Mortgage Settlement Monitor Hires Firm that Has Worked on Countrywide Matters
Sadly, there is a reason that the Obama Administration believes that any problem can be solved by better propaganda.
Read more...Category Archives: Banking industry
Wall Street’s War Against the Cities: Why Bondholders Can’t – and Shouldn’t – be Paid
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and author of “The Bubble and Beyond,” which is available on Amazon.
The pace of Wall Street’s war against the 99% is quickening in preparation for the kill.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Banks Getting Credit for What They Would Have Done Anyhow in Mortgage Settlement
Today, Joseph Smith, the official monitor for the Federal-state mortgage settlement entered into earlier this year with five major servicers, released a glossy initial report on program progress. Needless to say, my cynicism was piqued both by the glossy format of the document and the decision to release it well before the required date of second quarter 2013.
But the distressing part is the way the settlement is playing out according to script.
Read more...Spain Worse
By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
As I wrote early last week Antonis Samaras was to spend much of the weekend in talks with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande about the future of his nation. As the Telegraph pointed out yesterday the results were, as expected, unconvincing:
Read more...“Nonsense Economics” and the Deepening Greek Crisis
Real News Network has a sobering interview with Costas Lapavitsas,a professor at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, who gives an update on the political and economic situation in Greece.
Read more...New Real Estate Train Wreck Coming: Securitized Rentals
No matter how bad things get, it turns out they can always get worse. Wall Street is about to foist a new “innovation” on investors that even the ratings agencies won’t touch.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Former JP Morgan Chairman Offers Dubious Defenses of Big Banks
Ordinarily, it might not seem worth the bother to debunk yet another piece of bank propaganda. However Thursday’s op ed by former JP Morgan Chase chairman William Harrison, “Don’t Break Up the Big Banks,” recites a classic set of time-worn canards. As regulatory compliance expert Michael Crimmins said via e-mail, “It’s sounding desperate that they’re dragging Harrison out of retirement to spout this drivel.”Thus shredding this piece makes for one-stop shopping on this topic.
Read more...Greece’s Great Depression: “Everyone is Going into a Black Hole”
RT interviews University of Athens economics professor Yanis Varoufakis on the latest round of Greek bailout negotiations.
Read more...Ezra Klein Deems Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Elizabeth Warren (Plus Other Serious People) Not Credible
Ezra Klein demonstrated how far he’s has to descend into the Humpty Dumpty world of words meaning just what he chooses them to mean in order to defend failed Administration policies.
Read more...Our Coming Rentcropper Society
We are in the midst of a sea change in terms of the relationship of ordinary Americans to the housing market. Policymakers are not only in denial as to its magnitude, but are actively enabling courses of action that are likely to prove destructive.
Read more...New York Times Publishes Apology for Obama’s Failed Housing Policies
On the one hand, the dismal failure of the Administration’s cosmetic responses to the foreclosure mess is so evident that the New York Times is willing to acknowledge it, via a first page article titled, “Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama.” On the other, what the story offers is a whitewash, not an analysis.
Read more...Occupy Tampa Welcomes the Republican National Convention
Occupy Tampa is preparing for the Republican convention. As I understand it, they will be allowed to use the Voice of Freedom park and are hosting the Food Not Bombs World Gathering starting tomorrow. You can follow them on Twitter at fnbsouthflorida.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: How the ECB is Complicit in a Macro-Financial Debacle
Ponzi growth happens when unsustainable capital flows, wilfully predicated upon funding schemes that Reason knows to be fraudulent, give rise to large spurts of economic activity.
Ponzi austerity, in contrast, is what happens when unsustainable spending cuts, wilfully predicated upon funding schemes that Reason knows to be fraudulent, cause significant drops in economic activity.
It is an incontestable fact that Europe’s Periphery shifted from Ponzi growth to Ponzi austerity some time after the Crash of 2008.
Read more...Paul Ryan – Insider Trading and War on Medicare
Paul Ryan has become a lightening rod for controversy, both for his aggressive plans to cut Medicare and Social Security and for questions surrounding suspicious-looking trades in financial stocks that were September 18, 2008, the same day Congressional leadership was briefed about the crisis by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
The Real News Network interviewed Tom Ferguson to parse out history from hype on both issues.
Read more...Washington Supreme Court Issues MERS Smackdown
While MERS has served to illustrate the utter recklessness of the securitization industry, in that its promoters apparently believed that they could implement it nationwide and simply force state law to comply. But as the banks have found out, the law is not always so obliging.
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