Category Archives: Banking industry

David Dayen: How Chase Bank Denying Services to a Condom Shop Is Really About Deregulating Payday Lending

Under the odd conventions of journalism, if someone else writes about a topic, especially if it resembles a “scoop,” nobody else can write about it. So if you go down the road for a week or so chasing a story and then you see it in your friendly neighborhood copy of The Huffington Post, you can basically stop chasing. Thanks for taking food out of my mouth, HuffPo!

But in this case, the complicated story in question warrants more attention, because it’s a really good lesson in how “lobbying” incorporates more than just paying rich people in suits to sweet-talk politicians and regulators. This is the darker side of lobbying, with the venerated “small business owners” everyone loves to deify caught in the crossfire.

Chris Whalen Goes Off the Deep End, Issues Error-Filled Screed in Defense of Mortgage Servicers

I once had a good opinion of bank analyst Chris Whalen, despite having some reservations about him. But his error-filled screed against mortgage servicing regulations means he can no longer be taken seriously on the subject of banking. Whalen has become a textbook illustration of the Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

How Banks Fleece Heirs on Reverse Mortgages

Never underestimate the willingness of banks to find new and creative ways to cheat customers, particularly when big bucks are at stake.

Has Anglo-American Capitalism Run Out of Strategies?

In this Real News Network interview, George Irvin, research professor at the University of London takes a broad historical perspective to show how the rise of a low-wage, debt driven economy and the pressure to reduce the role of government have painted Anglo-Saxon capitalism in a corner.

The SEC Finally Takes an Interest in Collateralized Loan Obligations

The old saying is “better late than never,” but as we hope to demonstrate, the SEC is awfully late to take an interest in collateralized loan obligations. The problems it has gotten curious about now were discernible years ago. And the failure to take interest until now means that misbehavior that was discussed in the press during the crisis is almost certain to go unpunished, since the statute of limitations for securities law violations has passed.

Democracy Now Discusses Wells Fargo Foreclosure Document Fabrication Manual

It’s good to see that a lawsuit providing critical new evidence of systematic foreclosure abuses is getting the attention it warrants.

A New Wall Street Looting Scheme: Disaster Savings Accounts

As famed short seller David Einhorn says, no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse. We’ve got proof of his dictum in the form of a new looting scheme, the Disaster Savings Account Act. Since the financiers haven’t yet gotten their hands on Social Security, they are looking for new worlds to plunder.

Lawsuit Against California’s Robbing Homeowners of National Mortgage Settlement Funds Has Very Good Chance of Success

Late on Friday, a coalition of African-American, Latino and Asian-American groups sued California Governor Jerry Brown, demanding that he return $350 million stolen from the state’s share of the National Mortgage Settlement to plug a budget hole.

California is far from the only state to divert money given as a penalty for homeowner abuse into the General Fund; in fact, less than half of the $2.5 billion given to states in the settlement actually went to housing (and that’s a generous rendering which counts things like North Dakota spending to increase housing stock in oil country for police officers, when that has nothing to do with compensation for abuse). In fact, consumer groups in Arizona already tried to sue to force $50 million that went to their state’s General Fund back into the hands of homeowners. But a Maricopa County judge ruled that the language of the consent order was sufficiently broad to allow the diversion of funds.

Does that mean that this California lawsuit is nothing more than a show of vanity, destined to fail? Absolutely not. In fact, by a strict reading of the case law and the documents in the case, the plaintiffs should win in a walk.

Why the Justice Department Inspector General Report on Mortgage Fraud Matters

Hello, folks! As Yves is off explaining the world to Washington, I’m manning the controls for a couple days.

This allows me to ensure that NC has that whole Justice Department IG report on mortgage fraud covered. I know that Yves heaved the written equivalent of a sigh at the news, and she wasn’t wrong. Nothing tangible is likely to happen for the borrowers victimized by the abusive practices that DoJ willfully neglected to prosecute. And there’s surely a seat being kept warm at Covington & Burling for Eric Holder’s post-government career; this won’t hurt him a bit.

But because I don’t feel the coverage so far has plumbed the depths of this corruption, and because it’s still happening, it’s not worth going silent just yet. It’s probably spitting into the wind, yes, but I’ve got the time and the spit, so I want to note a few things.

Banker Farce: Spanish Bank CEO Launches Moral Crusade Against Political Corruption

“We have to fight corruption in order to build a new model of more sustainable and fairer growth.”

These laudable words came from the least likely of mouths – that of Francisco González, CEO of Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA). González was speaking at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting, held last week in Bilbao.

BBVA is Spain’s second biggest bank with operations in more than 30 countries including the U.S., China, Argentina, Columbia and Mexico. It has about 107,000 employees, 47 million customers worldwide, a million shareholders and now, it seems, a moralizing CEO.

Philip Pilkington: Bank of England Endorses Post-Keynesian Endogenous Money Theory

Yves here. Not only is the Bank of England siding with Post-Keynesian ideas about money, but it has even taken to creating layperson-friendly videos about the nature of money.

Is UCC Article 9 Going to Kill the Use of Bitcoin by US Businesses?

Warning to Bitcoin enthusiasts: if you airily try dismissing UCC Article 9 as a nothigburger, you’ve just established you are unqualified to comment on commercial transactions in the US. Read what follows and be warned.

New Lawsuit Alleges That Wells Has a Manual for Mass Fabrication of Foreclosure Documents

Catherine Curan of the New York Post has an important new story on a Federal lawsuit that looks to have unearthed a smoking gun about systematic document fabrication at Wells Fargo.

Bill Black at TED Explains How Insiders Rob Banks and Cause Crises

A presentation by Bill Black disproves that TED only features elite-flattering conventional wisdom.

New In-Depth Study Shows How Debt Collectors Abuse Legal System and Borrowers

The Loyola Consumer Law Review has just released an important paper by Peter Holland of the University of Maryland Francis School of Law. It’s a large scale statistical study, the first of its kind. Its conclusions are not pretty.