CRASH TALK

Pro Publica - "Systemic abuse." "Extraordinary incompetence." "Reckless." In a growing body of legal cases, judges and the Justice Department are breaking from legal jargon to starkly chastise mortgage companies. . . Judges have found that major mortgages servicers regularly mess up basic . . . Complaints to the government about mortgage servicers have soared in recent years. They've risen from 31 percent of the complaints that the Department of Housing and Urban Development received in 2006 to 78 percent in 2008, according to HUD spokesman Lemar Wooley.