Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court - National Business - MiamiHerald.com

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - 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," in which e...

New Jersey warns foreclosure fiends
New Jersey has fired a shot across the Banking Industry's bow. The state's Supreme Court ordered the biggest lenders to prove they are acting lawfully in processing Foreclosures. While that only seems like common sense, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told the Wall Street Journal he believes this is the first case in which the state courts have placed that particular ball where it belongs, in the Bankers' court. Time for a Mortgage rule makeover? "It's important that the judiciary ens...

Checkmate | BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze
KABOOM! BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze This is coming in from multiple fronts... Chink in the Armor The State Supreme Court of NJ has ordered a halt to all foreclosure in the state of NJ. This is most excellent news for the reason you may not realize: NJ is owned by the Wall St. Bankers. Remember the movie Copland about a town in NJ owned and run by a bunch of NYC cops? Guess who used to be Governor of NJ? Corzine. Guess what his job was before he became G...

NJ Top Court May Block Foreclosures
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS 2) — New Jersey’s highest court was threatening to block six major lenders, suspected of irregularities, from foreclosing on most Homeowners. Those lenders, which include Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, will have to appear in court next month and defend their Foreclosure practices. The Chief Justice of New Jersey’s Supreme Court said the court has become increasingly concerned about the accuracy and reliability of documents submitted to the office o...

Bank Of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs
Bank of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs The Attorneys General of Nevada and Arizona last week slapped Bank of America with lawsuits alleging widespread Fraud occurrs in the bank’s mortgage modification programs. BofA, the nation’s biggest bank, has consistently lagged behind the other big mortgage servicers in successfully modifying mortgages for troubled borrowers. Andrew Jakabovics and I also caught the bank violating the contract it...

NJ to Suspend Tens of Thousands of Foreclosures
Six of the biggest banks in the nation have been told by New Jersey's Supreme Court Chief Justice that unless they can prove otherwise, they will have to stop tens of thousands of Foreclosures in the Garden State. "This is something we have focused on for a number of months," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told NBCNewYork in a Conference Call with reporters Monday afternooon. New Jersey's action follows similar moves in other states where lawyers for Homeowners have found Bankers using so...

States accuse Bank of America of widespread fraud on homeowners
Source: NY Times That's the Boschian hell that one family in Chino Valley, Ariz., was put through by Bank of America, according to a Lawsuit (PDF) filed last week against the firm by the state's Attorney General, Terry Goddard. It's just one of numerous equally nightmarish tales detailed in the complaint, and in a similar one filed by Goddard's Nevada counterpart, Catherine Cortez Masto. The twin lawsuits, from two of the states hardest hit by the bursting of the Housing Bubble, accuse Bank of A...

Group calls for national mortgage servicing standards
A group of 52 academics and investment professionals are pressing federal Regulators to adopt national Mortgage servicing standards as soon as possible. Controversy over problems in Mortgage documentation now emerging in Foreclosure proceedings is threatening recovery in the Housing Market and the nation's entire economy, according to the authors of the letter, which was sent to federal financial regulators. "The chaotic situation in the Mortgage market today demands immediate action to ensure...

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...

Tim Chen: The Dangers of no Preset Spending Limit Cards
While most people understand that using all of their available credit can be detrimental, they don't understand why it affects their Credit Score. It can be summed up in two words: Credit Utilization. Credit utilization is the amount of credit that a consumer has consumed versus the amount of credit that consumer has available. It is this ratio that FICO uses as part of the formula for a consumer's "amounts owed" section. This section makes up 30% of a person's FICO score. As FICO is the larg...

Crony journalism at the NewsHour
JIM LEHRER: In the worst-case scenario, the panel says courts could block Foreclosures. Banks would be left holding bad Mortgage loans that cost them billions of dollars. That in turn would deepen disruption in the Housing Market. But, in the best case, the Oversight Panel acknowledges, concerns about Mortgage documents may prove to be overblown, a view embraced by the financial industry. This afternoon, executives from two major lenders, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, appeared before t...

Federal Reserve Blocks New Foreclosure Regulations
WASHINGTON -- Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department. The Fed, along with the more bank-friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is resisting moves to craft rules cracking down on banks that charge illegal fees and carry out improper Foreclosures. The FDIC supports such rules, according to an FDIC official involved in the dispute. The new regulations ...

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 51
As the Foreclosure mills get ready to start up in January, it's important to note that 27 states don't have judges decide Foreclosure proceedings, and in those states, trustees hired by the banks conduct proceedings for evictions. All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. Attorneys general in non- judicial states, including Arizona, Texas and Washington, are conducting independent pr...

Preeti Vissa: An Ebenezer Scrooge Christmas?
This time of year conjures up traditional images of family gatherings, cozy fireplaces, shared meals and happy exchanges of presents -- images of home, security and friendship. But millions of Americans who have had their homes foreclosed or who are in imminent danger of Foreclosure have no such sense of security, and in many cases no real home. Far too little is being done to help them. It seems like Ebenezer Scrooge is running Christmas this year. But it doesn't have to be this way. I've wri...

In California, Homeowners at Risk Struggle to Find Lawyers
In California, where Foreclosures are more abundant than in any other state, Homeowners trying to win a Loan Modification have always had a tough time. Gregory Royston, a Real Estate attorney, said winning modifications to Mortgages was never easy and often impossible. Now they face yet another obstacle: hiring a lawyer. Sharon Bell, a Retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel, southeast of Los Angeles, needs a modification to keep her home. She says she is scared of her bank and its plentiful resou...

How HAMP modifications are escalated
After publishing my post this morning about the way disputes are resolved in HAMP, I went back and forth with Treasury a few times. And it turns out that there’s much more to it than the Homeownership Preservation Foundation — although finding out exactly how it all works is basically impossible unless you know someone at Treasury. Transparent this is not. As far as I can make out, HPF runs something called the HOPE Hotline. The hotline then passes callers through to counselors who ...

Wells Fargo 'pick-a-pay' settlement - $2 billion
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wells Fargo, in a settlement with California's Attorney General announced Monday, agreed to provide $2 billion worth of loan modifications to nearly 15,000 Homeowners. Under the deal, the bank is also paying a total of $32 million to borrowers who lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to the AG. Email Print Comment Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) will offer modifications to 14,900 homeowners, who have so-called "pick-a-pay&q...;

Wells Fargo Agrees to $2 Billion in Loan Modifications
Source: Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to provide loan modifications worth more than $2 billion to California Homeowners who have “pick-a-pay” loans, California Attorney General Jerry Brown said. Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. home lender, also will pay $32 million to borrowers whose homes were lost in Foreclosure, Brown said today in a statement. Pick-a-pay, or pay option adjustable-rate Mortgage loans, allowed borrowers to make payments at various levels, according to Brown. The highest l..

Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citi face a possible foreclosure freeze in New Jersey. Other mortgage lenders and serv...
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Supreme Court rulings and the Roberts Court
The NYT makes note of the US Chamber of Commerce and litigation: The chamber now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate Speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign s...

Canada's TD Bank bets $6 billion on U.S. auto lending
Toronto (Reuters) - Toronto-Dominion Bank is buying Chrysler Financial for $6.3 billion, the second time in a week that a Canadian lender has placed a big bet on the U.S. Economic Recovery. Tuesday's cash deal, which includes about $400 million in goodwill, will make Canada's No. 2 bank one of North America's biggest bank-owned auto lenders. The bank won't issue any stock to fund its purchase from Cerberus Capital Management, a feature that helped push TD shares up nearly 4 percent. "The TD Ban...

Washington, American Samoa are worst U.S. markets for insurers
American Samoa and Washington, D.C. were the worst U.S. markets for insurers in 2009, as Foreclosures and a Tsunami in the South Pacific triggered customer payouts. Insurers in Washington spent 49 percent more on claims and other expenses than the $1.6 billion they collected in premiums last year, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said today in a report. In American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific, carriers paid out more than 13 times the $85,000 of premiums they ...

Everyone to Norwalk: Expo Line Phase II Trial Starts Next Week
The trial between the Expo Authority and Neighbors for Smart Rail, a group of Westside Homeowners who sued over the second leg of the light rail project, kicks off Tuesday morning at Norwalk Superior Court, according to The Transit Coalition's newsletter. This trial is really more of a hearing, and the judge can issue a decision that day or after a few days. A post on TC's discussion board has a little more. Neighbors for Smart Rail filed a Lawsuit back in March, arguing that Expo officials didn...

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 ...

Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods
WASHINGTON -- Despite mounting evidence of big banks committing serious Fraud in the Foreclosure process, the U.S. Senate eliminated $35 million in Legal Aid to Homeowners trying to keep their homes. The fund was wiped out in order to meet Government Spending caps advocated by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), but will likely end up costing Taxpayers much more in the long run, as wrongful foreclosures burn through the Balance Sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The ...