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  1. #91
    FTL ElNono's Avatar
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    That's essentially what some of us thought should have happened to all the tbtf's in '08.
    Don't know specifically about you, but when that was done with GM, a bunch of people here cried Socialism!
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  2. #92
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    I'm sure the hypocritical tea baggers would scream like hell about nationalizing all the bankrupt TBTF banks as socialism, communism, Sharia, terrorism.

    Let us know when the tea baggers target the financial sector as the real culprits screwing up the planet, rather the govts.

  3. #93
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    Bank Of America Forecloses On Man Two Days After Approving His Mortgage Modification

    falo on Aug 24, 2011 at 9:40 am

    America’s biggest banks have produced a litany of foreclosure horror stories recently, from Chase bank selling a off a soldier’s home on the very same day that he returned from Iraq to a women losing her home to foreclosure even after scrounging together $50,000 in back mortgage-payments that the bank said she owed. Wells Fargo foreclosed on one borrower for missing a few payments…after Wells Fargo specifically the borrower to miss a few payments.

    Bank of America also has a deep list of mortgage misdeeds, from improperly foreclosing on a family and stealing its pet parrot to blatantly violating its contract with Treasury after joining one of the administration’s anti-foreclosure programs. And BofA has been arguably the least capable bank when it comes to getting borrowers into sustainable mortgage modifications, due to its inability to keep paperwork straight or review cases in a timely manner.

    He finished the application process [for a mortgage modification] and continued making his payments, knowing lenders were backed up with modification requests. [...] Finally, on April 10, a letter. But not the one he was expecting. “According to our records, payment for your home loan is past due,” it said. Conca finally called a lawyer for help, and the lawyer corresponded with the lender, but got nowhere.

    Then on July 19, Conca received a letter saying he was approved for a rate reduction on a modified mortgage and he’d receive the paperwork in 10 days.

    Relief, but it was only temporary.

    Two days later he received a different kind of letter from Bank of America: a notice of intention to foreclose.

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...loses-two-day/

  4. #94
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    Schneiderman has refused to accept the whitewash and token "settlement", plus bank immunity from other prosecutions, so the White (Wall St) House kicks him out:

    New York Attorney General Kicked Off Government Group Leading Foreclosure Probe

    WASHINGTON -- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday was kicked off the committee leading the 50-state task force charged with probing foreclosure abuses and negotiating a possible settlement agreement with the nation's five largest mortgage firms, according to an email reviewed by The Huffington Post.

    Schneiderman was one of roughly a dozen state attorneys general leading the talks with the five companies, alongside representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies. The government launched the negotiations in the spring after widespread reports of foreclosure irregularities, such as so-called "robo-signing" and illegal home seizures, emerged.

    But state prosecutors and federal officials are pressing to complete a proposed settlement with the five companies even though they've initiated only a limited investigation that hasn't examined the full extent of the alleged wrongdoing, The Huffington Post reported last month. Elizabeth Warren, who until recently was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told a congressional panel last month that government agencies may not have sufficiently investigated claims that borrowers' homes were illegally seized.

    Schneiderman, a Democrat who's in his first term as New York's top law enforcer, has been among a group of state legal officers who has also questioned the desire for a speedy resolution. He's leading his own investigation into mortgage improprieties, subpoenaing documents from the nation's largest financial institutions and reviewing court records for possible illegal home repossessions.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...=Daily%20Brief

  5. #95
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    Obama's Deal for the Bankers: Amnesty for the Indefensible

    They will get away with it, at least in this life. “They” are the Wall Street usurers, people of a sort condemned in Scripture, who have brought more misery to this nation than we have known since the Great Depression. “They” will not suffer for their crimes because they have a majority ownership position in our political system. That is the meaning of the banking plea bargain that the Obama administration is pressuring state attorneys general to negotiate with the titans of the financial world.

    It is a sellout deal that, in return for a pittance of compensation by banks to ripped-off mortgage holders, would grant the banks blanket immunity from any prosecution. That is intended to short-circuit investigations by a score of aggressive state officials, inquiries that offer the public a last best hope to get to the bottom of the housing scandal that has cost U.S. homeowners $6.6 trillion in home equity in the past five years and left 14.6 million Americans owing more than their homes are worth.

    The $20 billion or so that the banks would pony up is chump change to them compared with the trillions that the Fed and other public agencies spent to bail them out. The banks were given direct cash subsidies, virtually zero-interest loans, and the Fed took $2 trillion in bad paper off their hands while the banks exacerbated the banking crisis they had created through additional shady practices, including fraudulent mortgage foreclosures.

    Yet the administration has rushed to the aid of the banks once again and is attempting to intimidate the few state attorneys general who have the gumption to protect the public interest they are sworn to serve. As Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times reported:

    “Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices. …

    “In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement. …”

    Donovan has good reason not to want an exploration of the origins of the housing meltdown: He has been a big-time player in the housing racket for decades. Back in the Clinton administration, when government-supported housing became a fig leaf for bundling suspect mortgages into what turned out to be toxic securities, Donovan was a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and acting Federal Housing Administration commissioner. He was up to his eyeballs in this business when the Clinton administration pushed through legislation banning any regulation of the market in derivatives based on home mortgages.

    Armed with his insider connections, Donovan then went to work for the Prudential conglomerate (no surprise there), working deals with the same government housing agencies that he had helped run. As The New York Times reported in 2008 after President Barack Obama picked him to be secretary of HUD, “Mr. Donovan was a managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., in charge of its portfolio of investments in affordable housing loans, including Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration debt.”

    http://www.thenation.com/print/artic...y-indefensible

    ==========

    iow, the capitalists have quite obviously violated fundamental property title law in the $100Bs or $Ts, a crime too numerous and Too Big To Prosecute.

    Note how it's the red-state Repug AGs pushing to let the capitalists escape free and clear.

    Right-wingers, tell us again how ACORN, F&F, CRA, and stupid mortgage owners (allowed by predatory, corrupt lenders to go) in over their heads caused the Banksters' Great Depression.
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-24-2011 at 11:19 AM.

  6. #96
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Note how it's the red-state Repug AGs pushing to let the capitalists escape free and clear.
    Obama holds the whip hand, according to your source.

  7. #97
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    Note how it's the red-state Repug AGs pushing to let the capitalists escape free and clear.
    Note how your article contains exactly zero references to red state republican AG's.

    lol boutons.

  8. #98
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    Note how your article contains exactly zero references to red state republican AG's.

    lol boutons.
    "The email announcing Schneiderman's dismissal from the states' executive committee was sent just after noon to more than 50 people by Patrick Madigan, a top lawyer in the Iowa Attorney General's Office. It read: "Effective immediately, the New York Attorney General’s Office has been removed from the Executive Committee of the Robosigning multistate."

    ''Kanner said Schneiderman was removed at Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller's "prerogative.""

    New York has actively worked to undermine the very same multistate group that it had spent the previous nine months working very closely with," Miller continued. "While we certainly respect the right of any state to choose to no longer participate in a multistate and to pursue another path, working to actively undermine a multistate while still a member of the Executive Committee simply doesn’t make sense, is unprecedented and is unacceptable. Accordingly, today I informed New York that it is no longer a member of the Executive Committee."

    =========

    IOWA is deeply, weirdly RED.

  9. #99
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    Judge Suspends All Federal Court Foreclosures In Rhode Island

    The backbone of American real estate law is a network of state-run registries, which track who owns what properties and whether the property is subject to any encumberances such as a mortgage. In the 1990s, however, the banking industry created MERS as an alternative, privatized registry that would allow banks to transfer mortgages more quickly in order to facilitate the creation of the kind of mortgage-backed securities that were a centerpiece of the recent economic crisis.

    MERS’ attorneys essentially argue that it should be above legal scrutiny because it is too big to enjoin.

    it will be interesting to see whether the banking industry attempts to discredit last week’s decision by noting that it was handed down by newly-confirmed Judge John McConnell. The Chamber of Commerce led a blistering campaign of obstruction against McConnell’s nomination because he committed the unforgivable sin of trying to hold lead paint companies and the tobacco industry accountable to their consumers.

    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-rhode-island/

    ==========

    Yet another capitalists escape clause:

    MERS Is Too Big To Enjoin.

    aka, above the law, as MERS and its motherfucker bankers rip off real wealth from Human-Americans.

  10. #100
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    Some of these mortgage companies are UNBELIEVABLY incompetent. One of my sisters died of breast cancer in April 2010. I am the executor of the estate. Long story, but after her cancer returned and metastasized she basically said fuck it and quit paying taxes (she was single, no heirs, and self employed). Consequently she ended up with 130K of tax liens and penalties on her condo in Dallas, putting her massively upside down in it. Immediately after her death I moved everything out, cleaned it up, and called GMAC Mortgage and said "hey guys, sorry, but here's the scoop...I'm offering to give you n immediate voluntarily foreclosure...we don't want the condo and don't have to pay for it and aren't gonna pay for it. Lets make this quick and easy and you just send me the papers you want signed."

    That was 16 months ago. They have done NOTHING. I've send them notarized releases from all the potential heirs (parents and siblings) releasing any claim to the condo. I am STILL getting calls weekly from random call centers wanting to know if I'm SURE I really don't want that condo...

    What the fuck? do they just not want to book the repo? I've told them a hundred times if I've told them once...verbal and in letter form that the condo is theirs...there is no telling how fucked up that place is now after sitting 16 months with the utilities off...

  11. #101
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    "do they just not want to book the repo"

    If they take possession, they owe insurance, maintenance, and taxes. I guess they figure they can't flip it quickly, so they don't want the REO liability.

  12. #102
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    "The email announcing Schneiderman's dismissal from the states' executive committee was sent just after noon to more than 50 people by Patrick Madigan, a top lawyer in the Iowa Attorney General's Office. It read: "Effective immediately, the New York Attorney General’s Office has been removed from the Executive Committee of the Robosigning multistate."

    ''Kanner said Schneiderman was removed at Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller's "prerogative.""

    New York has actively worked to undermine the very same multistate group that it had spent the previous nine months working very closely with," Miller continued. "While we certainly respect the right of any state to choose to no longer participate in a multistate and to pursue another path, working to actively undermine a multistate while still a member of the Executive Committee simply doesn’t make sense, is unprecedented and is unacceptable. Accordingly, today I informed New York that it is no longer a member of the Executive Committee."

    =========

    IOWA is deeply, weirdly RED.


    You fail.

    Thomas John Miller (born August 11, 1944, in Dubuque, Iowa) is the current Democratic Attorney General of Iowa

    http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Tom_Miller

    BTW, Iowa has gone democrat in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections.

    lol boutons.

  13. #103
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    Iowa is RED STATE

  14. #104
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    Just keep telling yourself that you dumbfuck.

    lol boutons.

  15. #105
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
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    lol @ the self-pawning bot.
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  16. #106
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    That's our boutons.

    Fucking Dukakis won Iowa, but no, they're as red a state as they come accorinding to the boutons-bot.

  17. #107
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    But... But... But...

    If it's not a blue state, what's this hype about president Bush stealing it?

    Why did Obama win 53.93% to 44.39%?
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  18. #108
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    Bombshell Admission of Failed Securitization Process in American Home Mortgage Servicing/LPS Lawsuit

    Did you get it? They said that these procedures were standard between the two companies, which was to “..to memorialize the transfer of ownership lender to the securitization trust” right before initiating foreclosure. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that is impermissibly late. The note and mortgage had to get to the trust by a clearly specified date, usually 90 days after closing. As we’ve written numerous times, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the securitization entity was a New York trust, and New York trusts are like computer code, they can only operate exactly as stipulated. The exception was trusts by Chase and WaMu, which did allow for the originator to serve as custodian for the trust.

    So AHMSI has just admitted that all of its foreclosures done with LPS were completed by the wrong party. In Alabama, wrongful foreclosures are subject to statutory damages of three times the value of the house, and recent cases have awarded much higher multiples of the property’s value. This little paragraph is a litigation goldmine for the right attorneys.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...+capitalism%29

  19. #109
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    Buffett’s BofA Stake Nets $1.4B on First Day

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...first-day.html

    ===

    aka, Wealthy enough to make your own waves. WB did the same with buying $5B of Goldman Sacks in mid-crisis, made about $3B, IIRC.

  20. #110
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    Buffett’s BofA Stake Nets $1.4B on First Day

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...first-day.html

    ===

    aka, Wealthy enough to make your own waves. WB did the same with buying $5B of Goldman Sacks in mid-crisis, made about $3B, IIRC.
    Must mean he thinks it's at or near the bottom.

  21. #111
    FTL ElNono's Avatar
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    Must mean he thinks it's at or near the bottom.
    Or he has enough money to set what the bottom is.

  22. #112
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    Or he has enough money to set what the bottom is.
    Maybe, but I think it wakes more than that. Could be people followed him, jacking up the price. artificial price increases usually don't last long, and when they do, you have a tech stock crash, housing bubble bursting, etc.

    Follow the leader and get screwed.

  23. #113
    FTL ElNono's Avatar
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    Maybe, but I think it wakes more than that. Could be people followed him, jacking up the price. artificial price increases usually don't last long, and when they do, you have a tech stock crash, housing bubble bursting, etc.

    Follow the leader and get screwed.
    He effectively set what the bottom is for BoA at this point in time.
    The cash he put in there basically covers the spread of liabilities everybody was so concerned about and that made the stock tank.
    You can only do that when you have billions to invest.

  24. #114
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    Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

    A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

    On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

    On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

    This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

    The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

    This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline.

    This deal will also submarine efforts by both defrauded investors in MBS and unfairly foreclosed-upon homeowners and borrowers to obtain any kind of relief in the civil court system. The AGs initially talked about $20 billion as a settlement number, money that would “toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners,” as Gretchen Morgenson reported the other day.

    What is most amazing about Wylde’s quote is the clear implication that even a law enforcement official like Schneiderman should view it as his job to “do everything we can to support” Wall Street. That would be astonishing interpretation of what a prosecutor's duties are, were it not for the fact that 49 other Attorneys General apparently agree with her.

    In Schneiderman we have at least one honest investigator who doesn’t agree, which is to his great credit. But everyone else is on Wylde’s side now. The Times story claims that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and various Justice Department officials have been leaning on the New York AG to cave, which tells you that reining in this last rogue cop is now an urgent priority for Barack Obama.

    Why? My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

    Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...824?print=true

    =======

    Yep, Barry the fist-bumping socialist/communist/terrorist subversive anti-American. Fox Repug Propaganda network is ALWAYS right

  25. #115
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    oops, not crimes, just mistakes, we NEVER make mistakes (when enriching ourselves)

    JPMorgan fined for contravening Iran, Cuba sanctions

    JPMorgan Chase Bank has been fined $88.3 million for contravening US sanctions against regimes in Iran, Cuba and Sudan, and the former Liberian government, the US Treasury Department announced Thursday.

    The Treasury said that the bank had engaged in a number of "egregious" financial transfers, loans and other facilities involving those countries but, in announcing a settlement with the bank, said they were "apparent" violations of various sanctions regulations.

    JPMorgan agreed to pay the money "to settle potential civil liability for apparent violations" of seven separate sanctions rules between 2005 and 2011.

    Treasury called all of those actions "egregious because of reckless acts or omissions" by the bank.

    "OFAC determined that JPMC (JPMorgan) is a very large, commercially sophisticated financial institution, and that JPMC managers and supervisors acted with knowledge of the conduct constituting the apparent violations and recklessly failed to exercise a minimal degree of caution or care with respect to JPMC's US sanctions obligations," the Treasury said.

    A JPMorganChase spokeswoman told AFP that none of the cases "involved any intent to violate OFAC regulations."

    "These rare incidents were unrelated and isolated from each other. The firm screens hundreds of millions of transaction and customer records per day and annual error rates are a tiny fraction of a percent," Jennifer Zuccarelli said in an email.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/2...e+Raw+Story%29

  26. #116
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    Bank of America kept AIG’s legal threat under wraps for months

    Top Bank of America Corp lawyers knew as early as January that American International Group Inc was prepared to sue the bank for more than $10 billion, seven months before the lawsuit was filed, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    Bank of America shares fell more than 20 percent on August 8, the day the lawsuit was filed, adding to worries about the stability of the largest U.S. bank. It wasn't untilWarren Buffett stepped up with a $5 billion investment that those fears were eased, though hardly eliminated.

    The bank made no mention of the lawsuit threat in a quarterly regulatory filing with theU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just four days earlier. Nor did management discuss it on conference calls about quarterly results and other pending legal claims.

    The SEC's rules for litigation disclosure are murky, and some lawyers said Bank of America may have been justified in not revealing AIG's lawsuit before it was filed. The bank's litigation disclosures are in line with those of many rivals.

    But other lawyers said banks have an obligation to disclose legal threats that could have major consequences.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/3...e+Raw+Story%29

  27. #117
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    Nevada Says Bank Broke Mortgage Settlement

    The attorney general of Nevada is accusing Bank of America of repeatedly violating a broad loan modification agreement it struck with state officials in October 2008 and is seeking to rip up the deal so that the state can proceed with a suit against the bank over allegations of deceptive lending, marketing and loan servicing practices.

    In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Reno, Catherine Cortez Masto, the Nevada attorney general, asked a judge for permission to end Nevada’s participation in the settlement agreement. This would allow her to sue the bank over what the complaint says were dubious practices uncovered by her office in an investigation that began in 2009.

    In her filing, Ms. Masto contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms, instead allowing months and in some cases more than a year to go by with no resolution, the filing says.

    The complaint says such practices violated an agreement Bank of America reached in the fall of 2008 with several states and later, in 2009, with Nevada, to settle lawsuits that accused its Countrywide unit of predatory lending. As the credit crisis grew, the settlement was heralded as a victory by state offices eager to help keep troubled borrowers in their homes and reduce their costs. Bank of America set aside $8.4 billion in the deal and agreed to help 400,000 troubled borrowers with loan modifications and other financial relief, such as lowering interest rates on mortgages.

    But foreclosure problems mounted in Nevada, where Countrywide originated 262,622 loans, and complaints about the bank’s loan servicing practices began flooding into Ms. Masto’s office shortly after the settlement was struck. She found that Bank of America had “materially and almost immediately violated” the terms of the settlement, according to the complaint.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/bu...gewanted=print

  28. #118
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    Nevada Lawsuit Shows Bank of America’s Criminal Incompetence

    It’s pretty remarkable that Mr. Market shrugged off the devastating implications of the amended lawsuit filed by the Nevada attorney general, Catherine Masto against various Bank of America entities. As we’ve stated before, litigation by attorney general is significant not merely due to the damages and remedies sought, but because it paves the way for private lawsuits.

    And make no mistake about it, this filing is a doozy. It shows the Federal/state attorney general mortgage settlement effort to be a complete travesty. The claim describes, in considerable detail, how various Bank of America units engaged in misconduct in virtually every aspect of its residential mortgage business.

    The case argues on two tracks: it seeks to overturn the legal shield provided by a 2008 consent decree with Countrywide, since, in simple terms, Countrywide and BofA have flagrantly disregarded it. The case argues a separate series of claims, based on the same fact set, in case the consent decree is deemed to be operative.

    The complaint describes abuses from the very outset of the securitization process: how borrowers were mis-sold mortgages (it describes how entire products were effectively predatory), how investors were misled as to their quality, how they were not conveyed properly to securitization trusts, how borrowers were subject to abusive servicing (as in charged improper and impermissible fees), how promises made under the old consent decree regarding mortgage modifications were violated (for instance, even though interest rate reductions were promised, instead modifications often resulted in HIGHER interest rates), and the filing of fraudulent paperwork to execute foreclosures.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...+capitalism%29

  29. #119
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    U.S. Is Set to Sue a Dozen Big Banks Over Mortgages


    The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation.

    The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter.

    The suits stem from subpoenas the finance agency issued to banks a year ago. If the case is not filed Friday, they said, it will come Tuesday, shortly before a deadline expires for the housing agency to file claims.

    The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value.

    Fannie and Freddie lost more than $30 billion, in part as a result of the deals, losses that were borne mostly by taxpayers.

    In July, the agency filed suit against UBS, another major mortgage securitizer, seeking to recover at least $900 million, and the individuals with knowledge of the case said the new litigation would be similar in scope.

    Private holders of mortgage securities are already trying to force the big banks to buy back tens of billions in soured mortgage-backed bonds, but this federal effort is a new chapter in a huge legal fight that has alarmed investors in bank shares. In this case, rather than demanding that the banks buy back the original loans, the finance agency is seeking reimbursement for losses on the securities held by Fannie and Freddie.

    The impending litigation underscores how almost exactly three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of a financial crisis caused in large part by subprime lending, the legal fallout is mounting.

    Besides the angry investors, 50 state attorneys general are in the final stages of negotiating a settlement to address abuses by the largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citigroup. The attorneys general, as well as federal officials, are pressing the banks to pay at least $20 billion in that case, with much of the money earmarked to reduce mortgages of homeowners facing foreclosure.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/bu...gewanted=print

    =============

    Taxpayers "lost $30B", do you think the penalties on the banks will make the taxpayers good? nah, pro forma/fool-all-y'all hand slaps, at very max.

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    23,503
    The More You Look, The More Bank Criminality You Find in Mortgage Land

    First is that the Associated Press reports that Guiford County, North Carolina register of deeds Joe O’Brien has found evidence of robosigning in his filed dating back to 1998. This is significant because:

    Servicers did nothing on a one-off basis. If O’Brien found robosigned documents in his files that far back, it is certain there are other examples in other jurisdictions dating back that far.

    It indicated the procedural abuses are much longer standing than virtually all commentators had assumed. I had thought it started with the 2002-3 refinancing boom, when servicers failed to staff up to meet big increases in volumes, which led to corners-cuttting in origination and eventually led to abuses in foreclosures. But this records search indicates the bad practices started much earlier and came to be applied over time on a more widespread basis.

    The second sighting comes from American Banker’s Kate Berry, and provides additional confirmation of other reports that banks continue to engage in backdating of documents after having piously sworn to stop that sort of thing:

    Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

    Some of documents reviewed by American Banker included signatures by current bank employees claiming to represent lenders that no longer exist.

    Many banks are missing the original papers from when they securitized the mortgages, in some cases as long ago as 2005 and 2006, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers. They and some industry members say the related mortgage assignments, showing transfers from one lender to another, should have been completed and filed with document custodians at the time of transfer.

    “It’s one thing to not have the documents you’re supposed to have even though you told investors and the SEC you had them,” says Lynn E. Szymoniak, a plaintiff’s lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. “But they’re making up new documents.”

    The banks argue that creating such documents is a routine business practice that simply “memorializes” actions that should have occurred years before. Some courts have endorsed that view, but others, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, have found that this amounts to a lack of sufficient evidence and renders foreclosures invalid.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...+capitalism%29

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