Judges Grow Angry At Banksters

It's about time judges start holding banksters accountable for their crimes.

The Bank of America lawyer laid down a patented rhetorical move heard in courts across America. Your Honor, this Orange County, N.Y., homeowner — a New York City police officer — didn’t make enough money to qualify for a mortgage modification. He didn’t send us the right documents.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t, and so we should be allowed to foreclose.
Justice Catherine M. Bartlett of New York State Supreme Court cut off the lawyer. You, she said, are telling me lies.
“Bank of America got a bailout, and this is an outrage, how this man has been treated,” she said. “Hard-working, middle-class Americans are trying to make it, trying to refinance with your bank.”
Either bank officials show up in person, the justice said, or I’m going to order them “here in handcuffs.”
Rage has acquired a cleansing power. Patience as a virtue is a hard sell at the burnt end of a four-year economic collapse. Zuccotti Park shakes, rattles and rolls; television yakkers chat about inequality; and the federal judge Jed Rakoff all but heckled the Securities and Exchange Commission last week for going easy on Citigroup misbehavior.

I share the rage.  Rock on, #OWS.