The Life-Sucking Machine and The Pit of Despair

Whoever wrote “The Princess Bride” and came up with the Life-Sucking Machine and the Pit of Despair must have been dealing with bankers at the time.

It describes corporate banking perfectly.

CitiMortgage cranked the Life-Sucking Machine up to nine on a scale of one-to-10 when they announced that I was officially in default on my loan, and I had 14 days to pay up. Or else.

Okay, it didn’t say “or else,” but the intention was plainly there.

It wasn’t signed. It didn’t include a contact phone number. Clearly, they didn’t want to talk to me. They wanted me to pay up, or else.

Technically, the part I interpreted as “or else” said:

“Failure to cure the default may result in the acceleration of all sums due under the Security Instrument (what’s a Security Instrument? I’ve never heard one being played at my monthly jam sessions).

“The Security Instrument entitles us to collect all expenses incurred in pursuing our remedies. (Remedies? Is the bank sick? Want me to send over some chicken noodle soup? I have a nice little arsenic and chipotle chicken soup recipe I’d love to cook for you…)

“Under IRS regulations, we may be required to report any foreclosure to the IRS. The foreclosure may result in income tax consequences to you.”

I am not a financial whiz, but I interpreted the statement to mean that they were planning to foreclose on me. And if I went into foreclosure, I may have to pay income tax on it.

How can that be? Is the IRS muscling in on the bank loan modification and foreclosure scam? How can I be required to pay taxes on a COMPLETE LOSS, which is what I would incur if I went into foreclosure and they sold my house?

While I was wandering around in the Pit of Despair (also known as the bottom of a cheap bottle of wine), I combed through my four-inch thick file of paperwork related to my loan modification. I found a letter from my old pal Rachel that I’d overlooked earlier, since Aisha told me the letters from Rachel are automatically generated form letters. And here I thought Rachel was missing me terribly all this time and writing me letters to express her feelings of unrequited loan modification love.

Poor, sweet, innocent Rachel. Her letter said:

“We remain committed to helping you identify all possible solutions regarding foreclosure alternatives. There may be a number of options available to you.

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS MAY INCLUDE:

·         Loan modification – may allow you to reduce your monthly payments.”

I swear, that’s what the letter said, in capital letters, just like that. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS MAY INCLUDE a loan modification.

Is CitiMortgage such a behemoth of a bank that they have no idea what each department is doing on behalf of the same client? Talk about one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. One hand is extending an olive branch while the other hand is picking my pockets.

I’ve heard the expression “Too Big to Fail” bandied about when people discuss the Great Recession and the huge banks that brought our economy down.

We need another expression for them now: “Too Big to Succeed.” They’re already failing. They’re failing every taxpayer and mortgagor in this country.

At one point in this frustrating process, my brother offered to help out. He said he’d come to Michigan and sit down with the bankers and me to discuss this situation and work out a solution.

Talk about Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."  When it came to big banking, my brother was a rube. I told him, as gently as I could, that there were no bankers to sit down with. I didn’t even know which of the many corporate offices of CitiMortgage was handling my case, but it most certainly wasn’t a real, live banker in Michigan. I told him there would be no “sitting down” with the underwriter who makes these decisions, because no one at CitiMortgage will reveal who the underwriters are. They could be mail room flunkies for all I knew, spending somewhere between 15 minutes or 12 seconds on their “Approved” or “Denied” decision, depending on whether or not it was getting to be lunch time and they didn’t want to miss the Wienie Wagon outside.

What a novel idea. Sitting down with reasonable people and working out a solution. I wonder how much money CitiMortgage could save if, instead of send out reams of automated forms and paying heartless, middle management personnel to put up with angry people seeking a loan modification, they simply assigned one level-headed person to spend one hour actually talking face-to-face with the person applying for a loan modification.

One hour.

That’s all it would take. I could bring all my bank statements, paycheck stubs, income and expense reports to the meeting, and the banker could tap away for a few minutes on a calculator and then either say, “Yes, you qualify,” or “No, you don’t.” And if it was the latter, the CitiMortgage banker could sensibly work on a plan to lower my interest rate and extend the terms of my mortgage, without government interference, so that I could keep my house and they could continue to make money on my loan interest, albeit with a slightly smaller profit margin.

Whoops. I must be thinking of another Jimmy Stewart movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Too bad life doesn’t always imitate art.