foreclosure crisis? we ain't got no stinking crisis!

If you are one of the millions of people going through a mortgage crisis, you are in my prayers. It is a very scary, humiliating, awful time. The thought of being out on the street, even worse if you have children; has got to be one of the true terrors of all time as an adult. Do you know what makes it worse? When the bank that you are working with is more interested in foreclosure than in getting their money. That's right. You heard me correctly. Someone near and dear to me is going through a foreclosure right now. Not her fault, by the way. She is not one of those people who bought too much home thinking she had some sense of entitlement, or built a 4000 square foot monstrosity with no reasonable expectation of making balloon payments when the adjustable mortgage rose. She bought a house with her husband and started to raise a family in it.She grew a garden, planted trees, and chased after the American dream. It turns out the man of her dreams was also the man of a co-worker's dreams. He neglected to make a house payment for eight months, and when she found out and began to try to fix the horrible mess he had made she ran into one stonewall after another. Enter the best relative you could ever ask for. Her brother has offered to loan her the money to get her home out of foreclosure. Problem solved, right? Ha ha ha, you silly thing. First problem:M&T bank won't return her calls for days at a time. The person she needs to talk to is on her honeymoon or some trip away and no one else in this huge bank can help her. Problem number two: when the bank does return her messages and sends her the amount she needs to reinstate her loan, the figure that is supposed to be good for a month is good for only three days! She spent four whole eight hour days trying to get this fixed. In the mean time the amount to save her house has quadrupeled over the last two months. I'll bet you are wondering how this ties in to the greatest company on earth, aren't you? Guess where she worked for ten years before being terminated for taking too long to come back from a medical leave of absence? If you guessed Walmart, you got it in one, smartypants. And it is purely a coincedence that a memo was leaked six months earlier that explained how much Walmart could save if they went with a plan to terminate as many associates as possible who had been there for seven years or longer. Purely a coincedence. So what would have happened if the amoral genius who came up with this plan had kept their big mouth shut? For starters, a family wouldn't be worried about where they are going to live,and I'd have had to come up with something else to write about. People who have given many years of their life to their job wouldn't have to worry about starting over at the bottom somewhere else. And maybe, just maybe, Walmart would be a great place to work again. If only Congress would do the work of the people, and show some interest in problems like these. If only the mainstream media was more interested in this than some poor girl in Alaska who accidently got pregnant. If only. Try calling your state and federal represenatives and asking them the same question. You'll thank me later.