Preeti Vissa: An Ebenezer Scrooge Christmas?

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...

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...

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...

A Visit From St. Bernanke
; The Economy was flung by Timmy without care, In hopes that St. Bernanke soon would be there; The Regulators were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of trannies danced in their heads; And Obama in his ‘kerchief, listening to his rap, Had just started contemplating the US Debt trap; When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, Tea partiers? Femen? What was the matter? Away to the window Obama flew like TARP cash, Which even Kashkari now admits was too rash. The buffoon with ...

LA Homeowners Arrested During Foreclosure Protest - Video
Apparently, something like 22 out of 120 Protesters were arrested on Thursday for trespassing when they refused police orders to vacate the premises as they demonstrated in front of the Chase bank branch at the corner of Hope and 4th in downtown  Los Angeles. The Homeowners say they are members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which bills itself as “a statewide Community Organization,” and the Home Defenders League, which was started by some of t...

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...;

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...

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...

We Are Not Scrooges!
Ever been stuck in holiday traffic fighting to be stuck in a holiday cashier’s line so you can purchase low-price presents on your high-balance Visa listening to high-volume holiday music and think, “Why am I doing this to myself?! I don’t even really LIKE Christmas. It’s just a scheme to get me to gain more weight AND gain more Debt.” When you’re broke, there’s nothing like Christmas to make you feel bad about yourself. Nothing shatters one’s cont...

Consumer Price Index, November 2010
Correction: Consumer prices rose 2.0% in the 12 months to November, following a 2.4% increase in October. The 0.4 percentage point decrease can be largely attributed to a slowdown in the growth rate of energy and food prices, and a decline in clothing prices. Energy Prices rose 6.7% during the 12 months to November, on the heels of a 9.1% increase in October. Prices at the pump were 7.2% higher than a year earlier, following an 8.8% increase the previous month. Electricity Prices increased 5.9% ...

Open Letter to Geithner & Co: Fix the Foreclosure Fiasco
Open Letter to Geithner & Co: Fix the Foreclosure Fiasco Tuesday, 12/21/2010 - 11:53 am by Bryce Covert | One Comment You may have heard that America has a little problem with widespread Fraud on the part of Mortgage servicers. So what are our Regulators doing to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future? Not much.  So Christopher Whalen called upon a group of 52 Economists, academics, and others, including Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellows Marshall Auerback, Tom Ferguson and R...

Will The Housing Market Continue To Decline?
. The quick answer to the headline of this article seems to be yes. The volume of housing that is in Mortgage trouble is rising as prices drop in vulnerable markets around the country. There isn't a sufficient floor of buyers in those markets to stop further declines and Foreclosure sales that appear to be on the horizon. It depends on the market. For example, the recent Case-Shiller 20 cities report shows that coastal California has had a positive trend: Los Angeles +4.4%; San Diego +5.0%, and ...

U.S. expects foreclosure probe results next month
WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:12pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Obama administration Task Force examining allegations of Fraud in the Mortgage Foreclosure process will deliver its findings next month, two Top Officials said on Monday. "We expect the results of the investigations will be presented to us next month," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a joint statement after meeting with the task force. "The Task Force will t...

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...

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...

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...

Does Anyone Really Think Bank Leverage Limits Control Risk?
Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. Eric Falkenstein is an expert on Hedge Funds, quantitative finance and the author of Falkenblog. I've seen several posts riffing on Tyler Cowen's American Interest article stating banks tend to go 'short Volatility'. I'm not too interested in it because I think it's a misleading way to put the problem. Banking crises are correlated with business cycles, and business cycles are correlated with volatility. Thus, one could say they have too ofte...

Home loan demand drops, lowest in nearly 1 year
By Julie Haviv NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers... Has QE2 worked? NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association on...

Home loan demand drops, lowest in nearly 1 year
By Julie Haviv NEW YORK | Wed Dec 22, 2010 7:01am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association on Wednesday said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended December 17 decreased 18.6 percent, reaching its Lowest Level s...

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...

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...

Report: US military pushing for new Pakistan raids
WASHINGTON—American commanders in Afghanistan are pushing to expand Special Operations Raids into Tribal Areas of Pakistan where Islamist Militants are known to find refuge, according to a newspaper report. Citing unnamed American officials in Washington, The New York Times reported on its website late Monday that U.S. Military commanders believe Special Operations forces could capture Militants for Interrogation, bringing in an intelligence Windfall. American forces have made rare forays...

Banks Now Recapturing Sentimental Value in Foreclosures
As the Foreclosure crisis grinds on, home-repossession horror stories continue to multiply and in some cases sharpen to a fine point. For example, it's may prove pretty tough for Bank of America to shake off a little anecdote from today's New York Times. It starts with Mimi Ash, a woman who says BofA wrongly foreclosed on her. The usual tropes of Foreclosure horror come into play: a return home, changed locks, missing possessions. But then there's a unique little twist: When she finally got in...

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