Author Archives: Yves Smith
Expert Witnesses Starting to Take on Forgeries in Foreclosures
One of the things we’ve lamented since 2010, before the robosiging scandal broke, is the use of forgeries and document fabrications to remedy otherwise fatal problems with foreclosure actions, such as a lack of proper signatures on a borrower promissory note.
It looks like document experts are finally getting their day in court.
Read more...Does Religion Serve a Purpose?
This lecture by professor Paul Bloom of Yale starts with the observation that religion serves no obvious adaptive purpose.
Read more...Links Groundhog Day
Tom Ferguson Saw the Disheartening Future of American Politics 25 Years Ago
Nathan Tankus found this archival video (you are going to get a gas out of the production values…and be patient with the set up, it takes a few minutes for the video to get going).
Read more...Links 2/1/13
Yet Another Cost of Doing Business Fine: Lender Processing Services Settles with 46 Attorneys General for $127 Million
All you need to know to get confirmation that Lender Processing Services got a great gift is to look at what its stock did on the day of the announcement of its $127 million settlement with 46 chump state attorneys general, on a day when the market was down generally:
Read more...IRS Anticipates Cheapest ObamaCare Family Plan Will be $20,000 in 2016
Aiee! CNS News found this tidbit (hat tip furzy mouse), contained in IRS final regulations published on January 31. Now admittedly these are examples for the purposes of illustrating how to make various calculations under the new regulations, but the assumptions are pretty clear.
Read more...Bill Black: Yglesias Pours the Geithner, Holder, Breuer (GHB) Banksters Immunity Doctrine in our Drinks
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
It’s early, but Salon has published on January 30, 2013 either the funniest or saddest column of the year to date: “Are Banks Too Big To Prosecute?”
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Prosecutors Get Tough on Mortgage Fraud….At an Itty Bitty Bank
One of the things that has been galling is watching various officials tasked to protect the public from financial services miscreants is to have them prattle meaningless statistics about how the number of actions of various sorts that they’ve taken is up relative to the previous incumbents. That’s tantamount to a MASH unit tallying up what a great job they did in improving the vaccination rate while not even looking at a huge rise in the mortality rate and questioning whether their response was adequate.
Read more...Links 1/31/13
Quelle Surprise! IMF Always Prescribes the Same Austerity Hairshirt
A new paper by Mark Weisbrot and Helene Jorgensen of CEPR have managed to unearth a dirty little secret: the IMF doesn’t just prescribe broadly similar policies in its Article IV consultations, it looks like its hands out the same medicine. We’ve used the metaphor of breaking countries on the rack, but cutting them to fit a Procrustean bed might be more apt.
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! Finally, Someone (Amar Bhide) Questions Benefits of Mortgage Securitization
A major intellectual blind spot in academia and among policy makers is the belief that making markets more liquid is always and ever a good thing.
Read more...Modern Monetary Theory, Bears 2.0 Style
A Bears-style video on MMT was posted earlier this month. While I like the innovation of a Sharon Stone-ish head and her smashed up interlocutor, and I think this video is well done, I have my doubts as to whether this approach is an effective way to educate people about MMT.
Read more...Marcy Wheeler: Lanny Breuer Now Blames 94 US Attorneys for Immunizing Banksters
By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel
Remarkably, on the same day two Senators (one of them named in the article) reminded Eric Holder that Lanny Breuer said this….
Read more...I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it’s a factor we need to know and understand.
