Wells Fargo, one of the biggest banks in the U.S., has been at the epicenter of Wall Street malfeasance over the last several years, with its fingerprints all over the housing crisis and the subsequent foreclosure fraud scandal. As Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith put it, Wells Fargo “has an annoying habit of piously claiming it is better than other servicers when it engages in the same indefensible conduct as its peers.”

Earlier this year, a judge blasted the bank’s foreclosure process, saying, that it “prefers to rely on the ignorance of borrowers or their inability to fund a challenge to its demands, rather than voluntarily relinquish gains obtained through improper accounting methods.” Now, the bank has left a family’s vacation home in ruins, after a contractor it hired broke in and stole the family’s belongings due to a mistaken foreclosure filing:

A local couple’s dreams have been shattered by a foreclosure mistake that left their retirement home in ruins.

When banks take over foreclosed homes, they often try to salvage the contents inside to recoup their losses. But what if they have no right to those contents in the first place? Alvin Tjosaas says that scenario is all too real for him. [...]

The house recently had valuables stored in the garage, including decades worth of family heirlooms. But the house was in ruins after Tjosaas says subcontractors hired by Wells Fargo entered the property with a foreclosure notice in hand. The notice had the name Stephen A. Janosik on it, but the address for the Tjosaas family home…Tjosaas says the subcontractors broke down doors, smashed windows, tore down walls, taking anything of value to sell later on.

Wells Fargo said in a statement after the fact, “We are deeply sorry for the very personal losses the Tjosaas family suffered as a result of their home being mistakenly secured and entered by an outside party hired to address a different nearby property. We are moving quickly to reach out to the Tjosaas family to resolve this unfortunate situation in an attempt to right this wrong.”

Wells Fargo is not the only bank to pull this particular trick: Bank of America once padlocked the wrong house due to a document error, stealing a woman’s pet parrot in the process. But this episode shows that, as much as the biggest banks have promised to clean up their act, the foreclosure process is still badly broken and marred with errors.

Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND) defended his plan to privatize Social Security at a Senate debate yesterday, prompting loud and sustained boos from audience members.

During the North Dakota Broadcasters debate in Bismarck, Berg’s opponent in the Senate race, Heidi Heitkamp, attacked the congressman for supporting privatizing Social Security. “When you say ‘I’m going to fix it,’ you’re going to privatize it,” charged Heitkamp. Indeed, as a state representative in 2005, Berg introduced a resolution formally supporting then-President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

When Berg said that this attack is “what’s wrong with Washington,” he was met with a loud chorus of boos from the audience:

HEITKAMP: When you say “I’m going to fix it,” you’re going to privatize it. That was George W. Bush’s plan. [...] That’s the plan you supported, Bush’s privatization plan. You can’t run away from that record.

BERG: Just as a wrap up, this is what’s wrong with Washington. People blame, blame, blame and don’t come up with solutions… [Loud boos from the audience]… What we need are solutions to Social Security. There’s no question. But what we need is to get our economy going.

Approximately 18 percent of North Dakotans receive Social Security benefits. Their retirement incomes could be threatened if Berg and other conservatives succeed in privatizing Social Security.

Former President Bill Clinton poured cold water on the Republican Party’s jobs rhetoric last night in a speech at the Democratic National Convention, telling the nation that in the 50 years since John F. Kennedy took office, the vast majority of private sector jobs have been created under Democratic administrations. In those 52 years, as Bloomberg reported in May, 42 million of the new private sector jobs were created during 24 years of Democratic presidencies versus just 24 million under Republicans.

Clinton highlighted the statistic last night as evidence that the Republican vision for the economy, which ignores that “poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth,” won’t provide the recovery the American economy needs:

CLINTON: Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs. So, what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million, Democrats, 42 (million). Now, there’s a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth. When you stifle human potential, when you don’t invest in new ideas, it doesn’t just cut off the people who are affected, it hurts us all.

Watch it:

The GOP’s supply-side economic policies, which rely on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, have failed to boost economic growth for more than three decades, a point Clinton made while hammering Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s plan to push through a tax cut four times the size of George W. Bush’s. “We simply can’t afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle down,” Clinton said.

Clinton isn’t alone in analyzing the GOP’s economic failures: in July, 40 economists looked at the Republican Party’s plans and determined that it had abandoned economic reality. During the GOP primaries, economic professors said the party’s plans couldn’t pass a basic economics class.