The Mortgage Bankers' Association booked this year's San Francisco conference in 1995. Little did they know that when it finally rolled around, they'd be trapped in their hotel rooms for fear of being booed down by an angry mob. Thousands of protesters have poured into the streets around the meeting to voice their anger at the industry arguably responsible for the current economic crisis.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
"They're the ones who started this crisis. They're the ones who are responsible for it," Nancy Mitchell, a member of the ANSWER Coalition - for Act Now to Stop War & End Racism, the organizer of the protest - said into her bullhorn as convention delegates filed into the hall. "They should not be bailed out. We need that money for workers, people who are losing their homes, their jobs, their health care."
Conferees, predictably, disagreed that they deserved to be the focus of the protest, insisting that the crisis was no better for them than for anyone else. Cheryl Crispin, senior vice president of communications and marketing insisted:
"Nobody benefits from a foreclosure. The borrower, the homeowner, does not benefit. The lender who provided the loan and has been in the game does not benefit. So we, as an industry, are doing everything we possibly can to help those homeowners who are able to stay in their home stay in their homes."
She also pointed out that in California, 25% of foreclosures involved investment speculation in vacant property. If that means the remaining 75% are families losing their homes, I'm not sure she should have brought up statistics.
For footage of the protests, see below:
image: cnn.com
