Excerpted from CNN Money, New York
November 16, 2009
Nicolas Cage: Movie Star, Foreclosure Victim

Hollywood actor’s financial troubles continue as he loses two New Orleans homes worth $6.8 million in foreclosure auction.

Even Academy Award winners are suffering from financial woes this recession. Actor Nicolas Cage lost two homes in New Orleans worth a total of $6.8 million in a foreclosure auction Thursday. (The image to the right is NOT of an exclusive motel/hotel . . . apparently it is the inner courtyard of one of Mr. Cage’s New Orleans homes.)

Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank purchased Cage’s 1140 Royal Street property in the French Quarter appraised at $3.5 million for $2.3 million. The bank paid $2.2 million for Cage’s 2523 Prytania Street property appraised at $3.3 million in the Garden District.

Cage owed $5.5 million in mortgage payments and $151,730 to the City of New Orleans in real estate taxes, according to Valteau.

Hancock Park Real Estate Co., a corporation through which Cage purchased both homes, is listed as the official property owner. Valteau said attorneys representing Samuel Levin, Cage’s former business manager, set up the corporation so that Cage’s name would not appear on the mortgage documents — a common strategy among celebrities (and among many people with considerable $$ and too much social visibility).

Last month, Cage filed a lawsuit against Levin in California claiming that Levin duped the Hollywood actor out of more than $20 million since 2001 when he was hired.

The suit said Levin “lined his pockets with several million dollars in business management fees while sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin.”

The suit went on to say Cage has “discovered that he is now forced to sell major assets and investments at a significant loss and is faced with huge tax liabilities because of Levin’s incompetence, misrepresentations and recklessness. Rather than attaining financial security, Cage has been forced to dispose of significant assets in order to pay for Levin’s gross misconduct.”

CNN reported that Cage owes more than $6 million in back taxes and his properties in California and Las Vegas have also been foreclosed on and are designated for auction later this month.

“The Cuomo report – prepared over nine months – argues that some banks paid out larger bonuses than their profits, while simultaneously taking exceptional state emergency funds.

Ten banks were given money as part of the government’s $700 billion financial stimulus plan.

In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid $4.8 billion in bonuses, representing more than twice its income. Similarly, Morgan Stanley awarded bonuses of $4.5 billion while earning just $1.7 billion.

All the while a painful global recession – partly caused by bankers’ excess – was depriving less fortunate citizens of their livelihoods. The government provided both firms with $10 billion as part of the its wider Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). Goldman recently reported a better-than-expected net profit of $3.44 billion for the three months to June.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch paid bonuses of $5.33 billion and $3.6 billion respectively while seeing losses of more than $27 million each, said the report.

Under the scripts category are sections for “Bones and Booth,” “Burn Notice,” “Criminal Minds,” “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “Leverage,” “Lie to Me,” “Numbers,” “Without a Trace.” I have a few other favorites that need to go on here, and you can add your own.

Join me on this. Bite back. These are TV shows. You can burn these Bonus Bankers, hang them, have drive-by shoot outs, lose them off beaches to sharks (will sharks eat sharks?), bury them anywhere, deplete their off-shore accounts (Leverage!!!!), have whole conventions of mortgage brokers strangely disappear in deserts. CSI’s team tracks them, “Without a Trace” can’t find them, but “Bones and Booth” do.
Feel free to include an appropriate assortment of politicians and real estate agents . . . Just have at ‘em. What goes around comes around. Very important that mortgage industry professionals end up in very very very long job lines for jobs that they cannot have as they are “over qualified,” and have “police records.”

Again, your potential base audience is 1.9 million people who have lost their homes due to foreclosure.

Perhaps there is an angry Wells Fargo employee or two who have been caught up in this mess. Wells Fargo/Wachovia’s new ad: “We’re with you when you need someone to stand by you.” Really! What about this from Wells Fargo’s website:

Welcome

A home is likely one of the biggest and most worthwhile investments you’ll ever make. And a Real Estate-Owned property, commonly called an REO or foreclosed property, may be a smart way for homebuyers who want to get into a home. Specializing in Foreclosures.

Since 1997, Premiere Asset Services (PAS), together with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and our partner REALTORS®, has helped more than 30,000 homebuyers nationwide realize their dream of homeownership through the purchase of foreclosed properties.

From Listings to Mortgage Assistance: We offer a wide selection of foreclosures, representing several financial institutions that work with PAS to manage and market their REO properties. To make these properties available to homebuyers, we maintain free online listings. Whether you’re a first time homebuyer or a seasoned investor, we provide assistance with the buying process, from application to closing.

Leading the Way for Homebuyers and Agents: For over a decade, Premiere Asset Services has led the way in the sale of foreclosed properties. We have the satisfied homebuyers and agents to prove it.

NoteEmployees of Wells Fargo and their immediate family members are prohibited from purchasing properties sold by Premiere Asset Services

This real estate debacle is war on our own soil, so what about staging a national fundraiser through crime television programs, each of whom present their own take on the story of an individual or family (a real family) who has lost their home through foreclosure? And what about photographing just one day in every state; every state has dozens of foreclosures per day.

WHY? ‘Cause SOMEONE has to do something effective! And because many denizens of Hollywood care deeply about their craft and country. Movies and television dramas do bring truth to light and light to truth.

These are the images you see on the news. You seldom see the men, women, children, dogs, cats, birds, etc. that have had to move. Some of these people have been out of work for awhile and have no money to move and/or can’t find rentals that will accept their pets. Where do they go? What happens to the uprooted children?

Have you done the math for the millions of homes that have been lost to foreclosure? It’s a shocking revelation. Surely lending institutions are not thinking of their future. Two million foreclosures (this year alone) translates to an average of 2.6 people per home (5.2 million people), times a 50% expected population growth by 2050 (41 years). More than 10 million people, all passing down the stories of how they lost their home because Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Chase would not assist even though they received billions in taxpayer dollars to help families keep their homes.

If the lenders think this is going to go away, it isn’t. People in the Southern United States are STILL upset over the Civil War which ended in 1865.

Think about the goodwill of such a project. And, again, that audience. Many of these shows have audiences exceeding 2 million anyway; this could add a few million more viewers to each show.

Depending on your position in our home foreclosure saga, you will be damned or you will be praised.

With “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” along with “desperate measures for desperate times” and “feel the fear and do it anyway” to push me along, I began this project by eMaililng Erin Brockovich . . .

Speaking of movies, we have just been invited to “The Ugly Truth” and I have to run out the door . . .

The list will go up when we return.

We’re back . . . Following is the start of a list. I will begin contacting everyone I can find immediately, sometimes with pleas for assistance, sometimes with specific reqeusts for types of visibility/coverage. I have worked with a few of these fine people and am hopeful that some will have the time and the desire in helping save homes.

Some years ago, I played a tiny part in getting visibility for a media conference staged at San Francisco’s Fort Mason by The North Face. It was designed to bring attention to the plight of the Tatshenshini River in British Columbia. A copper mining operation proposed building its plant on a site that happened to be an earthquake faultline. Trailings from the mine would have killed all life downstream, including rare glacier blue bears. Because of an article written by Paul McHugh of The San Francisco Chronicle, Al Gore unexpectedly attended the conference. For years, efforts to stop the mining operation had been spearheaded by Ric Careless and Donna Real of British Columbia; this was their last-ditch effort to gain visibility. After the event, within months, Gore met with the appropriate people and the Tatshenshini River is protected.

• Dr. Phil: Obvious reasons
• Erin Brockovich: Subject of the movie
• Don Cheadle: Human rights activist
• Sean Combs: Community activist, excellent businessman (and he dresses SO well)
• Russell Crowe: Social activist
• Danny Devito: Producer of “Erin Brokovich”
• Leonardo deCaprio: Environmental activist. May be a stretch, but tent cities are ugly and unsanitary, so perhaps this will interest him
• Dave Eggers, Author, and a fabulous person
• Al Gore, Activist who has effected change
• Michael Moore: Activist and documentary filmmaker
• Sean Penn: Activist . . . and showed in a rowboat with a rifle during Katrina
• Brad Pitt: Democratic candidates and causes
• Robert Redford: Devoted activist and filmmaker
• Steven Segal: Environmental and animal rights activist. “Above the Law” and other movies that make a point
• Rick Smollens: “Day In The Life” book series. Imagine someone of his caliber pulling together photo images of people around the U.S. being forced out of their homes . . . and naming the mortgage companies/banks responsible for each . . . perhaps with images of the bank executives that received bonuses
• Kanye West: Political activist with millions of followers
• Producers/cast of “Leverage,” “Lie to Me,” etc. (All of these are listed under the “Scripts” category)
• Bite Back Productions: Don’t know who they are. Love the name. I tried to register BiteBack.com and found their site

Fear is paramount. Self-blame and a sense of failure is part of the package, even though we are surrounded by extraordinarily qualified professionals who are also out of work . . . most for the first time in their lives. Sadness for people who take advantage of the situation is prominent, starting with bankers who are given bonuses for no reason.

I’m out of work for the first time in 50 years. Given this market, it has taken awhile to get back on track . . . six months actually. I finally managed to increase my salary to my December 2008 pre-layoff-numbers by working several jobs, 10-14 hours days, seven days a week (half-day off over the weekend for spiritual renewal, family and an occasional movie). Income shortfalls are made up by unemployment insurance.

During this time of severly reduced income, I tried to renegotiate my loan with Wells Fargo Bank. It’s been like walking on fire. Wells Fargo has lost papers, been non-responsive, and has not disclosed the holder of the note — which they sold some time ago. During one 7-day-period they sent a letter indicating we would discuss options, followed by a conversation indicating that the noteholders (whomever they may be) do not want to negotiate so there are no options.

Foreclosure papers filed by banks have had inaccurate information, yet they signed under penalty of perjury—meaning that they did in fact perjure themselves. THIS is a BANK; aren’t banks under Federal Charter?

This is an extraordinary news story. Banks are stealing enmasse from taxpayers; they are giving themselves bonuses while people erect tents under freeways.

I just saw the movie “The Hurt Locker.” You know what happens during war? People are forced to leave their homes under duress. Yes, that is a stretched analogy, but more and more people are being forced out of their homes. Is this not a war? There have been tent cities under America’s freeways for at least 20 years; they are growing and, oddly, some reporters just noticed them and wrote articles about this “epidemic.”

We’ve done many many fundraisers for other countries; given that the banks have bowed out—and can we PLEASE have all that money back?— isn’t it time to do fundraisers for people in this country?

This is the fodder for TV series such as “Lie to Me” and “Leverage.” Which, of course, made me think the only people that can/might do something about this nightmare would be producers of movies and television series. (Book publishers could also, but the traditional book publishing process is staggeringly slow.)

We all need shelter yet almost two million working families have lost their homes and more will unless powerful proponents actually take a stand.

During a county meeting years ago, a San Francisco human rights social worker said that even very solid and sane people are nuts within 7-10 days of living on the streets. It is a frightening place to be. There is no peace. There is no safety.

How do the new(er) immigrants feel about moving to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave with the promise of a home, a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage? Many escaped from Wherever to find peace, opportunity and freedom only to be told “Oh, too bad, you have to move. You have lost your home. Oh, you didn’t read the mortgage papers correctly. All 9,000 words. So sorry.”

And those who have not been struck by lightening as yet think, “Oh, well, ‘they’ got into bad loans. ‘They’ went in over their heads.” Certainly that’s true in some instances . . . but 1.9 million! Seems unlikely. People face illnesses and/or job losses. Some people did have the requisite 6-12 months savings for emergencies. I know people who have been out of work up to 20 months! What do we tell our children? Work hard . . . it may come to nothing, but work hard anyway . . . and pay your taxes so the federal government can give it to for-profit, privately held, quite irresponsibly managed auto dealers and banks.

In The San Francisco Chronicle, Matier and Ross commented about a man who has lost his home because the “bank” wouldn’t negotiate. What about naming the banks when these stories are told.

Some weeks ago, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat told the story of James Madison, a Santa Rosa Coldwell Banker agent, who is proud of how much money he is making by “helping” people get out of their homes so he could sell them to someone else. Madison has approached CRYING men and told them the bank foreclosed on their home. I don’t know James Madison. I don’t want to know him. He is a shark swimming in blood-filled waters. I feel sorry for his wife and children. I feel sorry for him. What goes around comes around. I worked with real estate agents who refuse to deal in these blood baths.