Archive
Democracy Now! – Joe Nocera on “All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis”
From Democracy Now!:
Joe Nocera on “All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis”
Boing Boing – Who owns your mortgage, the mind-croggling flowchart edition
From Boing Boing:
Who owns your mortgage, the mind-croggling flowchart edition
Cory Doctorow at 9:36 AM Sunday, Nov 21, 2010
This insanely complex chart represents securitization auditor Dan Edstrom’s best attempt to figure out who actually owns his mortgage: “The following flow chart reverse engineers the mortgage on the Ekstrom family residence. It took Dan over one year to take it this far and it clearly demonstrates what happens when there are too many lawyers being manufactured.”
Just When You Thought You Knew Something About Mortgage Securitizations (Thanks, Mr. Tough!)
Clusterstock – It Was Really The Lenders Who Put The Lies In Liars’ Loans
From Clusterstock:
Fox News Is Lying To The Tea Party About Housing Regulation
It Was Really The Lenders Who Put The Lies In Liars’ Loans
Goldman Sachs Only Wants Clients With More Than $5 Million
Jamie Dimon And Bob Rubin Dodged Questions On Foreclosure Fraud
Matt Taibbi – Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners
From Rolling Stone:
Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners
Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida
The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This “rocket docket,” as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and labyrinthine derivative deals of a type that didn’t even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn’t to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.
emptywheel – Want to Sue the Banksters? Ask WhereIsTheNote
From emptywheel:
Want to Sue the Banksters? Ask WhereIsTheNote
By: emptywheel Wednesday November 3, 2010 9:40 am
Remember WhereIsTheNote?
In the face of mounting evidence that the banks foreclosing on homes did not comply with legal requirements during securitization of mortgages and therefore don’t have legal standing to foreclose, the SEIU and some community organizations teamed together last month to create an online tool that anyone can use to ask their mortgage servicer where their note is. By helping homeowners proactively check whether their bank has the right paperwork, it gives them more power in the event of a foreclosure.
The site launched just over three weeks ago. 200,000 people have visited the website; around 15,000 have used the tool to ask their bank for their note (I’ll have a more exact number shortly).
What has happened since gets very interesting. In the first few days, some banks responded quickly and in apparent good faith, some admitting there was a problem, and others sending what they claimed was the note, but was either something else entirely, or clearly did not meet the requirements for transfer.
But as banks realized those first requests were not isolated requests, two things happened. Either banks have sent back a response saying the homeowner had no right to see their note. Or, banks have not responded at all.
Karen Weise – Wells Fargo Case Belies Claim It Always Verifies Mortgage Paperwork
The Raw Story – ‘Foreclosure mill’ gave employees jewelry, cars, houses to forge documents: testimony
From The Raw Story:
‘Foreclosure mill’ gave employees jewelry, cars, houses to forge documents: testimony
By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, October 18th, 2010 — 9:50 pmAccording to sworn statements released by the Florida Attorney General’s office, one of the state’s “foreclosure mills” bribed employees with jewelry, cars and houses to forge and alter documents required by courts conducting foreclosure proceedings.
Kelly Scott and Mary Cordova, two former employees of Florida attorney David J. Stern, were close to the process. Both described to investigators a secretive system designed to speed up foreclosures, and their testimonies seem to match up with claims made by Tammie Lou Kapusta, another former Stern employee.
Their statements were published online Monday afternoon.
Other…
Who’s who in the foreclosure scandal: A primer on the players
Mortgage Scammers Get Slap On The Wrist
ProPublica – Who’s Who in the Foreclosure Scandal: A Primer on the Players
From ProPublica:
Who’s Who in the Foreclosure Scandal: A Primer on the Players
By Marian Wang
When it comes to untangling our mortgage foreclosure mess, the complexity of the process is part of the problem. Here’s a primer on the players involved.
Truthout – Personally Invested in Mortgage Banks, House Republican Opposes Fix for “Foreclosure-Gate”
From Truthout:
Personally Invested in Mortgage Banks, House Republican Opposes Fix for “Foreclosure-Gate”
Saturday 16 October 2010by: Lee Fang | ThinkProgress | Report
(Photo: republicanconference / Flickr)Widespread reports about “robo-signers” — bank officials who would sign foreclosure forms without even reading them — have lead many business reporters to dub the crisis of potentially illegal bank foreclosures as “foreclosure-gate.” For example, a Bank of America official admitted in a bankruptcy case that she signed 7,000 to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and “typically” did not read them “because of the volume.” Responding to this crisis, many lenders, like Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Ally Financial, have halted foreclosures, while Democratic lawmakers and a cadre of a bipartisan state attorney generals have called for a wider foreclosure moratorium and investigations into the banks’ practices.
Marian Wang – More on the Foreclosure Scandal and the Mortgage Machine
From ProPublica:
More on the Foreclosure Scandal and the Mortgage Machine
by Marian Wang
Photo by Taber Andrew Bain on Flickr.
There are more headlines every day about banks using shortcuts and questionable paperwork to push through foreclosures. A group of 40 state attorneys general is expected to announce an investigation this week into the mortgage servicing industry, while calls for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures — an idea the White House opposes — have grown louder.
It’s not easy to follow, so we’ve dived in again to explain things.
The National Law Journal – Crackdown on California Attorneys for Mortgage Fraud a State-Federal Joint Effort
From The National Law Journal:
Crackdown on California Attorneys for Mortgage Fraud a State-Federal Joint Effort
The National Law Journal
The indictment last week of a California attorney was just the latest move by federal and state prosecutors and government agencies to impose civil penalties or prison time against Golden State lawyers allegedly involved in mortgage or foreclosure fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Los Angeles indicted Gerald L. Wolfe in the first known federal indictment of an attorney for alleged mortgage or foreclosure fraud. The State Bar of California has also been engaged in its own crackdown on such frauds, as have the California attorney general and the FTC.
Bloomberg – Citigroup, Ally Sued for Racketeering Over Database
From Bloomberg:
Citigroup, Ally Sued for Racketeering Over Database
By Margaret Cronin Fisk and Thom Weidlich – Oct 4, 2010
Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. units were sued by homeowners in Kentucky for allegedly conspiring with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to falsely foreclose on loans.
The lawsuit, filed as a civil-racketeering class action on behalf of all Kentucky homeowners facing foreclosure, also names as a defendant Reston, Virginia-based MERS, the company that handles mortgage transfers among member banks. The suit claims that through MERS the banks are foreclosing on homes even when they don’t hold titles to the properties.
“Defendants have filed foreclosures throughout the state of Kentucky and the United States of America knowing that they were not the ‘owners’ or beneficiaries of the loan they filed foreclosure upon,” the homeowners wrote in their complaint filed Sept. 28 in federal court in Louisville, Kentucky.
Related…
ProPublica – Biggest Banks Ensnared as Foreclosure Paperwork Problem Broadens
From ProPublica:
Biggest Banks Ensnared as Foreclosure Paperwork Problem Broadens
By Marian Wang
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and others have joined GMAC and JPMorgan under the microscope as bank regulators order major servicers to review their foreclosure procedures for robo-signing and flawed documents.
Read our original post, “GMAC’s ‘Robo-Signers’ Draw Concerns About Faulty Process, Mistaken Foreclosures.”
See ProPublica’s complete coverage of loan modifications.
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