Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods

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...

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...

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...

Strong Coalition Urges House Republicans to Create Anti-Appropriations Committee
President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR.org), Grover Norquist, wrote about having an "anti-appropriations committee back in June n the American Spectator. Norquist talked of Democrats, Republicans and "the appropriators" in congress and proposed an idea to take the starch out of the appropriator's assumed sense of entitlement to spend our money with abandon. Hearkening back to the board that identified needless spending during WWII, spending congress then cut from the budget, Norquist suggest...

Congress Poised To Expedite 9/11 Responders Bill Over GOP Objections
After months of GOP obstruction, a bill to help 9/11 First Responders cover their mounting Health Care costs is expected to zip through Congress. In addition to being a feather in the cap of New York and New Jersey Democrats -- who have been pushing the bill for months -- it will likely enjoy the distinction of being the last legislative item to pass the unusually productive 111th Congress lame duck session. Republicans have blocked the bill in both the House and Senate over objections to its ...

The Yin, Yang of the 111th Congress
The door soon will close on what is turning out to be one of the more enigmatic chapters of American government. During the past two years, Congress has been its most productive in decades, yet ultimately is reviled by the American public. Regardless of how much longer Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decide to hold open the current lame-duck session, they cannot alter the march of time. January will come, and the 111th Congress will be history...

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...

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...

Obama Signs Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Into Law
Amid applause, cries of thanks and chants of "Yes we can!," President Obama on Wednesday repealed the U.S. Military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which had banned gay service members from serving openly in the armed services. Proclaiming that the policy "will strengthen our National Security," the president vowed that "no longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie. Or look over their shoulders in order to serve the country they love." Paraphrasing Joint Chi...

Lame ducks, RINOs, and 'tolerance'
The Lame Ducks are doing as much damage as possible in their final hours. But they couldn't do it without help from Republicans, who have been complicit in the Repeal of DADT, in the sudden caving on the Food Safety bill, and in the ratification of the START Treaty. Nice Deb has video of a Press Conference given by GOP senators who are opposed to ramming this weak treaty through the Senate, 111th-style: Missing are Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Scott Brown, and Judd Gregg, who, for some inexpl...

Regulator Opposes Mortgage Principle Reductions for Underwater Homeowners
by Karen Weise, ProPublica The Obama Administration has been pushing for banks and investors to cut Mortgage balances for Homeowners who owe more than their home is worth. But the regulator for the biggest investors of them all -- the government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- won't let the two do it. The administration and some banks themselves have increasingly seen reducing the size of a borrower's loan -- what's known as principal reduction -- as an important tool for helping the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Rejoin the military, Obama tells gays
President Barack Obama signed into law Legislation lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the Military, repealing a 17-year-old policy and fulfilling a campaign promise. The law will “strengthen our National Security and uphold the ideals that our fighting men and women risk their lives to defend,” Obama said during a signing ceremony this morning at the Interior Department. Members of the Armed Forces make numerous sacrifices to serve, he said. “None of them should have ...

PA Reaches Agreement With Fracking Company Over Well Contamination
by Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica Residents of Dimock, Pa., said they were surprised -- and in some cases upset -- by the settlement that state environmental Regulators reached last week with Cabot Oil & Gas, which the Department of Environmental Protection says contaminated 18 water wells with Methane from its gas drilling operations. The Homeowners were told in September that the DEP was going to provide them with fresh water by building a Pipeline from a nearby water treatment facility. ...

State AGs Sue Bank of America
Mon Dec. 20, 2010 7:04 AM PST As officials from all 50 states investigate the causes of the recent "Foreclosure-gate" fiasco, two attorneys general have decided to go after Wall Street on their own. On Friday, Arizona and Nevada's attorneys general slapped Bank of America and its Mortgage servicing subsidiary with a blistering Lawsuit (PDF). The states say the lender made "false assurances" about modifying Homeowners' mortgages while foreclosing on them at the same time and ...

Banks Still Foreclosing on Homeowners Seeking Loan Mods Despite Rules
by Karen Weise, ProPublica In May, we first reported on how disorganization at banks caused Homeowners to lose their homes while still in the Loan Modification process -- something that's not supposed to happen under the rules of the government Loan Modification program. Treasury officials said they were working to fix the problem, but nine months later the practice is prevalent, according to a new report. For the report, the National Consumer Law Center and the National Association of Consume...

"I Wish the Law Had Worked": A Dispatch from the Land of Unintended Consequences
Once upon a time, people seeking Loan Modifications got screwed by lawyers who promised to save their homes, took a few thousand dollars, and disappeared from the face of the Earth. Then the light of Regulation shone upon California and a Task Force was convened, Legislation was devised, and everyone smiled when it passed by an overwhelming 36-4 in September 2009. Now, this: Lawyers throughout California say they have no choice but to reject clients [seeking help with Mortgage modifications] be...