1,014 new jobs announced at Charlotte nonprofit ["bank terrorists" on the move]

Charlotte Observer ^ | June 11, 2009 | Rick Rothacker

[MitchellC]

NACA to Fix Windows It Broke. Yippee!

Posted June 11th, 2009 at 2:04 PM by Jeff A. Taylor

And is only asking for $1m. in North Carolina taxpayer money to do it.

I tell you folks, here we have sure fire proof that one of the two following propositions is true:

• Our state and local leadership, elected and self-appointed, is dumber than a bag of hammers.
• Our state and local leadership, elected and self-appointed, thinks you are dumber than a bag of hammers.

Good God people, it was NACA, ACORN and similar groups “partnering” with banks like Hugh McColl’s Bank of America and Ed Crutchfield’s First Union that kicked off the stampede into high-risk, high-margin, sub-prime loans. This was the bottom-rung of the decade-long banking Ponzi scheme which collapsed last year, taking trillions of dollars with it. Now we are supposed to jump up and down because NACA will stick a phone bank sweat shop in East Charlotte to reach out across the nation and pitch more government subsidized loans to replace existing ones?

Oh happy day!

Bonus Observation: Gee, and this big manufactured story just happens to unfold at the same moment Ken Lewis is in DC degrading himself with the claim the Fed made him buy Merrill. Where’d I put my hammer?
===

NACA’s Bruce Marks is a Bully

Posted June 11th, 2009 at 3:32 PM by Jeff A. Taylor

Just cannot believe the junk that has flown out of the Charlotte Chamber and associated apologists today on the NACA million-dollar jobs subsidy. NACA chief Bruce Marks is no friend of legitimate bankers or the free-market financial sector. Why is Charlotte hitching itself to this shakedown artist?

If Charlotte is that desperate for borderline financial sector jobs — even more so than buying off GMAC to land a few jobs here suggested — then things are much, much worse in the local economy than even a confirmed nay-sayer like me thinks.

We’ve got real estate prices still tanking, Crescent Resources in bankruptcy, and now Bruce Marks as an official partner of the local power structure. Amazing. Check out what the WSJ had to say just last month about NACA and Marks:

“I’m tired of borrowers being screwed!” Mr. Marks yelled into the phone. “You’re incompetent!” Before hanging up, he threatened to call bank CEO Kenneth Lewis at home to complain about the loan executive. … In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.

Though some bankers privately deplore his tactics, Mr. Marks is a growing influence in the lending industry and the effort to curb foreclosures. NACA has signed agreements with the four largest U.S. mortgage lenders — Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. — in which they agree to work with his counselors on a regular basis to try to arrange lower payments for struggling borrowers. NACA has made powerful political friends, such as House majority whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, and it receives federal money to counsel homeowners. … Instead of relying on credit scores, he thinks lenders should look into the reasons for any late payments in prospective borrowers’ past and prepare renters for the responsibilities of home ownership. Then, if people are given a loan they can afford, they shouldn’t be required to make a down payment, he argues.

Critics doubt some of these changes would be helpful. Having to use a single interest rate for all would make banks less likely to lend to people with blemished credit records, says Richard Riese, an executive at the American Bankers Association.

A single rate also could lead to higher rates for everyone, adds John Courson, chief executive of another trade group, the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mr. Courson declined to comment on Mr. Marks. “You’re not going to drag me in there,” he said.

For now, NACA’s main focus is fighting foreclosure, and the 53-year-old Mr. Marks pursues it relentlessly. NACA holds mass “Save the Dream” gatherings, flying in hundreds of counselors to work with borrowers who hope to restructure their mortgages.

At one in Columbia, S.C., in March, a line of homeowners stretched around an arena waiting to meet counselors in canary-yellow T-shirts reading “Financial Predators Beware.” Mr. Marks, dressed in black and wearing a NACA cap, circled the arena with a bullhorn. “We’re gonna get it done!” he bellowed.

Simply put, Marks and NACA want to straight-up socialize mortgage lending in America. More than is already the case.

And we’ve invited him to Charlotte to do that and handed him a big fat check in the bargain. Try to imagine some fat, rich Roman city of ancient times hitting a rough patch and deciding the best thing to do would be to invite the barbarians in to help run the city’s affairs. The powerful Romans probably figure they can buy off the barbarians better that way, keep them close while assuring the general populace all is well.

This is precisely what the Powers That Be have done for Charlotte. Except that our once fat, rich city will just become an economic basket-case rather than all of us waking up with our throats slit. Ah, progress.

[manic4organic]

NACACORN

[MitchellC]

Bev Perdue's big announcement. One of the 'community organizers' that extorted millions out of BofA will now "invest" a fraction of it back into the city in order to keep the cycle going.

NC *Ping*

Please FRmail MitchellC if you want to be added to or removed from this North Carolina ping list.

[MitchellC]

This city is so screwed.

[smokingfrog]

Only 599,500 more jobs to go for this summer.

Let me know when we get to that magical create or save 3 million number.

[businessprofessor]

The barbarians have stormed through the gates. Government and businesses closely associated with government are the new growth industry. The USA will lead the world in regulations, lawsuits, community activists, union thugs, and subsidies.

[kcvl]

ACTIVIST FINANCIER ‘TERRORIZES’ BANKERS IN FORECLOSURE FIGHT

May 21, 2009

Bruce Marks doesn’t bother being diplomatic. A campaigner on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosure, he was on the phone one day in March to a loan executive at Bank of America Corp.

“I’m tired of borrowers being screwed!” Mr. Marks yelled into the phone. “You’re incompetent!” Before hanging up, he threatened to call bank CEO Kenneth Lewis at home to complain about the loan executive.

Mr. Marks’s nonprofit organization, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, has emerged as one of the loudest scourges of the banking industry in the post-bubble economy. It salts its Web site with photos of executives it accuses of standing in the way of helping homeowners — emblazoning “Predator” across their photos, picturing their homes and sometimes including home phone numbers. In February, NACA, as it’s called, protested at the home of a mortgage investor by scattering furniture on his lawn, to give him a taste of what it feels like to be evicted.

In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124276441945635993.html

[Tarheel]

We have been in the CLT area for about 24 years. In that time we have watched the city go from a solid southern banking city to a rapid growth banking conglomerate city and somewhere in that time span was ‘the world class city’campaign. Now, with this announcement, it looks like they are about to devolve into a city of thugs and thieves.

The state was flush with cash 24 years ago. Somewhere along the way the legislators spent every single dime, increased sales taxes, the schools have gone to he** in a hand-basket, and we have become a caricature of our former selves.

[MitchellC]

The American Spectator: What Dirt Does NACA Have on NC Gov. Bev Perdue?

By Matthew Vadum on 6.11.09 @ 4:47PM

The far-left community group NACA just squeezed taxpayer dollars out of the state of North Carolina.

NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) is a very aggressive ACORN wannabe and it played a role in the subprime mortgage collapse by using the Community Reinvestment Act to hound banks into lending money to people they should have known wouldn't be able to pay it back.

The state's Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, is even bragging about surrendering the $1 million grant from the One North Carolina Fund on her website.

The grant is going to help NACA expand its operations.

In her press release, the governor also promotes NACA's jobs fair happening tomorrow and Saturday in Charlotte. Perdue does her constituents a disservice, though, by not reminding them that a criminal record --or at least the ability to intimidate people-- might be a prerequisite to land a job with NACA.

It's unclear what kind of dirt blackmailer Bruce Marks, the head of NACA who glibly calls himself an "urban terrorist," had on Gov. Perdue. Perhaps a Freedom of Information Act request would be in order. (Here's a North Carolina Business Journal article on the grant.)

(Hat tip to Paul Chesser)

[MitchellC]

No dirt needed when it comes to Bev Perdue, I’m afraid. She really is dumb enough to believe this is a good idea.

[MitchellC]

This city may be on its way to becoming the next Detroit. The public schools are a baby-sitting service for thugs and illegals.

[STONEWALLS]

” The public schools are a baby-sitting service for thugs and illegals.”

...the schools are down to 35% white....when that happens it’s all over for a city.

[STONEWALLS]

“somewhere in that time span was ‘the world class city’campaign. Now, with this announcement, it looks like they are about to devolve into a city of thugs and thieves.”

....you can thank Hugh McColl/the Observer/Johnny Harris/Ed Crutchfield/the Belks/Paula Dupuy/George Shinn/Bruton Smith and others for what happened....they were all little more than Boss Hogg in an Armani suit.

[exit82]

I smell ACORN.

How nice the taxpayers of NC kicked in one million dollars.

[Tarheel]

That list of Armani clad Boss Hoggs is too true. There are more I could add to your list, particularly from the political field. It has amazed me how they move from county commission to school board to city council and then back again. Constantly recycling though out the local political scene. In a few cases they do stay and stay ad infinitum in a particular post. Never improving, just staying and spending.

[STONEWALLS]

....when I lived in Charlotte in the 80s and early 90s I never got over how compliant the public was...anything the above named cabal wanted; the Observer cheer led and people never questioned it....that was during the desperate lusting to be a “world class city” period....it was like it was bad manners to ask “wait a minute, how are we gonna pay for this”....the only public guy that I remember expressing unease was an Observer beat writer named Foon Rhee...he later left in the early 90s....I’m married to a Charlotte girl and we hate to go back to visit....it’s a shame what’s happened....if you could have seen the city in the 60s, it was a wonderful place when I used to visit there.

[MitchellC]

The white flight seems to be covered by middle class blacks moving into the city, which for civil society’s sake is good in the short term but is murder in the long term due to the voting pattern. Same as NC in general with the influx of white yankees, who in due time will be standing around wondering “what happened?” before moving along to ruin another area of the country.

[denydenydeny]

plans to hire customer service specialists, mortgage counselors, negotiators and others to help low-income and minority borrowers.

At least during the Depression, government hired people to actually make things via the WPA, etc.

These days we hire people to tell other people how to chisel money from the government.

[MaxMax]

low-income and minority borrowers.

Hey, it didn't work the first time so lets just keep trying until it does.

[Gritty]

Isn’t about time we change the name “Charlotte” to “Chicago”?