Can We At least Protect Our Soldiers From the Banks?

It used to be called the Soldiers and Sailors Act. Now it is called The Service member Civil Relief Act. As a law it is meant to protect our Soldiers, Airman, Sailors and Marines from the predatory lenders who would steal every last penny they made while fighting in a U.S. war, and put their families out into the street to boot.

Everyone acts surprised when they hear that banks are breaking Federal law by foreclosing on soldiers homes while they are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. People just can't believe the soldiers would be overcharged on their mortgage payments. Or the law that locks in a soldiers interest payments at 6 percent would be ignored.

But you would only be surprised if you thought U.S. commercial banks respected soldiers. They dont. To a U.S. bank, a soldier is just like any mark who walks through their door. They are going to relieve him or her of as much money as they can, steal it if they have to, and head for the crap tables on Wall Street

You probably remember what being in the service of your country was like. Tens of millions of U.S. citizens are veterans of the Armed Services. It is always tougher if you are married with children. If you are on active duty, however, chances are the military will place your family in military subsidized housing. That is one less worry when you have to be separated.

But today, many of the soldiers carrying the load in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the National Guard or the Reserves, so, for years they have been "weekend warriors, plus two weeks of training per summer. Then Bush II was elected, and it has been hell for the Reservist and National Guard ever since. The military doesn't give housing to them most of the time. It hasn't had to, because they are "civilian soldiers" and usually own their own houses. In fact, a Reservist might be your next door neighbor. Chances are he or she is living in your neighborhood.

In other words, he owns housing like yours, and has a mortgage so is making monthly payments to the bank. Then along comes these wars, both a little iffy, on the common sense side. But that's not for soldiers to worry about. They worry about coming back home alive, about the thousands of traumatic brain injuries and amputations and deaths both of these wars have created.

You want to get in country, do your assignment for maybe a year or so, (don't worry; they will be calling for you again later) and then go back home in one piece to your family. But while you are away, actually dodging bullets on the battlefield, you receive a tearful telephone call from your wife. She tells you that your local bank is going to put your family out on the street, that she doesn't know why. She even tells you she has been making larger mortgage payments than in the past.

This is something you can't settle on the phone, but you can talk to your commanding officer about it before you are sent back out to the field to "fight for your country." So you tell him, and he reports it up the chain of command. The chain of command has received many other such complaints and they do some investigating.

They discover that over 45,000 American servicemen and women, people who are protected from creditors under certain circumstances of national security, through the Serviceman's Civil Relief Act are being ripped off. Yes, while they are dodging bullets, commercial banks are stealing from them. In the above mentioned cases, certain banks were not following the law that mandates only six percent interest be collected on an active duty soldier's mortgage.

You live on a fixed budget as a military family, especially a young one. So some soldiers fell behind in payments. The banks response was to violate federal law once again and begin foreclosure proceedings. They sent the sheriff to 20 or so military families and illegally foreclosed on the soldier's property. By law, no bank can foreclose on a soldier's house while he or she is on active duty. They knew it, but they did it anyway.

The other day JP Morgan apologized to these families and said they would make it right. But obviously it should have never happened to these soldiers and their families.

Something is happening with U.S. commercial banks. Perhaps they figure they 've purchased the president and most of our lawmakers, and can get free money from the Fed that you and me will have to payback. They have decided to invest in overseas companies instead of U.S. companies. Now they're going after our active duty soldiers' At this point we have more reason to go to war against them than we did against Iraq.

Yes, their britches are getting pretty big. Maybe the U.S. people ought to show these peanut heads who is really in charge. Perhaps America's banksters should just take a look at Egypt.