The attempted mortgage eminent-domain grab that has been covered on this site here, here and here has taken a new twist. After the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association voiced "very serious concerns" about the plan to a reporter from Bloomberg News, the chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners, Steven Gluckstern, responded:
"The Washington lobbyists for Wall Street are opposed even though they agree it has merits to help average Americans who are struggling," Gluckstern wrote. "We'll take the advice of legal scholars over the comments of Wall Street's lobbyists any day."
This from a guy who is going around with Evercore and a plan to raise billions of dollars to buy the mortgages at discounted rates after the government seizes them? The "average Americans" versus "Wall Street" dichotomy here is totally specious. What's going on here is a fight between the Wall Street guys who own the mortgages now and a different set of Wall Street guys (i.e., Mr. Gluckstern's backers at Evercore) who want to use the power of the government to take the mortgages away from the current owners at a cheaper price than they could get if they offered to buy them from the owners without the assistance of government power.
