Mike and Mary Boehm did everything right. Well, except for Mike getting fired in June 2009. But I’m assuming that was a byproduct of the Great (Republican-caused) Recession. Anyway, the couple had trouble meeting their house payments and applied to the Bank of America for a loan modification. They were told it would take about 45 days. That was 409 days ago. It sure as hell didn’t take Bank of America that long to get a federal bailout for billions of bucks. And that bailout stipulated that banks which received the funds were to work to modify mortgage payments so that fewer people would face foreclosure.

The Boehm family

So the Boehms applied. And they did everything right–and many things two or three times over. Although the modification had not received final approval, the process was started, and the Boehm’s made every modified payment on time. They spent hours upon hours on the phone trying to straighten out glitch after snafu after hitch caused by the bank’s carelessness. “You faxed us this information already? Really? Then do it again. You’ve faxed it twice? Oh. Try faxing it to this other number.” After all that effort on Mike and Mary’s part, the Bank of America has decided to foreclose. Proceedings will start the day after Christmas.

Monday, a group of Mike and Mary’s friends and activists mobilized by M.O.R.E. (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) staged a protest in front of the Clayton office of the bank in St. Louis County. Ninety people showed up and most of them stayed the better part of two hours in the cold. The hope was that a strong showing would move the bankers to relent and allow a loan modification. Not only did BoA not do so, it got the Clayton Police to arrest six activists who had the gall to go up four steps onto bank property. The six were led away in handcuffs, issued two summonses apiece (for trespassing and refusing to obey a lawful order) and then released in less than two hours. Kat Logan Smith, the Executive Director of Coalition for the Environment and Hannah Allison, who organized today’s protest for M.O.R.E., were among the six.

Hannah Allison (in foreground) and Kat Logan Smith (ahead of her) are led away in cuffs

Kat Logan Smith (wearing her Bank of America exec devil’s horns) displays her summonses

The video below opens with a few seconds of chants at the rally but consists mainly of an interview the Boehms gave me at the Clayton Police Station while they waited for the arrestees to be released.

The Boehm’s have complained to the Missouri Attorney General’s office. In doing so, they noticed that there were five pages of complaints that have been lodged for similar foreclosure problems on the website. And that’s just for Bank of America. But Koster’s office coolly informed them that they are taking the matter under advisement. (Should the Boehms translate that as: ‘Go away. You don’t interest me’?)

Thanks a heap, Mr. Attorney General. When I think how Robin Carnahan, as Secretary of State, went after the big money boys, I can only long to see Chris Koster earn some Democratic street cred the same way.

Meanwhile these level headed, hard working people are living in a nightmare, courtesy of their mortgage lender. But don’t blame Bad for America. A buck has no conscience and neither do most corporations. In throwing the Boehms under the bus, BoA is simply minding the bottom line. The bank makes money when it forecloses:

While homeowners, lenders and investors typically lose money on a foreclosure, mortgage servicers do not, says report author Diane E. Thompson, of counsel at the National Consumer Law Center. Servicers are the companies that manage the mortgages and collect payments.

“Servicers may even make money on a foreclosure,” she writes. “And, usually, a loan modification will cost the servicer something. A servicer deciding between a foreclosure and a loan modification faces the prospect of near certain loss if the loan is modified and no penalty, but potential profit, if the home is foreclosed.”

Thompson attributes this to a system of perverse incentives created by lawmakers and rulemakers in the market, like credit rating agencies and bond issuers.

Hmm. Do you suppose that Bad for America was hoping that the Boehms would be a little less responsible about dotting every i and crossing every t in the paperwork and less persistent about verifying that the bank had received it all? Few people are as organized and responsible as Mike and Mary. If the Boehms had been a little less reliable, the bank could have leaped on some miniscule mistake as an excuse to foreclose. Not that BoA cares that the family made payments for an extra year. Who knows but what Bad for America strung the Boehms along for more than a year just to get that additional money out of them before finally cashing in its foreclosure chip. All that is just guesswork, of course, and I could be wrong about it; but I’m not wrong about this: BoA’s attitude is to hell with people. In fact, to hell with the American economy and all the damage these foreclosures are doing to it. As for bad publicity, this corporate entity might as well shoot us the finger. In fact, that’s what it did when it ordered the arrests. Such arrogance is hardly surprising when you remember that Bank of America is the main investor in QC Holdings, the biggest payday lender in Missouri. Bank of America is used to screwing people over and getting away with it.

The question then is, are we–and the Boehms–helpless? The answer is that we’re not, but we’ll have to be like water on stone: a persistent force. Homeowners who have a problem like the one the Boehms face should contact Attorney General Chris Koster both by e-mail and by calling 1-573-751-3321. They should also call M.O.R.E.’s national hotline: 1-877-59HOME9.

As soon as I post this, I will call Koster’s office and urge that they take action. Please do the same. Unless we annoy the spit out of Koster, he won’t do diddly squat.

The most comprehensive solution would be for laws that encourage this predatory lending practice to be changed. But the House is about to be in Republican hands. So lotsa luck with that. For now, progressives need to get Bank of America as much rotten press as we can generate. Yesterday’s action mustn’t be the end of that effort, just the beginning. We will have to be our own 21st century Charles Dickens, exposing the Scrooges of the nation.

I wish I could tap Mike and Mary on the shoulder and tell them it’s time to wake up, that it was just a bad dream. I can’t do that, but if they want me to, I’ll keep their story front and center.

“Bank of America, Bad for America!” chanted the crowd gathered in the shadow of the impregnable, forbidding Bank of America tower in Kansas City on Tuesday. A coalition of progressive groups brought a couple of hundred demonstrators to KC on Tuesday. The plan there, as in other cities on Tuesday, was to soften up “Bad for America” for Wednesday’s massive demonstration at the annual stockholders’ meeting in Charlotte, N.C. The Bad for America slogan was for openers. The rally goers had lots more:

“Bailout. No thanks.

Bust up. Big Banks.”

“Predatory lender.

Criminal offender.”

“Big banks, you suck.

You’ll do anything for a buck.”

“Who got the money, money?

Who got the money, money?

You got the money, money.

We got the bill.”

Okay, it’s doggerel. But does a pack of greedy dogs deserve anything better?

Too bad yesterday that we didn’t have a fly (with a video camera) on the local executive’s wall, because it must have chafed the suit and tie that he had to tolerate the de classe crowd on the public sidewalk in front of his domain. (As a group, we had to stay off their property. I ventured onto the plaza to take pictures and was politely instructed by a cop to move back to the sidewalk.) Anyway, a video of the exec’s remarks about us would probably have electrified a crowd that was already galvanized. Mr. Bank Exec had to play it gracious, though. When the hoi polloi wanted into the bank to deliver a letter with its demands, he ordered that the group’s representatives be allowed in with no fuss. Otherwise, we’d have just hung around on the sidewalk chanting and showing our signs to the passing traffic.

Robin Acree of GRO was gutsy and funny leading the rally. She called out the CEO of B of A, Brian Moynihan, for heading an operation responsible for more foreclosures than anybody else. She pointed to a picture parody of Don Early, head of the payday loan company QC Holdings. In Missouri, those bloodsuckers charge an average of 431 percent annually on loans.

And guess who the third largest shareholder in QC Holdings might be. Its name begins with Bank and ends with America.

 

Robin told the story of attending a hearing about payday loan companies in Hannibal–a meeting that was also attended by the Missouri payday loan industry spokeshole, Tom Linafelt. Out on the parking lot after the hearing, she heard him say to one of his buddies, “That group that was badmouthing us, that’s those people from Mexico, MO. They’re out to take us down.” Robin grinned at the memory and told the crowd, “Too right!”

Notice at the end of the video that some of us have more youth and bounce than some of the rest of us.

After having its say at Bad for America, the crowd moved on to the KC offices of QC Holdings, which is in an office building so expensive that the sign in front is marble with real gold hammered into the words “Corporate Woods.” QC Holdings is on the fifteenth floor. That’s private property. And a security guard with an attitude promptly said, in his snarkiest voice, that he was calling the cops. Once the cops came, they politely asked the group to leave, and the crowd departed.

Step a few presumptuous toes onto their private property, and you find out how gracious the well heeled really are.

Go on. Tell me you know somebody who isn’t pissed at the big banks. Even many of the tea partyers hate them. It doesn’t matter which side of the spectrum people are on; they’d like to see those bloodsuckers at Wells Fargo and Bank of America hung naked by their toenails over a bonfire.

Unfortunately, the financial environment that bred the current crisis was also bipartisan. Oh sure, we could blame Republicans Phil Gramm, Texas, and Jim Leach, Iowa, for introducing in 1999 the bill that repealed the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, an act which kept speculation tamped down. But those two Republicans only led the charge. In their wake was a 90-8 vote in the Senate, a 362-57 vote in the House, and a signature–as if it were needed–by Bill Clinton.

Not until January of 2010, a year and a half after the global economy wobbled on the edge of a chasm, only to be pulled back from the brink by almost a trillion bucks loaned to the very villains who caused the wipe-out, did Obama, with Paul Volcker at his side, propose reinstating many of the Glass-Steagall regulations. What took you so long?! And anyway, it’s not as if a proposal strong enough to do the job will survive the butchering, compromising, and selling out that will go on during markup. If such a miracle did occur, Congress would freeze in a bi-partisan iceberg (real Dems vs. Rs and Blue Dogs) when it came time to vote on actual reform.

Part of the reason adequate reform isn’t likely to pass is the banks themselves. They used taxpayer money from the bailouts to lobby against reform–and, they know how to spread the moolah to the right campaign coffers. Meanwhile, in 2009 the top five banks made their highest profits ever. And they paid bonuses amounting to $140 billion–about the amount of money it would take to cover the shortfalls in fifty states from the Great Recession that the banks caused.

Damn straight we’re pissed.

The banks “have their boot on the neck of the American Dream.” It’s time to take it to the streets. At least that’s part of the strategy that National People’s Action has mapped out for pressuring the banks to stop ripping people off and start lending to small businesses and investing in communities. Last October, NPA led a coalition of groups that turned out thousands of protesters at the annual American Bankers Association convention in Chicago. They called it Showdown in Chicago, and now every time a TV station wants to illustrate the anger of the populace at the banks, they dredge some video of those protests out of the archives.

It’s time to give MSNBC and CNN new footage. NPA plans to double down, triple down, quadruple down on the protests. There will be regional demonstrations in late April through mid-May. The plan is to focus on the two worst offenders and to turn the clubby atmosphere of their annual stockholders’ meetings into circuses. All the members of last October’s coalition–SEIU, for example, and the AFL/CIO–are itching to get going. Each march will involve at least a thousand, maybe far more–a flood of loud, angry and yet articulate protesters.

The NPA strategy is two pronged.

First, progressives can accomplish a lot by focusing their energy on regulators rather than on legislators: Ben Bernanke at the Fed, Sheila Bair at the FDIC, and John C. Dugan at the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency). In Mexico, MO, Jordan Estevao, an NPA organizer, recently explained the strategy to activists at GRO, one of the members of the Showdown in Chicago coalition.

He asked how many of us had been to Bernanke’s house to discuss the banking problem. Lotsa laughter. But, referring to the protests against Bernanke’s nomination, Estevao said that “because we ‘went to his house,’ he’s now … afraid of us.” NPA is scheduled to meet with Bernanke on March 9th to discuss the actions they feel the Fed needs to be taking. For example, NPA will urge Bernanke to see that the Community Reinvestment Act is enforced.

 

Sheila Bair at the FDIC is even more on board. She showed that she supports NPA’s goals when she spoke at the Showdown in Chicago in support of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency:

“In looking at indecipherable credit card statements and documents, mortgages you can’t understand and APRs from payday loans and high overdraft fees, I don’t see how anyone can say we’ve done a good job protecting consumers from financial services.”

And here’s a sentiment to endear her to us: “‘It’s time to put an end to the ‘too big to fail’ doctrine… Yes, no more bailouts, no more bailouts!'”

That leaves John C. Dugan at the OCC. Estevao shrugged and opined:

“We’ve met with him before, but we don’t know if he’s quite there yet. What that means is that, with the first two, we can negotiate. With the third one, we can act, we can do action. It’s how, you know, how do we bring people to the negotiating table? We hit ’em. And when we hit him, it sends a signal to the other two that they should stay at the table. And then eventually this guy will crack when he’s the odd one out that isn’t working with the community. And, you know, these two [Bernanke and Bair] both have something to protect, they both have something to lose: both of them are under, you know, scrutiny, and are facing the prospect of their powers being rolled back. So we can weigh in on either side of that fight, either help those changes happen or stop them from happening.”

On the Big Banks, it’s ACTION, ACTION, ACTION.

And that’s the second prong of the plan. The coalition will focus on Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Not that it won’t go after, say, Chase Manhattan if its CEO gets an outrageous pay package, but the main idea is to make the other big banks sweat that they could be next when they see how NPA keeps hammering the two worst.

As for what makes Bank of America and Wells Fargo the worst, B of A is the biggest bank and it has the most foreclosures. Wells Fargo has a lot of lawsuits against it for discriminatory practices in lending. The other factor that determined NPA to focus on these two entities is that they are accessible. Bank of America is in every area where NPA affiliates operate, and Wells Fargo is in most of them.

So protesters are going to shine a media glare on the annual stockholder meetings of these two banks on April 27th and 28th. Crowds of demonstrators will show up for the Wells Fargo meeting–Showdown in San Francisco–and for the Bank of America meeting–Showdown in Charlotte. GRO (Grass Roots Organizing) is considering organizing a Heartland Showdown in the Kansas City financial district. That one is still iffy. But there will be a Showdown on Wall Street in early May.

Estevao explained why such actions work:

“If we focus on these two and make them the bad guys of the financial collapse, and every time that we do a protest we’re naming them as the ones that collapsed our economy, eventually that’s gonna be bad for business. And, you know, we don’t even have to like really … they’ll start to lose a little bit of money, but what’s worse is that their stock prices will go down.

So when we were fighting Wal-Mart in Chicago, you know, we wanted them to pay a living wage and we wanted them to pay health insurance because they would have put a lot of other businesses out of business that were paying health insurance in Chicago. That’s the problem with them. And, so we introduced this ordinance that would force them to do those two things, to pay a living wage and pay health benefits. And, you know, at the same time all over the country a lot of other organizations were going after Wal-Mart too, particularly in urban areas. Wal-Mart’s expansion strategy right now, because they’re already all over the suburbs and rural areas … they’ve saturated that market, so they’re trying to get into the cities. And we were stopping them from getting into the city, and it was hurting their stock prices. Their worst nightmare is that a protest would actually start to hurt their stock prices.

We can totally do that with Bank of America and Wells if we’re relentless and if we do big enough … big enough actions that they get a media profile.”

Oh yeah? Like that skinny guy in blue jeans is seriously going to harass the suits at Wells Fargo? It can happen. This is the most unifying issue of our time. Like I said, you don’t know anybody that doesn’t hate the big banks. And if you get enough skinny guys in blue jeans together, suddenly Clark Kent is Superthrong. I own blue jeans. And if GRO gets that K.C. action off the ground, I’m buying an AMTRAC ticket out of St. Louis.