As ‘bonazaman’ states, in the US, foreclosed homes are sometimes being bulldozed. However, in the US, banks have been known to refuse to accept the foreclosure, because by the time they get around to taking control of the property many months later, it has become a worthless slum. The local authority may then demolish the property for safety reasons and then sends the bill for demolition to the owner – that is, the mortgagee now living in a rented shack with no job who couldn’t afford the mortgage in the first place!

On a different economic problem, but the same underlying corruption, I give you my second piece of evidence – health insurance rescission (the retroactive cancellation of health insurance) in the USA. During the US government hearings on this problem, a CEO of a health insurance company said that this only affected 0.5% of the people they cover – a tiny number. However, on a bit more digging it becomes apparent that the only people who they rescind are those who are diagnosed with serious and expensive illnesses; that is, the issue naturally doesn’t affect anybody who just pays in their health premiums, but it actually affects about 50% of people who claim for costly treatment. So, after paying your health insurance for 30 years or more you are diagnosed with a brain tumour. Your health insurance company then cuts you off and, of course, no other health insurance company would take you on with a known condition. You die, and the insurance company pockets a good profit (see http://tauntermedia.com/2009/07/28/unconscionable-math/).

In the UK, senior bankers have insisted that they get paid their multimillion salaries and bonuses this year even though their companies have actually *failed* and only continue to exist because taxpayers are forced to pay for them, stating that their employers, the banks, have a contractural obligation to pay them these bonuses. Yet the same senior staff have laid off thousands of their own staff, thus breaking employment contracts. Not to mention breaking pretty much every social contract about embezzling public funds and sucking money out of the mouths of generations yet to be born.

Iceland has no monopoly on evil. At the risk of sounding like I want to start a moral crusade, I have to state that in democratic countries such as my own (the UK) and Iceland, we the people have not only the responsibility but the power to identify this kind of heedless and avaricious behaviour and stop it. All too often we get bamboozled by the pretty lights these sociopathic confidence tricksters spin for us and believe that if we ‘deregulate’ we can create wealth for ourselves. Its a form of economic Stockholm Syndrome.

If we don’t shoulder our democratic responsibility soon, then I really think that what we laughingly refer to as ‘western civilisation’ is heading for the dustbin.

HE’s is the victim you dolt.
He could afford it, until the ROBBER BARONS with their LYING Triple AAA ratings, insurance (LIE) A.I.G; set up their own shadow banking system (hedge funds, credit swaps, derivatives) after they REPEALED (firewall) the Glass Stegall Act. Hey where’s Sen (former) Gramm author of this heist (bill) and Bill Clinton, (now a multimillionaire) who signed it? Congress sits back like they know nothing/ buffoons the lot of them. Meantime the BANKS are the ones (the crooks) getting trillions in bailouts (European just got voted 100 billion via the IMF/ meantime Iran distracts) while citizens are left homeless and penniless. And yes, now the banks, rather than lowering the principle/ putting a moratorium on foreclosures are bulldozing under their toxic assets. Oh and Gramm got himself a job (thank you from Wall Street) as UBS/ after he and his wife cleaned up on ENRON. The whole world is run by crooks and the citizens who’ve worked hard their entire lives are being made to pay for the largest HEIST in world history with none of these CRIMINALS in jail. And they want to charge this guy? I hope everybody does this.