The Florida foreclosure crisis; is it being fully uncovered --or covered up?

Report from the Epicenter of Fraud Closures.
Can there be a rescue of U.S. workers facing foreclosure and unemployment?

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida--In all of the economic issues we are dealing with, there is always a back story, a deeper context that is usually missing, disappeared like those Allende supporters in Chile in the l970s who wanted to empower workers, not just rescue them when they get buried in a deep hole. MORE

A couple of EXCERPTS:

Crime Wave

Here in Florida, one epicenter of the housing catastrophe, homeowners were shell-shocked by the latest fraud closure crime wave.

Denise Richardson writes in the Sun Sentinel, "Last I knew, knowingly signing documents fraudulently and using them in a court of law is frowned on, right? It's criminal, isn't it? Or is it only criminal if you are a homeowner and not a bank? Seems we've gone to great lengths to create and then accept a double standard here.

"Perhaps these financial crimes--yes, that's what they are, crimes--continue to happen because we never addressed the real problems to begin with. You can't fix a problem you don't acknowledge. Does anyone believe that was done to help protect the rights of homeowners? Let's call it what it is: fraud."

An attorney in Deerfield Beach, Fla., representing 3,000 foreclosure victims, has taken hundreds of depositions from Bank employees who admit they knew nothing about the details of the evictions they signed off on. Many are now being put down as "Burger King Kids" yet they know more about real whoppers than this lot knows about real estate. RealtyTrac reports that foreclosure and REO (real estate-owned) homes accounted for 24 percent of all residential sales during the second quarter? That is huge!

Here in relatively affluent Palm Beach County, homeowners are No. 1 in the state for the average number of loans in foreclosure that are delinquent. It has the fourth highest number of foreclosures, 45,829 with an average delinquency of 623 days. You will recall that Bernie Madoff once turned Palm Beach into a hunting ground for his Ponzi scheme.

Read more from Danny Schechter the News Dissector