Poor debtors go to jail and are billed for the privilege

Poor debtors go to jail and are billed for the privilege By Jerry Mazza Online Journal Associate Editor Apr 27, 2009, 00:20

A doctor in the Midwest wrote to me again this past Friday about how the economic mess is destroying people.

He wrote, “One of my patients is a . . . 40ish CPA and she was in for an eye problem yesterday . . . She was distraught over the state of the economy and its effect on her clients. She has had many this year who have lost their homes to foreclosure. To her -- and her clients’ -- dismay, the bank or lending institution is issuing 1099 forms for re-po’d property to the victims. Apparently, since the hapless former homeowners are effectively ‘forgiven’ the remaining amounts on their loans, that is imputed as earned income and they are turned into the IRS for large tax liabilities!!! How’s that for justice? She said that she had actually had people speak seriously about killing themselves!”

“What a screwed up country . . . Yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and cashed in part of my IRA (already down near 50%) to pay off office credit cards (we have depended on these credit lines for office expenses for some time) because they all raised their rates to 30%!!! Of course, O[bama] has nothing to say about usury . . . [more]