NYT Rides The "Foreclosure Express" | Mother Jones

This is just an excerpt from excellent article

By Andy Kroll

| Sun Sep. 5, 2010 10:08 AM PDT

— Flickr/bluesky

NYT Rides The "Foreclosure Express" | Mother Jones: "The woman doing the announcing sounded like an auctioneer, spewing one long monotone stream of names and banks and legal jargon. Occasionally convicts in blue and green jumpsuits straggled by, their arms and ankles chained together.�In one hour this uncontested court dispatched nearly 165 foreclosure cases. Sitting there watching, I felt like I'd arrived at the place where the American Dream goes to die.

The fear among legal experts and foreclosure defense attorneys—like Margery Golant, quoted in both my story and the Times'—is that this fast-paced foreclosure system, pushed ever faster by the banks' lawyers, could steamroll homeowners who have a good shot at saving their homes. As Golant told me for my initial story, 'The judges are so swamped with this stuff that they just don't pay attention. They just rubber-stamp them.' Worse yet, some defense attorneys fear that having older, retired judges deciding complex legal matters in a rapid-fire setting poses even more problems. 'They're too fucking old to understand what's going on,' one defense attorney, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid damaging work relationships, says of the senior judges. 'It's the truth.'

The Times mentions that the Florida legislature earmarked $9.6 million for this 'fore">>>KEEP reading to read full article by clicking on title link.