The Debt Crisis is Deep and Ominous by Carl Bloice August 31, 2007 Black Commentator
At 7:30 a.m., only a few hours after the New York Times hit the streets August 6th, with a front page story on the difficulties holders of subprime mortgages were having, mortgage broker Jack Kunkel was in front of his computer, clearly upset. The article had been accompanied by a photo of Nicole Brownlee, an African American woman who was fighting foreclosure on her home. "Now that the mortgage market has gone sour, the media is flooding readers with pitiful stories of borrowers, invariably elderly Black females, who were suckered into taking out a mortgage loan," Kunkel wrote to the Times, going on to conclude, "The woman in this article made her bed and now she needs to sleep in it. She can't get out of it by playing the hapless-elderly-Black-woman role, suckered by a slick-talking mortgage broker." That ran under the title "Mortgage Woes" in that day's Readers' Comment section of the paper's online edition. Ms. Brownlee actually wasn't the person featured in the very informative article by Gretchen Morgenson. That would be Dianne Brimmage (no picture) of Alton, Ill, a former forklift driver at the recently closed Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant in nearby Godfrey. "A borrower in good standing since 1998, she said a local broker persuaded her to combine her debts in a fixed-rate loan of $65,000 in 2003," Morgenson reported. "But at the closing, she was presented with an adjustable-rate mortgage from the Argent Mortgage Company, carrying a low teaser rate for two years. When she objected, the broker assured her that rates would fall and she could get a better fixed-rate loan later. She said she believed him." Ms. Brimmage's ethnic background was not mentioned. Full article at: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=13662 <http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=13662> Alejandro Valle Baeza -- Posgrado Facultad de Economía Av. Universidad 3000 Circuito interior México 04510, DF México Tel. 55-56222148 fax 55-56222158 Página web: http://usuarios.lycos.es/vallebaeza
