1,014 new jobs announced at Charlotte nonprofit ["bank terrorists" on the move]

In the unfolding economic crisis, helping borrowers with troubled mortgages has become a growth business, landing Charlotte a dose of good economic news today for its beleaguered financial sector.

At an office park in east Charlotte, Gov. Bev Perdue and other government officials gathered to announce an expansion by a non-profit organization that aims to add 1,014 jobs here over the next five years. Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a nonprofit community advocacy and homeownership organization, plans to hire customer service specialists, mortgage counselors, negotiators and others to help low-income and minority borrowers.

NACA, as the organization is known, said it plans to hire about 500 of those workers in the next two to four weeks. It will hold a job fair Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. both days at its location at 5855 Executive Center Drive. Job seekers can also find information at www.naca.com.

NACA plans to invest $4.5 million in Charlotte as part of an expansion over the next five years, although NACA chief executive Bruce Marks said the total is really much higher when you tally the total salaries that will be paid in coming years. The jobs will have an average annual salary of $35,982 but some will pay as high as $80,000, Marks said.

The nonprofit is receiving a $1 million grant from the One North Carolina Fund, which provides financial assistance though local governments to stimulate economic activity and create new jobs. The companies receive no money upfront and must meet job creation requirements, the governor's office said.

NACA has two main thrusts: helping borrowers get affordable home loans and, increasingly, helping people who can't afford loans they received from other lenders. The group is holding “Save the Dream” events around the country in which counselors aim to provide same-day loan modifications in which they reduce interest rates to as low as 2 percent and in some cases trim the principal owed.

The next event is July 10-14 in Atlanta. Some of the new hires at the Charlotte office will be part of the team that travels from city to city running these gatherings, which can draw 25,000 or more homeowners, Marks said. In three earlier stops, NACA has helped 30,000 homeowners, and Marks said he expects to aid hundreds of thousands more in the coming tour. As part of the expansion in Charlotte, Marks has agreed to hold an event in North Carolina at a yet to be determined time.

NACA has reached agreements with major mortgage servicers allowing them to make these modifications, Marks said. “We are doing a mobile servicing operation,” he said. “We're doing their job for them.”

Marks said he hopes his organization will set an example for how to modify loans and eventually not be needed for the task. But in the foreclosure crisis he expects to still have plenty of work helping homebuyers with home-purchase loans that feature no down payments and below market interest rates. Those loans have carried low foreclosure rates, now around .68 percent, because borrowers are counseled about the loans and helped if they get into trouble.

Since the 1990s, Marks has cultivated a reputation as a “bank terrorist” known for holding protests against banks – and bank CEOs – that the group deems to have poor lending records in minority and poor communities. The fear of his wrath has led many lenders to collaborate with him rather than fight him.

Retired Bank of America chief executive Hugh McColl Jr. was the major banker to team up with Marks after a famously rocky meeting in 1995. Marks told McColl that all bankers were evil. McColl retorted that nonprofits just want a handout. But the two came to an agreement, and Bank of America continues to be a major partner with the organization, agreeing in 2004 to commit $6 billion to NACA's lending program.

McColl was on hand for the announcement today, and Perdue praised the retired banker for his role in landing NACA's expansion in Charlotte. In an interview, McColl said he was on the “periphery” of the deal, while praising Marks' plans for Charlotte.

“The jobs are important but what the jobs do are equally important,” McColl said. “They help people own homes in the United States.”

McColl declined to comment on recent events at Bank of America, including CEO Ken Lewis' Capitol Hill appearance today, saying he has been retired from the bank since 2001.

NACA to Fix Windows It Broke. Yippee!

Posted June 11th, 2009 at 2:04 PM by Jeff A. Taylor

And is only asking for $1m. in North Carolina taxpayer money to do it.

I tell you folks, here we have sure fire proof that one of the two following propositions is true:

Our state and local leadership, elected and self-appointed, is dumber than a bag of hammers.
Our state and local leadership, elected and self-appointed, thinks you are dumber than a bag of hammers.

Good God people, it was NACA, ACORN and similar groups “partnering” with banks like Hugh McColl’s Bank of America and Ed Crutchfield’s First Union that kicked off the stampede into high-risk, high-margin, sub-prime loans. This was the bottom-rung of the decade-long banking Ponzi scheme which collapsed last year, taking trillions of dollars with it. Now we are supposed to jump up and down because NACA will stick a phone bank sweat shop in East Charlotte to reach out across the nation and pitch more government subsidized loans to replace existing ones?

Oh happy day!

Bonus Observation: Gee, and this big manufactured story just happens to unfold at the same moment Ken Lewis is in DC degrading himself with the claim the Fed made him buy Merrill. Where’d I put my hammer?
===

NACA’s Bruce Marks is a Bully

Posted June 11th, 2009 at 3:32 PM by Jeff A. Taylor

Just cannot believe the junk that has flown out of the Charlotte Chamber and associated apologists today on the NACA million-dollar jobs subsidy. NACA chief Bruce Marks is no friend of legitimate bankers or the free-market financial sector. Why is Charlotte hitching itself to this shakedown artist?

If Charlotte is that desperate for borderline financial sector jobs — even more so than buying off GMAC to land a few jobs here suggested — then things are much, much worse in the local economy than even a confirmed nay-sayer like me thinks.

We’ve got real estate prices still tanking, Crescent Resources in bankruptcy, and now Bruce Marks as an official partner of the local power structure. Amazing. Check out what the WSJ had to say just last month about NACA and Marks:

“I’m tired of borrowers being screwed!” Mr. Marks yelled into the phone. “You’re incompetent!” Before hanging up, he threatened to call bank CEO Kenneth Lewis at home to complain about the loan executive. … In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.
Though some bankers privately deplore his tactics, Mr. Marks is a growing influence in the lending industry and the effort to curb foreclosures. NACA has signed agreements with the four largest U.S. mortgage lenders — Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. — in which they agree to work with his counselors on a regular basis to try to arrange lower payments for struggling borrowers. NACA has made powerful political friends, such as House majority whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, and it receives federal money to counsel homeowners. … Instead of relying on credit scores, he thinks lenders should look into the reasons for any late payments in prospective borrowers’ past and prepare renters for the responsibilities of home ownership. Then, if people are given a loan they can afford, they shouldn’t be required to make a down payment, he argues.
Critics doubt some of these changes would be helpful. Having to use a single interest rate for all would make banks less likely to lend to people with blemished credit records, says Richard Riese, an executive at the American Bankers Association.
A single rate also could lead to higher rates for everyone, adds John Courson, chief executive of another trade group, the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Mr. Courson declined to comment on Mr. Marks. “You’re not going to drag me in there,” he said.
For now, NACA’s main focus is fighting foreclosure, and the 53-year-old Mr. Marks pursues it relentlessly. NACA holds mass “Save the Dream” gatherings, flying in hundreds of counselors to work with borrowers who hope to restructure their mortgages.
At one in Columbia, S.C., in March, a line of homeowners stretched around an arena waiting to meet counselors in canary-yellow T-shirts reading “Financial Predators Beware.” Mr. Marks, dressed in black and wearing a NACA cap, circled the arena with a bullhorn. “We’re gonna get it done!” he bellowed.

Simply put, Marks and NACA want to straight-up socialize mortgage lending in America. More than is already the case.

And we’ve invited him to Charlotte to do that and handed him a big fat check in the bargain. Try to imagine some fat, rich Roman city of ancient times hitting a rough patch and deciding the best thing to do would be to invite the barbarians in to help run the city’s affairs. The powerful Romans probably figure they can buy off the barbarians better that way, keep them close while assuring the general populace all is well.

This is precisely what the Powers That Be have done for Charlotte. Except that our once fat, rich city will just become an economic basket-case rather than all of us waking up with our throats slit. Ah, progress.

ACTIVIST FINANCIER ‘TERRORIZES’ BANKERS IN FORECLOSURE FIGHT

May 21, 2009

Bruce Marks doesn’t bother being diplomatic. A campaigner on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosure, he was on the phone one day in March to a loan executive at Bank of America Corp.

“I’m tired of borrowers being screwed!” Mr. Marks yelled into the phone. “You’re incompetent!” Before hanging up, he threatened to call bank CEO Kenneth Lewis at home to complain about the loan executive.

Mr. Marks’s nonprofit organization, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, has emerged as one of the loudest scourges of the banking industry in the post-bubble economy. It salts its Web site with photos of executives it accuses of standing in the way of helping homeowners — emblazoning “Predator” across their photos, picturing their homes and sometimes including home phone numbers. In February, NACA, as it’s called, protested at the home of a mortgage investor by scattering furniture on his lawn, to give him a taste of what it feels like to be evicted.

In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124276441945635993.html

The American Spectator: What Dirt Does NACA Have on NC Gov. Bev Perdue?

By Matthew Vadum on 6.11.09 @ 4:47PM

The far-left community group NACA just squeezed taxpayer dollars out of the state of North Carolina.

NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) is a very aggressive ACORN wannabe and it played a role in the subprime mortgage collapse by using the Community Reinvestment Act to hound banks into lending money to people they should have known wouldn't be able to pay it back.

The state's Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, is even bragging about surrendering the $1 million grant from the One North Carolina Fund on her website.

The grant is going to help NACA expand its operations.

In her press release, the governor also promotes NACA's jobs fair happening tomorrow and Saturday in Charlotte. Perdue does her constituents a disservice, though, by not reminding them that a criminal record --or at least the ability to intimidate people-- might be a prerequisite to land a job with NACA.

It's unclear what kind of dirt blackmailer Bruce Marks, the head of NACA who glibly calls himself an "urban terrorist," had on Gov. Perdue. Perhaps a Freedom of Information Act request would be in order. (Here's a North Carolina Business Journal article on the grant.)

(Hat tip to Paul Chesser)

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NACA to Fix Windows It Broke. Yippee!

NACA’s Bruce Marks is a Bully

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