NJ Top Court May Block Foreclosures

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...

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...

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...

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...

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..

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...

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 ...

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...;

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court - National Business - MiamiHerald.com
Newark, N.J. -- 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 emp...

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...

Banking, other deals drive stock indexes higher
NEW YORK -- Financial companies led stock indexes to new two-year highs Tuesday after another big banking deal raised hopes that more acquisitions could be on the way. Toronto-Dominion Bank said it is buying Chrysler Financial, the automaker's old Lending arm, from Cerberus Capital Management LP for $6.3 billion. It was the latest example of a relatively healthy Canadian bank buying a U.S. lender battered by the Financial Crisis. Toronto-Dominion bought Commerce Bancorp Inc. in 2008, and just f...

JPMorgan Dominates in Investment Banking Top Line
When it comes to Investment Banking, 2010 belongs to JPMorgan Chase, according to the results of a Dealogic study reported by The Wall Street Journal. In its gold-medal performance, JPMorgan raked in $5.2 billion this year. Bank of America came in second with $4.6 billion, followed by Goldman Sachs with $4 billion. And wherever there are winners, there are inevitably some losers. From The Journal: Among the biggest losers, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC's investment-banking revenue fell 23%,...

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...

Business Bankruptcies: 2011 Will Likely Follow 2010 Lower
In another bit of good news for the domestic economy, the list of U.S. business bankruptcies will likely get shorter, and probably less distinguished, in 2011 just as it did this year. While companies such as movie-rental chain Blockbuster and grocery institution A&P (GAP) reflected the struggling economy by declaring Bankruptcy during the past few months, U.S. business bankruptcies through the Third Quarter fell 5.5% from a year earlier, while third-quarter bankruptcies alone were down ab...

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 ...

Summary for Week ending December 18th
by CalculatedRisk on 12/19/2010 09:20:00 AM Note: here is the economic schedule for the coming week. Below is a summary of the previous week, mostly in graphs. A key story was that the proposed tax Legislation was passed by the Senate and House, and was signed into law on Friday. • Housing Starts increased slightly in November Click on graphs for larger image in graph gallery. Total housing starts were at 555 thousand (SAAR) in November, up 3.9% from the revised October rate of 534 thous...