More on the FDICs Fight Versus Other Bank Regulators on Servicer Abuses; Rep. Miller Backs More Aggressive Action

Helping people, helping Democrats
During the Holiday Season, our thoughts often turn to helping those in need. Also, as partisan Democrats, our thoughts often turn to helping the D’s win Elections. Those two concepts fit together quite nicely. With Democrats still (largely) in control of the Federal Government, the donkeys will perform better in elections when more Americans believe they have been helped by the Democrats running the government. As such, I have an action item for you that can help the government make a tan...

Hockett on the Financial Crisis
There is a growing consensus that our Mortgage markets are fundamentally broken. In a recent article in The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner surveys a number of leading legal academics’ prescriptions for the Foreclosure crisis: Katherine Porter, a Law Professor at the University of Iowa and an expert in Mortgage servicing, recently testified to the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that according to lawyers for both home-owners and banks, “a...

Va. law speeds up foreclosure
RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Lawyers say a year-old Foreclosure law in Virginia fails to protect Homeowners, who often get only two weeks' notice of impending sheriff's sales. The law was introduced after the state Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that a bank had not given a homeowner enough notice of foreclosure. The state legislature provided greater protection for banks. Under the law, foreclosures are not handled by the courts, The Washington Post said. Homeowners who want to make a legal chal...

Wells Fargo agrees to modify California ARM loans
Wells Fargo Bank has agreed to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California Homeowners with risky pay-option, adjustable-rate Mortgages that Wells purchased from other banks, and to pay $32 million to 15,000 borrowers who had similar loans and lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to an agreement with the California Attorney General's office. "Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not aff...

NJ Judge Threatens to Close Down Big Banks over Fraudclosure
via madamab over at her place. Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," ...

Va. Beach gets grant to help prevent foreclosures
The Virginia Beach Community Development Corp. and two other organizations in Hampton Roads received federal funds Thursday for counseling families on housing matters and Foreclosure. The Virginia Beach organization, which provides assistance to low- and moderate-income families in the city, received $46,307 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The department announced it distributed nearly $73 million in counseling grants to more than 500 organizations nationwide. "These o...

How the roof fell in on Countrywide
It was one of the more hotly anticipated shows of the fall. On Oct. 18, the trial of Countrywide's former CEO, Angelo Mozilo, along with David Sambol, its president, and Eric Sieracki, the CFO, was set to begin. Mozilo has been publicly excoriated as one of the real villains of the subprime scandal -- and the case against him was one of the few the government has brought in the wake of the financial crisis. But almost on the eve of trial, the two sides announced that they'd settled, with Mozilo ...

On self-regulation in banking
I spoke to Max Keiser recently about a number of issues in a wide-ranging interview featured below. In the video, Max and Stacy Herbert talk about some of the hot button issues of the day like the banking sector in Ireland and the lack of criminal prosecutions in the US for the first 13 minutes or so. In the last half of the video I talk to Max about a lot of topics including gold, Mortgage Fraud, Wikileaks, currency revulsion, and Sovereign Debt. Let me focus on one: fraud. It is astounding whe...

Wall St. watchdog
Attorneys-general of New York state have a record of demagoguery in bringing ill-founded Lawsuits for political gain. The important civil suit outgoing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed against the auditors of the collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers is entirely different. What the auditors (the big firm of Ernst & Young) did simply smells. A serious lawsuit on an accusation of aiding a Fraud is an excellent place to get answers. The facts are not disputed. Ernst & Young approved Leh...

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...

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...

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 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...

Obama to press on for Fed nominee
WASHINGTON - President Obama will resubmit the failed nomination of Nobel Prize-winning MIT Economist Peter Diamond to the Federal Reserve, even though he faces even stronger opposition from the next Congress. The nomination of Diamond fizzled when the Senate adjourned Wednesday without acting on it. But the White House said yesterday that the president will press ahead on the nomination. Diamond, a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an authority on Social Security, pens...

Hooray? Higher mortgage rates spurred home sales uptick
The country's economic engine seems to be running in reverse as more expensive borrowing spurs Home Sales, and an uptick in borrowing sends Mortgage rates back down. The recent surge in Mortgage rates, by all rational calculations, should have made America's already troubled Housing Market worse off. Instead, higher borrowing costs modestly boosted homes sales in November. Before slipping down slightly this week, Mortgage rates had risen for several weeks in a row as yields on 10-year Treasury ...

How higher rates boosted home sales
Hooray? Higher Mortgage rates spurred Home Sales uptick Posted by Nin-Hai Tseng, writer-reporter December 23, 2010 3:18 pm The country's economic engine seems to be running in reverse as more expensive borrowing spurs home sales, and an uptick in borrowing sends Mortgage rates back down. Image by magro_kr via Flickr The recent surge in Mortgage rates, by all rational calculations, should have made America's already troubled Housing Market worse off. Instead, higher borrowing costs modestly b...

Weekly Audit: Republicans Poised to Declare War on Welfare State
Senate Republicans scuttled a Bipartisan $1.2 Trillion dollar spending Omnibus Bill last week. Now, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is scrambling to pass a temporary funding bill to keep the Federal Government’s lights on. The GOP abruptly pulled the plug on the omnibus, a massive piece of Legislation that Republicans and Democrats had collaborated on for months. Why? Because the Republicans want to start over in the next session of Congress when they will control the House and pick up...

C&L;'s Late Nite Music Club With Buck Owens
I listened to both the Christmas Cd's yesterday. Their pretty good but don't hold up quite as well as some of the other records IMO. The truth will set you free but you can't handle the truth! Comments are restricted to Registered Users only. Righties are mad that so much got done during the lame-duck session. Cue the whining Alan Grayson's Got Your Back on Foreclosure Fraud. Won't you get his on November 2nd? UPDATED Raul Grijalva has your back on foreclosure fraud. Will you have his ...

WPs Graham proud to stand up for embattled Kaplan
Peter Goodman calls Washington Post’s Kaplan unit “an enterprise that seems on par with subprime Mortgage Lending in terms of its commitment to public welfare,” but WP chairman Don Graham says “I’m proud to stand up for Kaplan in the same way I’m proud to stand up for the Washington Post.” He promises a Probe of wrongdoing allegations. Huffington Post co-founder, Reuters editor, seven others named to CJR's new Board of Overseers. https://journ.us/hkn...

Federal Reserve Raises Asset Exemption on Home Mortgage Reports
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System recently announced that it was increasing the asset threshold that triggers home Mortgage collection and reporting requirements for certain depository institutions. Pursuant to the Federal Reserve’s Regulation C which implements the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Central Bank will raise the asset exemption requirement to $40 million. What this means is that Financial Institutions such as banks, savings and loans, and Credit Unions, wi...

D.C.'s foreclosure investigation freezes home sales for months
D.C.'s Attorney General is investigating the city's Foreclosure process, which has left homebuyers in a state of limbo. Sales of foreclosed houses in the District ground to a halt for months as the city's investigation into the Foreclosure process scared away title insurers who didn't want the risk associated with the property. And although the D.C. Office of the Attorney General is now sorting out the confusion, the stalemate has left some prospective homebuyers embittered and frustrated. "For ...

Obama to re-nominate Nobel Prize winner to Fed (AP)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will resubmit the failed nomination of a Nobel Prize-winning Economist to the Federal Reserve, even though he faces even stronger opposition from the next Congress. The nomination of Peter Diamond fizzled when the Senate adjourned Wednesday without acting on it. But the White House said Thursday that the president will press ahead on the nomination. Diamond, a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an authority on Social Security, p...

More Illegal Foreclosure Bank Break-Ins
I wonder if you could go to a Bank CEO’s home, break into his house, and throw out all of his personal possessions — family heirlooms, photos, awards — then claim a paperwork error. That is the excuse they have been using: “In an era when millions of homes have received Foreclosure notices nationwide, Lawsuits detailing bank break-ins like the one at Ms. Ash’s house keep surfacing. And in the wake of the Scandal involving shoddy, sometimes illegal paperwork that has b...

Where does your tax money go?
Where your tax money goes is important to the people of Sacramento and all Americans. The rules of the Internal Revenue Service are very complicated. The income taxes you pay the I.R.S. Serves two purposes. Neither one of these is to give the tax money to the government. The I.R.S's first purpose is to control and redistribute the money. The 20th President of the United States, James Garfield said “Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and c...

Senate fails to confirm Fannie and Freddie regulator
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The nomination of North Carolina bank commissioner Joseph Smith to head the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac died on Wednesday as the U.S. Senate adjourned without acting on it. While President Barack Obama could renominate Smith to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency after the new Senate convenes on January 5, he may be reluctant to do so, given Republican opposition. The Republicans' hand will be even stronger next year because they will gain five more...