship between incidence of suicidal thoughts and those people who have just suffered major financial setbacks (things like: layoffs, uninsured medical expenses, lawsuits, business failures, incarceration, etc.) They are, in my decidedly unscientific estimation, a lot more likely to contemplate suicide than the general population. I don't think Durkheim tested that relationship.
Yet we do see studies that suggest that Seattlites, which because of the weather suffer from a marginally higher incidence of SAD, are more likely to commit suicide.
C'mon - which would make "Goodbye, cruel world" more of a consideration for you? A string of rainy days? Or a string of days where you felt compelled to toss your telephone into your dishwasher to avoid calls from people you owed money to but were unable to pay?
"I believe that MA, like most states, also requires the notice of sale to be published in the newspaper for three consecutive weeks prior to the sale date."
I can't believe anybody reads the foreclosure notices looking for their own house to show up 'just in case' they didn't get the memo otherwise.
Maybe they should, but given newspaper subscription numbers, it seems unlikely that anyone reads those except creditors and bargain hunters.
"This isn't about what Mr. B may have found out this week. The man says the account was in arrears for 42 months and at no time ever did he know that."
Tanta, obviously you dont have teen or pre-teen kids where "I thought you meant this week" is a pretty standard answer to "did you ever..."
Will someone please ask Mr. B if he ever was aware that his name was on 3 bk filings? If he did, then he lied. If he didn't, then at least one bk lawyer somewhere out there is going to look pretty stupid.
Declaring bankruptcy is not something honest people take lightly. Since one or both Balderramas filed repeatedly, I can only conclude they were working the system to get out of their obligations.
I can't believe anybody reads the foreclosure notices looking for their own house to show up 'just in case' they didn't get the memo otherwise.
Of course they don't. But that is not the point.
State laws provide for this public notice of FC to establish some threshold of reasonable notice. Every state I am familiar with also requires personal process service, too, in addition to all the other kinds of notice.
If you don't answer your phone and you don't open your mail and you don't talk to the inspector that the servicer will likely be sending out prior to the FC sale to verify occupancy and you hide from the process server and you don't read the paper, well, what can be done for you?
Most people just answer the phone, rather than relying on the local rag to tell them their home is being sold.
This whole conversation is just beginning to sound surreal to me. Most times when I post on a story having to do with debt collection, I get horror stories of people getting phone calls all hours of the day and night, and having their employers and neighbors called, etc. etc.
Suddenly, today, we think it's plausible that none of the forms of communication--calls, letters, personal process service, newspaper notices, copies of filings stuck to the door--ever got through to two out of three people in that house.
I think some people are so invested in seeing lenders as the bad guys that they don't care which end they fire from: either servicers harrass people with endless calls or they make so little effort to contact borrowers that it's easy to not know you're facing FC in a house you live in for 42 months.
Not to seem too heartless, but I do wonder if the police have conclusively ruled this a suicide.
Seems to me as if the husband knew all about the financial problems, and would perhaps have a motive (insurance) to take his wife's life...his hunting rifle, faxed suicide note...
Just a thought...
Tanta, I spend most of day on the phone with lenders and dealing with homeowners in default, with some in denial beyond belief.
I can tell you that both ends of the spectrum exist. Yesterday I asked for a 2nd postponement on a trustee sale while the lender worked on a workout approval. She asked me why we needed to postpone when the approval had been granted 30 days earlier. The problem was that they moved this file to a new negotiator 31 days ago, but never forwarded the approval to the new guy.
One the other hand, we had to go to court to stop a trustee sale that would have occurred the next day where the borrower had brought the loan current 14 days prior, but the lender failed to cancel the sale or rescind the NOD.
"Surreal"
All the way around.
Perhaps the B's purchased single premium credit life insurance?
I believe that was one of PHH's rackets back in the day.
Tanta,
As I stated earlier, I have actual knowledge of one joint Chapter 13 filed by a spouse hiding a foreclosure. The husband was literally escorted from the house during breakfast after their 13 was dismissed, the house sold, and redemption period ended. There was a divorce. There were disciplinary actions taken against the wifes attorney.
It has happened. It is capable of repetition, especially if the working husband puts fiances in the hands of a stay at home wife who gets the mail, etc. It cant be common though.
Gazillions of calls sounds like unsecured creditors, not mortgage holders. I can't recall clients complaining about calls from the mortgage company. They almost all complain about calls from collection agencies.
Life insurance will pay in the event of a suicide provided that it has been in force for more than 2 years. I know that is the case in Ohio, and am pretty sure it is the case in most other states.
Group think is alive and well as always on this blog - especially with Tanta's posts.
I would think the police saw the faxed note or notes - if they are hand written then she likely did it.
No one has stopped to ask that? NO ONE on this blog. It's laughable.
Also, when you go into foreclosure 60 zillion people who want to loan you money, or want to defraud you or want something or other send you letters and notices, which typically have the word foreclosure printed in violent colors on the outside. He never, in 42 months picked up the mail?
Isn't it true that wannbe suicides do something to alert somebody that something is going on? But sending a fax? Never heard of that. Don't women start more suicides, but fail to succeed in actually killing themselves more often than men? I like someone far upthread want to know if this fax was typed or hand written.
Also all this the lender has no fault stuff is nonsense. Yes the borrows are all morons but make no mistake about it - alt-A, zero down ARMs and other easy money loans got us into this situation. The lenders made a ton of fictious profits peddling this crap.
Are borrows at fault yes - but come on folks.
Well, this seems like a fun group of speculators of a different kind! Let me try a crazy one:
The husband might have found out about the financial troubles and the forgeries on the BKs and then got even... forging the suicide notes being a clever payback.
karen: "The most odd part of the story is the use of the fax machine. Maybe it's because I don't have a personal fax machine, but it seems like an odd and removed way to send a message. Even more removed than sending an email --which could also be done by the husband. Though it might be easier for the husband to sneek a fax around his wife, than send an email on her account."
Ah, but there's the beauty of a fax. A fax can be handwritten and the signature verified. You learn this in Committing Suicide for Dummies. No... but more seriously, a handwritten with a verifiable signature is a way to kill yourself without placing any possible suspicion on other parties.
Jes: "It would be interesting to know if there were any significant changes in US drug use during the Great Depression. Anyone out there have stats?"
No stats. But Prohibition was repealed in December of 1933 so stats of alcohol consumption for the decade might not be so valuable.
Here's what gets me: There have been NUMEROUS complaints to the labeling of PHH as a "predatory lender" in the Globe article. There have also been NUMEROUS labels of John Balderrama as a "suspect" (if not more!). How are these any different?
Granted, the Globe is a newspaper and has a responsibility to the public (readers, subscribers), whereas the posters here are mostly anonymous and have no responsibility to anyone. On the other hand, the reporter has a deadline for a story (and needs that story to get paid), whereas there is no deadline requirement for any of the posters here who are rushing to label.
Now, I love this blog post. It's the first and only post I've read of yours. (So good that I might read more.) But I'm sorry Tanta, I still have a little sympathy here for the reporter and newspaper side. He made a mistake and called PHH predatory. He's human. Just like the many posters here who (without a deadline) are quick to label suspects in a case where all the facts are likely not known.
Did you send him your blog post and ask if he would comment or investigate further? It might give him a headstart on his next deadline!
To Terry Moore -- I sent a link to the post to the reporter. No reply, at least not to me. I'm sorry, but I don't have the sympathy that you seem to have for this reporter. He's now written two articles on this, and deadline or not, he has a responsibility to check the facts. And even if he doesn't do it, his editors should. Meanwhile, Tanta, without the backup the reporter has, or the power of the Globe, was able to gather all the information necessary.
"Also all this the lender has no fault stuff is nonsense."
That doesn't appear to be the case in this instance. With a loan payment of @ $1700 on this property, there is nothing that points to this being a risky loan given the income and debt ratio stated in the bk filings.
Brian - how exactly do you think Tanta has gathered all the information needed? This idealization of Tanta is silly.
BW - In general Tanta will defend the lenders, I wasn't talking specifically about this loan.
Just saying if the woman hand wrote the letter - all the "husband did it wackos" and "this doesn't add up" folks should think again.
At the very least someone should have mentioned it before comment 250 or so.
SR
I just went back and read the entire post again, the more I think about it - what is even the point of it. This woman wrote a note saying she is killing herself because of foreclosure.
Tanta calling the media and police to task for stating what was said in the woman's note doesn't make sense. Tanta is not bringing any new information out. She is just saying the police and media don't know what they are talking about. And they may not BUT they are minicing a note. PERIOD it's that simple.
If you want to dispute who wrote the note then that is great but its also silly. I would bet that its handwritten.
SR
I wouldn't put all of the blame of journalistic malpractice on the reporter.
In cases such as this, in which it appears that a reporter is merely filling in fresh details to a pre-set narrative, you should suspect the editor.
Most editors were mediocre or bad reporters but good ass-kissers. They get promoted into editing positions. They're the people who pre-write the headline after they've heard a few details; they're the ones who decide to place a story atop Page One when the don't know what the story is really about.
I suspect that the reporter who wrote this article is a little less credulous, and a little more cynical, than you think. When the reporter told the editor that a woman killed herself shortly before a foreclosure auction, that was all the editor needed to know before deciding that the story was Page One material and that the mortgage company was responsible for the death. These aren't decisions that the reporter makes; they are decisions that the editor makes.
The reporter quoted the police chief as not knowing whether the life insurance policy would pay out. To me, a longtime reporter, that paragraph positively screams that it's the product of an editor's intervention. Editors are fond of asking stupid questions with unknowable answers. They make the reporters ask them, and to report the eye-rolling replies from exasperated sources.
In other words, the reporter probably wrote the story, and the pinhead editor said, "Well, will the insurance policy pay off?" And the reporter silently thought, "How the fuck should I or anyone else know? We'll find that out next week." But the reporter dutifully called the police chief, who gave a politely worded answer that amounts to, "How the fuck should I know? We'll find that out next week."
Aside from the argument that the media love to run articles about Evil Corporations because those articles please their advertisers, those same Evil Corporations, I think much of the media criticism here has merit. But I do want to make it clear that the truly stupid, bad person behind this particular story is likely the editor, not the reporter.
One final thought: The editor decided that the story was banner-headline material, but didn't think the story warranted an extra staffer or two to look at court documents. It's easy to criticize the reporter for not combing through the court records in addition to interviewing people, writing the story, and dealing with the idiotic editors, on top of the already high workload that comes with covering the cop shop. Something had to give, and that something was a close review of the court records. There are only so many hours in a day, and there's always a follow-up story to fill in missing information.
Also, it's kinda funny to see people complaining that the media exploit suicide to further their own agendas. To me, that looks like these commenters are exploiting a suicide to further their own agendas about how terrible the media are.
Tanta, you have a lot of humanity. If you didn't, you wouldn't have bothered with this story. We don't know all of the facts and may never know them. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that anyone will ever get to the bottom of it without spending a lot of time and money.
I know.
Hi Holden,
A lot of merit to what you say, and thank you for a closer look at the rolls of reporters and editors.
Are you a journalist yourself?
One thing I'd love to know is how the story and the paper got together to begin with. Do the papers have people who go over the police crime blotters to attempt to dig out a juicy story? Do the reporters themselves do this? It would be interesting to know how the relationship developed.
Thank goodness somebody slammed that piece of garbage, Aaro
BW, you said you reread the article. One thing that Tanta has pointed out time and again is to use some critical thinking when reading an article like.
One example that you read:
"John Balderrama did, however, file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy three times from 2004 to 2006, but the courts dismissed the petitions."
Note that it said the husband. Not her and no mention of POA. Yet we are to believe that after three filings he was still unaware of the mortgage being in arrears.
There are other red flags that just don't scan. It doesn't take much to wonder what the heck is really going on.
Until we do know, all statements, including so it seems that PHH is predatory, are speculative.
Cheers
Tanta. You don't get it. The prevailing attitude is anti-lender. Forget your deeper diggings. This is the face of it and lenders are the bad guys.
All of the nit-picking whether based in fact or fiction does not help a lender in today's political climate and this is fuel to the already raging fire of anger that is directed at lenders. Whether you agree or not is not important. The tide is against you here. If you do not adjust your position you will be swept out to sea...
Well Freud may be mythology or maybe not. His ideas were not like chemistry or physics that can be "proved" or "disproved." It has become faddish to diss him and his ideas. In any case he has been a very powerful cultural influence and I find it odd that people hate him and it so much. People who "hate" Freud may in fact fear his insights. I think those are undeniable. And blame for all sorts of things can be laid upon him conveniently.
Hear, hear.
Erich Fromm observes in his "The Sane Society" that a hallmark of Freud's thinking is "the courage to defy common sense and public opinion."
In a deeply authoritarian culture like ours is today, that kind of intellectual nonconformity is asking a bit much. We didn't get Bushism or the housing bubble by being brave!
Fromm, by the way, is an intriguing guide to the shared pathologies -- which he calls the pathology of normalcy -- that have led to historically high levels of suicide in Western culture. There may be no single cause in suicides, but there are social and cultural forces that appear to make them likelier.
In short, while poor Mrs. B.'s death can't be laid only or even significantly at the feet of the mortgage servicer, we can look to the culture of the mortgage screwjob, the for-profit war, the catastrophically long work week, mountainous debt and related forms of what everyone agrees is "normal behavior" for an answer to why there are so many Mrs. Bs, so much wasted human life.
This view can also help us understand why the newspaper is so busy mythologizing her. Like the forces that want housing to continue to be an economic vehicle for penurious debt for most and vast wealth for a few, the corporate news media -- itself a great swiller at the bubble's trough -- wants above all to return us to the conditions that only recently prevailed.
Turning Mrs. B. into a mortgage martyr is a very devious yet all-too-predictable manipulation. The goal is to make people stop thinking about what has gone wrong and get them to do it again.
HC | 07.25.08 - 7:40 pm |
Jesus.
Mac, I know that it said he filed 3 times. The filings also listed the house debt. With no other debt other than a car loan, the filing was clearly to stave off foreclosure.
Either he was part and parcel to the bk filings and lied about not knowing about the mortgage issues, or the wife pulled off quite a scam.
Proving what he knew is easy. My point was that it is possible for the wife to have done this without her husband's knowledge. While it may not seem probable, it is possible.
This isn't about PHH. it's about a woman who had some serious issues. A sad event, regardless.
The real question though, is how much do you think the family is being offered for made for TV movie rights?
Gambling or drugs, addiction or shiftlessness, crime or bankruptcy--whatever it was, something very sad happened in that home. And whatever it was, some poor woman surely didn't deserve to die for it. Requiscat in pace.
Tanta is near dead last on the list of anyone who might have missed the essential human sadness at the bottom of all this. Tanta, that's why we love you. On the other hand, CNN's desk editor is pretty much near the top of that list.
Posts like this are why I come to CR. A commitment to the truth, even knowing the tomfoolery it will invite.
"Well, John Kenneth Galbraith labelled that "rash of suicides" a "myth" in 1955, and if anyone has more recent hard data that says otherwise, I'd like to see it"
Funny, Edward Chancellor, in his book, Devil take the Hindmost, quotes Churchill as writing the day after the Great Depression: "Under my window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade."
Whether or not that ancedote confirms or denies anything about the Great Depression is another matter.
However, I do know that a rash of Suicides occured after the Shanghai bubble burst this year!
China Leaves Small Investors Behind on Road To Capitalism - washingtonpost.com
Send in the forensics! (Full disclosure: I am one).
From the news story: "All the bankruptcies were dismissed due to either failure to make payments to the trustee or failure to attend hearings or creditors' meetings." So (1) the bankruptcy filings were accepted by the bankruptcy court, (2) the only debts were the house and the car, and (3) the income is obviously adequate to pay the debts, whether structured & supervised through the bankruptcy court, or not. Yet the mortgage debt is in arrears and the arrearage continues to increase? Huh. Where is the obviously adequate income actually going?
The goal is to make people stop thinking about what has gone wrong and get them to do it again.
HC
That's fool's goal there. Everybody alive now will have to die for this to happen again - just as everbody alive in 1929-1941 had to die for this to happen.
Uncle Billy,
Yes, I'm a reporter and have been one for lo these 22 years. I write about mortgages for Bankrate.com and in the past, working for the AP and the Toledo Blade, I've reported just about every type of story, from crime to courts to college sports to light features to education.
Do the papers have people who go over the police crime blotters to attempt to dig out a juicy story? Do the reporters themselves do this?
After I answer, I'd like you to reply to this question: How did you think reporters got crime stories? I worry that a lot of our media critics have a similar lack of knowledge.
In a metro area such as Boston's, big newspapers typically have several reporters who cover what's called the "cop shop." Big-city police departments often have a tiny office in the main police station where reporters write their stories.
When I worked for a newspaper, the paper was unstaffed from about 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. or so. The first reporter scheduled to come in in the morning was the cop shop reporter. The first thing that reporter does is to go to the police station and scan through all of the police reports going back to the previous afternoon. Not looking for "juicy," looking for newsworthy. I mean, if you're looking through the police report and you see that vandals slashed 20 tires in two blocks of a residential street, that's not juicy, but it'll go in the paper.
Through the day and deep into the night, cop shop reporters hang out at the police station, talk to cops, always ready to jump in a car and go to the scene if a big fire breaks out or a dead body is found somewhere.
Crime reporters get most of their info from cops. So if someone kills herself with a shotgun, but the article says it was a rifle, don't assume the reporter got it wrong first. Maybe the cops got it wrong, and the reporter merely passed it along.
Thus ends the primer. Sorry to go far afield, but at least I'm not jabbering about Freud.
Tanta, I disagreed with your class-based critique of the Gretchen Morgenstern story in the Times the other day.
But today you came back with a home run.
Super, super stuff.
stock_regulator writes:I would bet that its handwritten.
Look, d00d, FWIW, I wasn't trying to play 'Horatio' here. But that proves zero to me. As long as we're at it...
I think somewhere in chapter 14 of "How to Murder Someone and Frame the Killing as a Suicide for Dummies" they talk about "best practices" of getting your mark to hand-write their own "suicide note" if possible by creating "duress" in the form of pointing a high-powered rifle at your mark's skull. It's amazingly effective in getting them to write all kinds of shit in their own handwriting.
Not sayin' that's the case here. Occams Razor would prolly say that Mr.B just lied about "not knowin' nothin' about no late mortgage payments" simply to save face in the bright light of the national media machine. Nothing more.
But again, all the facts aren't here. Yet.
Tanta, I sincerely hope you'll have a follow-up post if there is more to tell in the future. I'm very curious what more may come of this case.
very good analysis Tanta.
I'd be willing to bet, based upon the picture I saw of her and her behavior, that she was well known at the local liquor store.
One thing is for sure, now that major news outlets are reporting this, it's more likely that someone will read and get the idea that hey! suicide is a resolution to all of my problems!
:/
Holden:
I find it refreshing and valuable to add the perspective of a journalist.
I guess what I find troubling here is that it seems like the journalist didn't vet out the overall story by consulting anyone outside of the "cop shop." Although "pouring over court documents" may have described the practice in the past, in this day and age it would take about 20 minutes to download the court records from a website and email them to someone who may have some expertise. Perhaps I'm just totally clueless, but I just assume that at an outfit like the Boston Globe they might have sources/authorities they could use as a quick sounding board to check to see if the story makes sense. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that the reporter covering the police beat wouldn't have a deep knowledge of mortgages, bankruptcy, and the credit situation, but I would think that if this had run by a financial reporter or some external expert, the questions Tanta raised would have come up immediately. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight, but, hey, there's a lot of brilliant hindsight going around in all areas these days.
Tanta, thanks for this substantive analysis. Every day, I read the NYT & WSJ on the assumption that they fundamentally know what they are talking about.
However, when you drill down on specific stories, it seems the coverage is often misleading, misinformed or biased. It makes me wonder about reporting in other areas. Perhaps the impending death of the newspapers isn't such a threat to transparency after all.
screw you tanta...what are you now....big brother? Facist Pig!
Couple of things that have come to mind...
"All of the money" may very well have been paid to the servicer of the loan. But if payment ONE was called late by the servicer, any future payments would have the arrearage from payment ONE taken off the top, thereby making each and every payment following less than the full amount due - at least on the servicer's books - and making each and every following payment "late" as well.
This removes any incentive for anyone at either the foreclosure mill or the auction house to even attempt to deal fairly with the homeowner, because if they do then the foreclosure mill and/or the auction house may end up losing out on fees and cutting their own bottom lines. HLO has also had two class actions filed against them and settled out for FDCPA violations. Mark Harmon and Realty Funding have had a verdict rendered against them for FDCPA violations in NH as well. Forgive me, Tanta, I cannot find a link to the latter case law. For one of the former: Sorry. Page not found.
For the other, I believe the case was Allen et al. v. Harmon Law Offices. I'll have to see if I can dig up my opt out letter somewhere.
If the only assets declared in the BKs were the house and the car I would tend to agree that it was safe to ASSume that the BKs were filed in order to halt the foreclosure process. Guess what, if you call or walk in to an attorney's office and tell them that you've made your mortgage payments and yet, the servicer is STILL foreclosing on you, at the very least they most likely will not take the case and if you're REALLY lucky, they'll call you a deadbeat and tell you to shut up and go pay your mortgage. Ask me - PLEASE someone ask me - how I know that... I spoke with upwards of 150 law firms before I found one that believed me enough to take a closer look at my case.
Something is definitely not right with this case. Could be Mr., could be Mrs., could be both, could be the servicer. No one knows until the various forensics teams are done. Hopefully the team will include a accountant.
In addition to Harmon Law Offices and Commonwealth Auction Associates, Mark Harmon also owns Northeast Title Abstract and Realty Funding.
Oh, I forgot to mention that, in the interest of full disclosure, Harmon Law Offices is a named defendant in my $13.5 million racketeering action filed in US District NH.
PHH Mortgage Corp v. Barber
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/judge-kurtz-phhm-07262008.pdf
found in Amir Efrati's Some Judges Stiffen Foreclosure Standards piece today. Some Judges Stiffen Foreclosure Standards - WSJ.com
And before you say it, Tanta, yes it's "only one case". Cut me some slack, it's 2 am and I wasn't really looking for things like this right now. If you need additional case law I'll look for more later. But all it really takes is one...
If I were the PD I'd be having a handwriting expert look at that suicide note.
I predict a Law and Order episode out of this, come fall.
As Tanta points out, something stinks here. Set-up, maybe.
I find it really sad that I need to read the blogs to find the research that should be done by the billion dollar a year news enterprises.
Oh well, off to watch more manufactured news favoring their preferred presidential candidate.
Perhaps I'm just totally clueless, but I just assume that at an outfit like the Boston Globe they might have sources/authorities they could use as a quick sounding board to check to see if the story makes sense.
I find it really sad that I need to read the blogs to find the research that should be done by the billion dollar a year news enterprises.
The newspaper business is dying. Reporters are being laid off by the hundreds. They don't have the staffs to do the depth of work that you want, as quickly as you want. The fault lies more with Craig Newmark and with newspaper managers than with the reporters themselves.