November 17, 2010

Will There Be An Investor Uprising?

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The Senate Banking Committee met today to hold hearings about the foreclosure fraud crisis. MarketWatch has a brief summary here. After it was over, Dave Dayen, Atrios, and Mike Konczal (rortybomb) chatted on Twitter:

ddayen: It’s a national crime that this foreclosure fraud hearing won’t lead the nightly news

ddayen: hearing ending, yes these things are a lot of hot air, but I think this one might have done some good

Atrios: what possible good? nice that maybe some senators get it, but… then what?

ddayen: point is that this has gone from a backwater on blogs to the chair of Senate Banking saying this is a crisis. Baby steps

Atrios: yes that’s progess but..Treasury unlikely to do anything and of course congress is useless

ddayen: Congress is useless but investors, AGs not necessarily. Investors watched this hearing and $ signs lit up in their eyes

Atrios: true, long thought that the only slim hope for this mess was investor uprising

rortybomb: You only need a little bit of successful investor uprising to put ratings agencies into motion, which sends whole thing collapsing.

Atrios: true, tho i think problem with investor uprising solution is that many investors are on both sides of this

rortybomb: You could also have an investor uprising which doesn’t really help homeowners/communities at all. That’s a worry.

Atrios: yes i agree with that, investor uprising no guarantee of helping homeowners. just slim possibility

ddayen: That is a worry, but there are a combination of pressures here, particularly from courts denying foreclosures….pt. being, a multi-pronged attack w/courts, investors, munis and AGs, could get the banks to a homeowner-friendly endgame

So will investors who bought securities backed by fraudulent mortgages lead a revolution against the banks who sold them? Maybe! Though probably not. In any case, I just thought everyone might enjoy eavesdropping on the postgame show a bit.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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