Like Baltimore doesn't have enough problems with the blizzard, and with exploding water lines turning streets into rivers, and a mayor who is so corrupt she makes your average Afghan warlord look like a man of integrity, an explosive crime rate, ACORN thugs, etc, etc., ad nauseum, they have now gone all out. Now they are suing Wells Fargo for, of all things, reverse redlining.
I shit you not. Because Wells Fargo foreclosed on a few hundred homes, in a city where thousands of properties lay vacant, they seem to feel like the bank has damaged the city in some way. Okay, now the only thing I can figure about this is, they are distressed about the lack of property taxes. But would not the bank be obliged to pay these taxes, since they technically own them now? Or were they expected to pay the property taxes the owners couldn't pay, obviously, since they couldn't pay their mortgages, or wouldn't.
They sued Fargo back a ways for the practice of red-lining. That is where banks target areas as bad investments due to poverty and the unlikelihood residents will pay their mortgages. Since it just so happened most of the people in these neighborhoods were black, it was decreed a racist policy, of course, and the feds eventually told them to cut that out.
Reverse red-lining then is where a bank obeys the law and sells an x amount of what it assumes are likely to be bad mortgages, but does so with sub-prime interest arrangements when the recipients actually qualify for the lowest fixed rates available.
The judge overseeing the case has decided the city has no real standing to collect damages and has said he will limit the scope of the lawsuit.
It just amazes me that a city that is so poorly run, mismanaged, and obviously corrupt would have the temerity to try something like this. But then again, thousands of Baltimore residents every year give themselves a Christmas present, albeit sometimes a late one, that should be reflected in the next census.
They leave.
You would think the people who run the city would learn something from that, but then again, if they did, they might have to sue themselves.
