Jerome Bauer
**************
March 21, 2011

To Citimortgage, and to whom it may concern:
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Thank you for your letter, dated (3/9/11), explaining why you have denied me the Home Affordable Modification. You claim that I have been denied because I failed to make all the required payments during the trial period. This is incorrect, and bank records will show this to be the case. I made every payment and my students and the St Louis community even organized a benefit concert to help me make one of these payments, featured on a local television news story last year.

I have a few questions for you.
1) Why did you deny to the Attorney General that you made an offer to increase substantially my monthly payments to $1900 in August 2009? This error was caught in time by the Obama team called in to oversee your government bailout.
2) Why have you reserved the right to restrict access to your website?
3) When you took over my mortgage from Coldwell Banker Mortgage in summer 08, why did you increase my monthly payments by c. $100? Why have you now lowered my monthly payments by the same amount, claiming a shortfall in my escrow? I am not complaining, I am just asking.
4) When I was in the trial period of the Home Affordable Modification Program last year, why did you send me a bill for the full monthly payment, an $800 late fee, and a claim that I had agreed to this?

Please refund the $800 late fee. Please show me the Note.

Sincerely,

Jerome Bauer, PhD

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Happy Independence Day! On this day I declare independence from victimhood and foreclosure, and I declare my commitment to get out of debt and rebuild my life and career, with or without help.

Help has come to me unexpectedly, in the last month. I am not out of danger but with good management I should be able to rebuild my credit, and I can now afford to teach college courses for contract adjunct lecturer pay, indeed a privilege. I am confident that I will be able to keep my house.

As a point of honor, I never considered selling my house, for fair market value or short sale. Washington University in St Louis, London Properties, and Citimortgage, among others, will attest to that. I was quite prepared, as a last resort, to become a squatter in my own home, and to invite some of you to join me, as a point of honor, and in fulfillment of a promise made to me by some of you. Now I may never know who would have risked arrest with me, and who would have played it safe. Now I can play it safe. I can live at home, as a respectable law abiding citizen, and never know what life in a homeless shelter would be like. Some things may be good not to know. I want to leave this behind me and look to a better future.

Thanks to all who helped, especially to Adam Shriver and the St Louis Activist Hub for the Benefit to Save Cervantes Free University, which bought me some time. Please support the Activist Hub and the mortgage activism of the People’s Settlement, to keep working folks in our homes. If you prefer, you could help me indirectly by donating to the WashU CoOp, http://www.washucoop.com, General Inquiries. Just ask for our Treasurer, and make a pledge to our Sustainability Fund or our Garden Fund. Sorry this is not yet tax deductible. If I need help again, I will be sure to ask, but I prefer not to beg. I declare my independence from victimhood.

Please help others less fortunate than yourselves. You too could lose your job, your home, and your health, and then it will be your turn to ask, or to beg. It could happen to anyone.

Thanks especially to my patient and kind housemates, who were kept informed and would not have been asked to go down with my sinking ship.

Don’t be a victim. That’s boring at best. When somebody helps you, be sure to pay it forward.

Happy Independence Day!

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I seem to remember asking him to dinner, or was it my penultimate Executive Response Team case manager? She seemed so nice, I asked her nicely. My very last case manager was not nice at all. Bad Cop, obviously. Now they have another Good Cop working on my case, and robotic raspberries. What will they think of next?

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Let’s march through their office and give them our raspberry. This is long overdue.

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Happy Memorial Day! Can you remember a time when bankers were honest? Perhaps our local bankers and savings and loans are still honest. Let’s break up with our banks, and invest in our local communities. Put people before profits.

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I did not call the press, they called me to cover a newsworthy story that they had been following for quite some time. Had the story or the healine reflected badly upon WashU or Citimortgage, I doubt if it would have run.

Professor Bauer is back. Actually, Professor Bauer has never left WashU. Professor Bauer is, and always has been, a respected member of the WashU community, and our students will rally to save his house, and Citimortgage will take credit for doing the right thing and making his low income loan modification permanent. They will be given credit for doing so. Our students will be given credit too, for saving his house and not trashing it. Our students are good neighbors.

Don’t ask permission. Don’t let anybody else define you. I like the story though I did not write it.

I did not start this group either. My students started it, and I was even allowed to join for a while: Save Professor Bauer: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2269848616&ref=mf

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So, happy Cinco de Mayo! Yesterday was International Star Wars Day. In case you missed it, May the 4th Be With You, Vikram Pandit and Citimortgage!

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It was easy to find folks to cuss out Bank of America, because it is hard to find a satisfied customer, and yet they behave as if they have a monopoly. Now they have agreed to fly their loss mitigation team to St Louis to keep folks in their homes, and they are making other changes. The customer is always right, yes?

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