(Fred Weinberg/Penny Press) – We have a fundamental problem in this country as it relates to home mortgages and the housing market.
In a perfect world—that is, a world of free markets where the Government doesn’t have its thumb on the scale—when you borrow money against a house, the underlying value of the house should bear no relationship to the repayment of the loan.
But this is not a perfect world.
When banks and other lenders do incredibly stupid things and get into trouble, they go howling to the government to bail them out.
And they get bailed out.
A homeowner who now owes twice what his house is worth?
Not so much.
Those same banks that took your money as a bailout now tell you that you have a “moral” obligation to repay your mortgage and, no, they won’t give you a hand because, after all, that might create a “moral hazard”. Apparently, bankers themselves are not subject to the same “moral hazard” when they get bailed out, perhaps because they have no morals.
In any event, in 2009, the Nevada legislature, in its infinite wisdom, created a mediation program to at least give homeowners a shot at having an adult supervise the process of trying to modify loans to allow them to stay in their houses. That adult would ultimately be one of two judges in the state if the process could not be concluded at a lower level.
One of those judges (note the lower case “j”; it’s there for a reason) is Donald Mosley of Las Vegas.
Now the fact that this clown is actually still a judge is a tribute to a transient electorate that often doesn’t pay attention to the basic fact that many lawyers who can’t get enough clients become judges because they need the job. Mosely is one of those judges.
Apparently, in a line-up of very embarrassing judges, they couldn’t find anything else for Mosley to do, so they gave him this assignment.
And he immediately did what he does best—prove once more to the world that he is a complete doofus.
In an October, 2010 hearing over a mortgage loan, Mosley told lawyer Jacob Hafter, “judges, and the Supreme Court was part of this discussion, are not going to, in this forum, start modifying loans; just would not do (it). That would lead to a nightmare. I’d be here until midnight every night restructuring loans.”
Now, if what Mosley said is true, that the Supreme Court had already discussed the matter with him and Washoe County District Judge Patrick Flanagan who handles such cases in Northern Nevada, then it is either judicial malfeasance, or incompetence, or both at a very high level and needs to be settled in a real court, a Federal Court.
If, as is more likely, Mosley is just shooting off his big, fat, incompetent, lazy judicial hack piehole, then it’s time to replace him as many other Clark County “jurists” have been replaced (they’re slightly harder to get rid of than Clark County Commissioners, but that’s what the FBI is for) and go on down the road.
The argument in this case isn’t whether or not to have a judge modify every mortgage. Only those where a lender refuses to play by the rules.
That ought to be an easy ruling.
Unless, of course, Citicorp, the lender in this case, has somehow made its point loudly to one of Mosley’s favorite campaign contributors.
Heaven forefend, not in Clark County, Nevada?!
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