EDITORIAL: Justice Toal'Decision May Not Save Mortgagees

South Carolina Chief Justice Jean H. Toal took another swipe at improving the state’s home foreclosure picture last week when she once again ordered a moratorium on all foreclosures moving through the state’s courts.

Toal’s administrative order, which became effective Monday, freezes all cases in process as of May 9.

Toal, who issued a similar order in 2009, is attemping to achieve several goals. First, as the chief officer of the state’s courts, she’s trying to help clear some calendar time in all state judicial districts. The rising tide of foreclosure proceedings created a bottleneck in the court system. Second, and more to the point, Toal was apparently frustrated at the seeming intractability of some (and perhaps all) lenders who were not, in Toal’s estimation, giving their best effort to loan modification. Many, noted Toal, were negotiating with borrowers while at the same proceeding with their legal case, a “dual-tracking” strategy that retained lender flexibility while at the same applying more pressure to borrowers. Okay, you don’t have to agree to the loan modification we’re proposing. But if you don’t, well …

Toal’s activism is, in some ways, quite laudable. She is using the law in a very creative way, opening the door to court action via the conduit of preserving the sanctity of the court system. If it slows to a crawl (or whatever comes before a crawl — justice is never swift), then justice may be perverted.

But it’s impossible to offer a blanket sanction to her actions, namely because the issue she is addressing is covered in shades of gray.

The mortgage crisis of 2007-present, which is reflected in the rising number of foreclosures that must now be dealt with, helped spur the worldwide financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. Financiers get blamed for the “financial tsunami” because of the complex investment instruments they created and the cavalier fashion in which some operated, and rightly so. But lenders, who knowingly made millions off questionable loans, should shoulder some of the blame; and greedy borrowers should, too.

All of that makes taking sides in the slow, painful unwinding of all that excess extremely difficult. Toal’s moratorium punishes lenders, which many may see as a good thing. But it rewards borrowers, at least some of whom are in the fix they’re in because they’re were greedy, ignorant or both.

We can’t condone that. But we can’t help but applaud Toal for at least trying. The mortgage crisis needs attention. It may be the single biggest drag on the economy, bigger even than high unemployment, although obviously the two are connected.

If Toal’s action move that ball forward — move us closer to an end for the mortgage crisis — then we’re all for it.

Unfortuantely, we’re not sure it will.

A new deal

For Amazon?

Should the South Carolina House of Representatives get a re-deal on the Amazon deal?

The House is apparently going to give it a try. Some members are bent on attaching Amazon’s proposed, special sales tax exemption to another bill, just weeks after voting it down by a 71-47 count.

That’s a pretty decisive defeat and the only reason to think it might be different this time is because some House members clearly thought that Amazon was bluffing when it said, just before the vote, that it would pull up stakes and leave the massive facility it’s building outside Columbia if the vote didn’t go its way.

Amazon wasn’t bluffing — or, it’s a really good bluffer. In either case, the day after the vote it sure looked like it was gone. Work had stopped at the Lexington County site, and the 1,250 (or so) jobs promised with the relocation were nowhere to be seen.

That’s a lot of jobs, especially at the back end of a recession, and it caught the eye of more than a few legislators.

Enough to change a 24-vote margin?

We’ll have to wait on the next hand to find out.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of this newspaper. Editorial board members are:Mark Blum (regional publisher);  Tucker Mitchell (regional editor), Kimberly Ginfrida (content manager), Jackie Torok (content supervisor), Naeem McFadden (editor, Marion Star & Mullins Enterprise), John Sweeney (political writer), Matt McColl (editor, Weekly Observer), Bob Sloan (editor, The Hartsville Messenger), Charles Tomlinson (editor, Lake City News & Post) and David Johnson (regional circulation director).