Banks bilk homebuyers, cities say

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson accused the banks of knowingly luring people into mortgages with impossible payments. “The money was too good,” he said. The banks “were living large off the misery and suffering of people.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of RainbowPUSH, called for a massive march on the Department of Housing and Urban Development Jan. 22 to force President Bush to address the foreclosure crisis in his State of the Union message that night.

“We need to take mass action for mass results,” Jackson told a Washington news conference Jan. 15.

Predatory lending has unleashed a flood of foreclosures in a housing collapse that is pushing the economy toward recession. The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report last November predicting that 1.4 million homes will be foreclosed in 2008, with a combined market value of $316 billion.