I hate banks and Wall Street almost as much as I hate retail. This is one reason why.

In violation of a law intended to protect active military personnel from creditors, agents of Deutsche Bank foreclosed on his small Michigan house, forcing Sergeant Hurley’s wife, Brandie, and her two young children to move out and find shelter elsewhere.

They refuse to make amends. The criminal element here is that these banks broke the law. They foreclosed on an American service member.

In court papers, lawyers for Saxon and the bank assert the sergeant is entitled to recover no more than the fair market value of his lost home. His lawyers argue that the defendants should pay much more than that — including an award of punitive damages to deter big lenders from future violations of the law. The law is called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and it protects service members on active duty from many of the legal consequences of their forced absence.

They are wrong. They are like bank robbers who might say that giving back the money should be the end of the story.

I’ve been amazed by the activism of people in Boston over evictions. This story here is just one of the thousands of people all over the country facing foreclosures and evictions.

Ana, 51 and Raul Esquivel, 55 have considered Boston their home for the last 22 years. They are immigrants—Raul is from Guatemala and Ana is from The Dominican Republic. They bought their home at 21-23 Rowe Street in March 2006, with hopes of renting out one half of the house to pay the mortgage. Their bank, Deutsche Bank, had valued the property at $498,000—a gross over-inflation of the actual value. Last year, the Esquivels began falling behind on their payments. They asked Deutsche Bank to refinance. Unfortunately, in a matter of months, the value of their house had dropped to $285,000, making refinancing no longer feasible. Their monthly payments rose from $3,200/month to $4,200/month, an increase that Ana and Raul, who both work, could simply not afford.

This is why any bailout plan that is going to pass will not really help the American people. Sure it will probably save the country as far as a complete meltdown is concerned, but we’re not doing anything to help stop evictions and foreclosures.

Despite all this, Deutsche Bank refused to negotiate with the Esquivels. Raul’s sister even offered to buy the house back at market value—which wouldn’t cost the bank a cent of real money—but the bank still refused to negotiate and instead continued with the eviction. This type of policy has been indicative of the investment banks, whose predatory lending practices have led to a national surge in foreclosures.

So banks are probably going to get bailed out and all this worthless paper is going to be picked up by the governemnt. But who’s picking up the people with no homes anymore? Granted some people got mortgages who should not have been granted them in the first place, but cases like the Esquivel’s are a serious problem. The Esquivels wanted a house–the American dream like many people—and they did have a plan that would’ve made this a reality. They had a way they were going to pay for their home even though it was over-valued. So when the price of their home came tumbiling down they were stuck with a mortage they could not refinance and they no longer could afford.

I find it interesting to see corporations strongly come out in favor of a cap and trade scheme on carbon emissions.

Companies involved include Alcoa, British Airways (BA), Deutsche Bank, EDF, Petrobras, Shell and Vattenfall.

They argue that cutting emissions must be made to carry economic advantages.

The business leaders hope their ideas will feed through the G8 into the series of UN climate meetings that are aiming to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol when its current targets expire in 2012.

While there are some who feel the cap and trade system must become a reality (Fred Krupp talks about this in his latest book Earth: The Sequel). I can’t help but think that the reason corporations are now calling for cap and trade is because they see the writing of eventual regulation on the wall. Therefore, for them it is better to come out ahead of this inevitability and get something weaker in place now.

Technorati : Alcoa, British Airways, Deutsche Bank, EDF, Petrobras, Shell, Vattenfall, cap and trade, carbon