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Business Title: Warren Buffett's mobile home empire preys on the poor Billionaire profits at every step, Editor's note: This is a joint investigation of The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times. Denise Pitts walked into the pawn shop not far from where she bought her mobile home in Knoxville, Tennessee, and offered up her wedding rings for $100. Her marriage wasn’t over, but her husband was battling cancer and, Pitts said, her mortgage company told her the only way to keep a roof over his head would be to sell everything else. Across the country in Ephrata, Washington, Kirk and Patricia Ackley sat down to close on a new mobile home, only to learn that the annual interest on their loan would be 12.5 percent rather than the 7 percent they said they had been promised. They went ahead because they had spent $11,000, most of their savings, to dig a foundation. And near Bug Tussle, Alabama, Carol Carroll has been paying down her home for more than a decade but still owes nearly 90 percent of the sale price — and more than twice what the home is worth. The families’ dealers and lenders went by different names — Luv Homes, Clayton Homes, Vanderbilt, 21st Mortgage. Yet the disastrous loans that threaten them with homelessness or the loss of family land stem from a single company: Clayton Homes, the nation’s biggest homebuilder, which is controlled by its second-richest man — Warren Buffett. Buffett’s mobile home empire promises low-income Americans the dream of homeownership. But Clayton relies on predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees, and interest rates that can exceed 15 percent, trapping many buyers in loans they can’t afford and in homes that are almost impossible to sell or refinance, an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times has found. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 39. Very long and excellent article on Buffet's scam empire. Deadly oil trains and scamming poor people with mobile homes.
#5. To: TooConservative (#1) Very long and excellent article on Buffet's scam empire. Capitalism is a scam.
#7. To: Pericles (#5) Capitalism is a scam. You mean unlike communism,that promises you that you can share in everyone else's wealth and they will be happy to share with you?
#13. To: sneakypete (#7) Capitalism is a scam. You assume being anti-capitalist is being pro communist - it is not. Capitalism produced communism. They are the yin and yang of economics. Also, people mis-identify the market supply and demand system with capitalism. It is not the same system.
#15. To: Pericles (#13) Capitalism produced communism. No. Capitalism creates opportunity. Communism was created by people like you.
#17. To: A K A Stone (#15) (Edited) Capitalism produced communism. No, capitalism does not create opportunity because of lack of capital limits opportunity regardless of merit. The free market creates opportunity.
#18. To: All (#17) A free market is one that is not regulated by government, but rather driven by demand and supply. The free market theory contends that an ideal free market is where entities are exchanged voluntarily after a seller and buyer mutually agree on a price, without any intervention from external influences.
#39. To: Pericles (#18) he free market theory contends that an ideal free market is where entities are exchanged voluntarily after a seller and buyer mutually agree on a price, without any intervention from external influences. ROFLMAO! Who came up with that theory,the Easter Bunny? There are very good reasons that is only a theory and will never be a reality. EVERYTHING is influenced by external interventions. It's rare to see an anarchist over 12 years old. You must teach school. Nobody else that is an adult is so sheltered they believe crap like that.
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