Debt Collector: On Your Toes When the Bank Collector Leaves

Rick Williamson used to be a Chicago banker, but now he is a junk-loan buyer. He knew that name-calling would ensue as soon as he makes a move to foreclose an athletic club found in Fayetteville, Arkansas. This athletic club is actually a family-run gym as well as a spa complex located in the northwest corner of the state. Williamson has been called a lot of names – among which, vulture and bottom feeder remain constant as he spent years searching for bargains in many distressed real estate options. He has been called by Robert Shoulders, who is the owner of the club for over thirteen years, a ‘trash eating rat’. However, Williamson sees it in a different light – and the government agrees with him.

Not His Fault – Just Doing His Job

Williamson points out that it certainly is not his fault that the owner of club ended up overextending himself. This was done by borrowing around ten million dollars in order to add to the spa facilities – including tennis courts, a preschool and other types of amenities to amp up his once-modest club with snazzy new facilities. And now that Williamson is part of this aggressive move to pick up loans such as this, he is said to be committed to helping clean up some bad debts which are now clogging up the entire economy. Fixing the things that are currently contributing to the ailment of the country is necessary, he maintains. It is important to destroy the many worthless debts that are out there. With characteristic candor, he adds that it is his job to knock down the zombies and proceed with liquidating their assets.

Clashes All Across the Country

Clashes such as the one that Shoulders and Williamson have faced are happening all over the country. This is because banks continue to struggle through this really bad crisis – the worst to have had happened in this generation. Williamson is a member of what is called as a niche industry that deals with the purchase of these bargain-basement prices for hard-to-collect loans which had been auctioned off by the FDIC after a bank failure. Their job is to take out the troubled assets and the ones that many others dare not touch. In exchange, they get returns that are potentially lucrative.

At present, the FDIC has seized over fifty eight banks for the past year and three months. Through many loan auctions which they had established, they were able to sell off around two point two billion dollars’ worth of loans. There was one point two billion dollars that had been generated for use of the government in making sure that funds may be enough to insure the depositors of other banks.