Banks Now Recapturing Sentimental Value in Foreclosures

Banks are after your homes and your furniture
Bad economy.  No one has any money.  Forecolsures.  Greedy politicians.  Greedy Bankers.  Have you met any yet here in Collin County?  How's your personal economy? I know a few that had their homes foreclosed on and there are a few in my neighborhood that I don't know.  So far, there are over 10 pages of homes being foreclosed upon in our county but I haven't seen or heard of any banks breaking into homes as is represented in the New York Times for a home in Tr...

Banks to Homeowners: Were In Ur Houses, Changin Ur Lockz
Photo: iStockPhoto Bank of America might be on edge about what would happen if BrianMoynihanSucks.com gets into the wrong hands, but they're not afraid to look like the bad guy. According to a federal Lawsuit, Bank of America not only wrongfully foreclosed on Mimi Ash's ski home, but they also broke in, changed the locks, and threw out all her possessions, including a wooden box inscribed with the words Together Forever that held the ashes of her late husband, Robert. Alan Jaffa, chief executi...

In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks
Source: New York Times By ANDREW MARTIN TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, R

Banks Accused of Illegally Breaking Into Homes
TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. Arriving at her home in Truckee, Calif., Mimi Ash found it had been cleared of her possessions. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words &ldquo...;

Banks Accused Of Breaking Into Homes
Arriving at her home in Truckee, Calif., Mimi Ash found it had been cleared of her possessions New York Times: TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the word...

Banks Break Into Homes, Not Always Legally
Banks have made the occasional huge mistake in the massive home Foreclosure crisis of the last decade, including illegally ordering home break-ins once in a while. When Homeowners are behind on their Mortgage payments, or attempting to modify their home loan, or even on occasion fully paid up but lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, they are in danger of having their home broken into and their possessions removed by the banks. A New York Times report details the occasional terrible mistakes banks h...

What Will It Take?
By John Ballard When I saw a Tweet linking this story my first response, of course, was RT. But then it hit me: This is obscene. Stories such as this are proliferating like rats in a landfill. This is not one of those local stories that clutter the news -- Drug Busts, apartment fires, C-store robberies, police chases, Traffic Jams... This is a national plague that has been unfolding over what will soon become three years. Have we have become so deaf and blind to the wholesale ugliness of it al...

When banks burglarize
When Bank of America bought Countrywide, did it know that as a consequence it would start being associated in the public mind with meltwater reeking of rotten halibut? In Texas, Bank of America had the locks changed and the electricity shut off last year at Alan Schroit’s second home in Galveston, according to court papers. Mr. Schroit, who had paid off the house, had stored 75 pounds of salmon and halibut in his refrigerator and freezer, caught during a recent Alaskan fishing Vacation. “La...

Bank Break Ins Leading to Litigation
Even though banks piously insist that every one of their Foreclosure actions is fully justified, evidence in the court system continues to prove that claim to be false. We pointed out this sorry development in October, that of banks entering and changing the locks on homes they had not foreclosed upon. Per a report from the Sarasota Herald Tribune: The process of banks hiring people to break into homes, even when occupied, is just the latest oddity of the messy Foreclosure crisis in Florida. S...

Florida Home Sales and Prices Slide in November
Existing Home Sales fell 15 percent in November compared to a year ago, and prices dipped along with them, according to a report released Wednesday by the Florida Association of Realtors. The median sales price for a home was $132,700 last month, down 5 percent from November 2009. The voluntary Moratorium on Foreclosure filings imposed by Mortgage companies in recent months delayed closings on some properties and impacted sales activity, the FAR report states. Companies like JP Morgan Chase and ...

Hilton and Starwood settle lawsuit over trade secrets
The unprecedented case started in 2008 when Starwood charged that Hilton - and two former Starwood executives who had joined Hilton's luxury hotel development team - stole documents to help Hilton develop its own version of Starwood's successful W hotel chain (Denizen) and rush it to market. A federal investigation was launched in April 2009 into the allegations, at which time Hilton grounded efforts to develop Denizen. Bans Hilton until January 2013 from developing a hotel brand that would comp...

Misc: Ernst & Young accused of fraud, Banks accused of illegal break-ins
by CalculatedRisk on 12/21/2010 10:14:00 PM Two stories: Lehman's Accounting was fishy. The other is a real fish story ... • From the NY Times DealBook: Cuomo Sues Ernst & Young Over Lehman The New York Attorney General on Tuesday sued Ernst & Young, accusing the Accounting Firm of helping Lehman Brothers, its client, “engage in a massive Accounting Fraud” by misleading investors about the Investment Bank’s financial health.• From Andrew Martin at the NY ...

Assanges One-Way Open Thread
A couple days ago, I laughed my way through “Julian Assange is A Black Pot,” Larry Johnson’s assessment of Wikileaks principal Julian Assange’s rigid standards when it comes his own Privacy. Today, I spotted this Salon.com commentary on the Black Pot, “ Yes, Julian Assange actually is a criminal .” The author is Michael Lind, Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation. Steve Clemons heads the New America Foundation, and IR...

Apple Unplugs WikiLeaks App
After three few days of availability, Apple on Monday unplugged a Wikileaks app from its iTunes App Store. The application, which went live on December 17, provided users with access to Wikileaks documents and updates from the site's Twitter account. In addition, it automatically forwarded users to mirrored WikiLeak content and Cablegate data. Andrew Conry-Murray spoke with the president of RSA, Art Coviello, at EMC World 2008 about Data Loss Prevention. Russian developer 'Igor Barinov '--als...

Times Sues NYPD
Saying that is has repeatedly failed to obey a state law requiring it to provide information to the press and public, the New York Times has sued the New York Police Department. The Lawsuit, filed yesterday, Recounts four instances this year in which access to information by the paper was denied or delayed. “Information that was once released is now withheld. Disclosures that could be made quickly are put on hold for months,” said David McCraw, the Times' vice president and assistant...

The 111th: what's not to like?
The first Obama-era Congress has ended its session.  It was a dizzying, maddening, agonizing, exhilarating, arduous, bruising and, for scores of Democrats, ultimately career-ending journey from the stimulus to Start — and the party paid a devastating price for its accomplishments, losing control of the House and six Senate seats. It is a period that will no doubt be pored over by historians for years. But it is already clear that much of the next two years will be spent fighting over...

California's slow growth means no new House seats
California grew by a smaller percentage over the past decade than at any time since it became a state in 1850, meaning it will not gain any new seats in the House of Representatives for the first time in 90 years, U.S. Census Bureau figures show. The numbers, released Tuesday in the unveiling of the bureau's 2010 decennial population tally, conflict with a recent, higher count by the state that would have netted California two more congressional representatives. "You might consider this an ind...

Civil rights complaint against Texas curriculum
This ought to be interesting. Two Civil Rights organizations are seeking a federal review of Public School education in Texas, accusing state school administrators of violating federal Civil Rights laws after Curriculum changes approved earlier this year by the Texas Board of Education. The request to the U.S. Department of Education made by the Texas NAACP and Texas League of United Latin American Citizens on Monday contended that the Curriculum changes passed in May “were made with the...

Patterson on the Open Beaches ruling
I must say, I enjoyed Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson’s op-ed on the recent Open Beaches ruling by the State Supreme Court. The man can bring the snark, I’ll give him that. Two points of interest besides that: Texans, you see, can be such a hard-headed lot. Most of us ignorantly thought passing the Texas Open Beaches Act in 1959, and voting overwhelmingly to enshrine this right in the state’s Constitution in 2009, would keep the beaches open. With this public access came op...

Healthcare suit judges hold industry stock
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Three U.S. judges hearing court challenges to the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul own healthcare-industry stocks, a government Watchdog group says. U.S. District Judges Gladys Kessler, Michael Schneider and Keith Starrett had holdings in funds that invested in companies such as Insurance giant UnitedHealth Group Inc., or owned direct shares in companies such as medical-equipment makers Covidien PLC and Medtronic Inc., the Center for Public Integrity said. ...

Bank of America Prepares to Get WikiLeaked by Buying Up Negative Domain Names
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Bank of America isn't waiting around for the media to confirm whether or not it's the target of Wikileaks's next leak. The company has been trying to hoover up negative Domain Names about its CEO, Brian Moynihan, registering BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com — in some case, the .net and .org versions as well, all in the last month. Oh, Bank of America, you vastly underestimate the Inter...

No, WikiLeaks Has Not 'Confirmed' It Will Target Bank Of America
In the furious storm of speculation over which institution will be the subject of Wikileaks’ next document dump, the media’s definition of “confirmed” just got a little blurrier. But calm yourselves, Bank of America executives: your secrets are no more or less certain to be exposed than they were yesterday. On Tuesday, the Times of London published the first newspaper interview with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange since his release from Wandsworth Prison in London. In it,...

Bank of America Draws the Line
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. has joined several other Financial Institutions in refusing to handle payments for Wikileaks… “This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments,” the bank said.Curious as to just how rigorous the Bank of America’s “internal policies” might be, I turned to Google. Similarly, traffickers...

Julian Assange Has A Treat For Bank Of America
Unable to contain his excitement any longer, Julian Assange has revealed the target of his next ‘Leak- Bank of America, come on down! Given that this was the ‘large US bank’ most had assumed Assange was hinting at several weeks ago, it’s not that much of a surprise. He did however offer up this vague and slightly sinister statement however, which you should feel free to marinate on. “We don’t want the bank to suffer unless it’s called for,”...

Airgas rejects Air Products' $5.9 billion bid
By Ernest Scheyder NEW YORK | Thu Dec 23, 2010 6:20am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Airgas Inc (ARG.N) has rejected yet another takeover offer from rival industrial gas producer Air Products and Chemicals Inc (APD.N), saying a sweetened $5.9 billion bid is just not enough. Air Products stood firm, though, reiterating on Wednesday that its $70-per-share cash offer is "best and final." The news sent Airgas shares down 2.8 percent to $61.44, and analysts said arbitrage investors were selling their po...