The Real Foreclosure Scandal: Why Have Virtually No Lawyers Been Disbarred?
Even now, years after the subprime market’s death in 2007, new stories of mortgage chicanery or accounts providing more evidence of known abuses keep surfacing.
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Quelle Surprise! Administration Lied About Mortgage Fraud Results, Numbers 4 to 10 Times Too High
Normally I’d relegate a good job of news spadework to the daily Links feature, but Bloomberg caught out Attorney General Eric Holder in such an egregious lie that this failed con job merits ample, widespread publicity and well-deserved derision.
Read more...Are New York City “Feminist” Organizations Sock-Puppeting for Wall Street in Attacking Spitzer?
Yves here. Regular readers may notice that this article is a departure from normal NC fare, in that this site has steered clear of posts that address a particular demographic or ethnic group. But we’ve decided to go this route in response to the feint being used by the Wall Street and its Democratic party sock puppets to go after Eliot Spitzer’s campaign to become Comptroller of New York City.
Read more...So Why is the Administration Trying to Look a Smidge More Aggressive About Going After Banks?
In the last few days, the Department of Justice (as well as the SEC) filed a case against Bank of America over a 2008 prime mortgage securitization that takes breaks some new ground in fraud allegations and is also saber-rattling in the form of launching a criminal investigation into JP Morgan’s sale of mortgage backed securities.
So what’s with the new-found religion?
Read more...Calling All California Lawyers (and Others Who Want to Help Abused Homeowners)! Please Ask California Court of Appeal to Publish an Important Pro-Borrower Chain of Title Ruling
Your humble blogger is in no position to speculate how this curious set of circumstances came about, but we have a good news, bad news situation, and hope readers can help remedy the bad news part.
Read more...Beware Private Equity Guys Bearing Gifts: Eminent Domain Mortgage Scam Hit with Well-Deserved Lawsuit
The private equity firm Mortgage Resolution Partners looks to be well on its way to getting the good uses of eminent domain torpedoed by getting some not-too-swift municipalities to sign up for its self-serving scheme. One indicator of how dubious the MPR program is that investors who have been complacent in the face of all sorts of abuses by originators and servicers, have roused themselves to act in a unified manner and push back against the MRP plan, in the form of a suit filed in Federal court in California on Wednesday.
Read more...To End the Eurozone Crisis, Bury the Debt Forever
The Eurozone’s debt crisis is getting worse despite appearances to the contrary. How can we end it? This column presents five major options for reducing crisis countries’ debt. Looking into the details, it seems the only option that is both realistic and effective is for countries to default by selling monetised debt to the ECB. Moral hazard aside, burying the debt seems to be the only way we can end the crisis.
Read more...European Pundits Starting to Give Up on the Eurozone
We’ve been pointing out for some time that Germany has refused to budge from wanting contradictory things relative to the Eurozone. Now something still has to break, but some of my correspondents who’ve just been in Europe now think that we will see a political crisis in Europe before we see an economic one, and that, like objects in your rear view mirror, may be closer than it appears.
Read more...Trader Describes How Dishonesty Pays in Finance, Big Time
Yves here. It may seem like a “dog bites man” account to describe yet again how traders are fixated on their bonuses, often have tawdry personal habits (cocaine, whores, flashy cars) and have no compunction about leaving rubble in their wake, be it customers or the firms for which they work.
However, it’s one thing to hear it from outsiders or people who’ve managed to spend some time on a dealing room floor, and another to have someone in the industry describe what goes on.
Read more...The Hidden Credit Report That Shuts People Out of the Banking System
Jessica Silver-Greenberg at the New York Times has an important account of how a system created by banks to catch scam artists like check-kiters has morphed over 20 years into a shadow credit reporting system.
Read more...Europe’s Good News, Bad News
Data out of Europe is showing relative improvement on several important fronts, but is this merely stabilization or “less bad” as opposed to finally turning a corner?
Read more...Robert Prasch: The Next Chair of the Federal Reserve Must be a Regulator
If we go by the rumors circulating in the financial press, the Obama Administration is on the verge of selecting a proven failure – Lawrence Summers – to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve System. We can, and need to, do a lot better than that.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: The Depressing Tale of How Greedy Financial Titans Crushed Innovation and Destroyed Our Economy
Whatever happened to innovation in America?
Read more...Why It’s Absurd that America Doesn’t Tax Wall Street’s Transactions
Yves here. The post below from Paul Buchheit makes a persuasive layperson’s case for a financial transactions tax. There is an equally sound case to be made from a financial markets viewpoint.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: The Annotated Wolfgang Schäuble (PR Versus Reality, European Periphery Edition)
Yves here. Varoufakis performs the important service of translating what is effectively a formal communication from Germany on its stance towards subject states, meaning the Eurozone periphery.
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