Category Archives: Banking industry

“Lifting the Veil”

Mark Ames referred me to the documentary “Lifting the Veil.” I’m only about 40 minutes into it and am confident it will appeal to NC readers, provided you can keep gagging in the sections that contain truly offensive archival footage (in particular, numerous clips of Obama campaign promises).

Ames’ mini-review:

It begins with John Stauber, one of the great anti-PR writers, and historian Sharon Smith laying out the flat rancid truth: That the Democratic Party of today is the Big Co-apter. The Republicans have always been the party of corporate interests; and the Democrats portray themselves as agents of social change and progressive/populist opposition to corporate power, but the Democratic Party’s job is to co-apt these anti-corporate movements and subvert them to the same (or a different faction of) corporate interests.

To complete our two-corporate-party farce, we have an alleged third choice, a so-called opposition “Third Party,” the largest “neither left nor right”/”neither Democrat nor Republican” third party for the past three decades. And that party is…ta-dum!…Libertarianism. Which was nothing but a corporate PR project designed to co-apt the whole realm of Third Party opposition and subvert it to the most radical corporate agenda of all. In other words, even our Third Party/outside-the-system party is nothing but the most purified, most extreme pro-corporate party of all!

At this point you have to assume that the oligarchy is just laughing at us. “Hey, here’s an idea–let’s make the opposition to our fake-two-party system nothing but our corporate wish-list we send to Santa every year, and package that as the radical opposition.” “No way Mr Koch, there’s no way they’ll buy it–everyone today who’s against the two-party system is on the radical Left.” “Just give me a couple of decades, and a few billion dollars, you’ll see…” CUT TO TODAY: “Holy shit, you were right, Chuck! Ah-hah-hah-hah! The suckers have nowhere to go but right into our mouths–doors one, two and three our ours! Mwah-hah-hah!”

As black activist Leonard Pinkney says, “The Democrats are the foxes, and the Republicans are the wolves–and they both want to devour you.” So what does that make Libertarians? Avian flu viruses?

Quelle Surprise! Banks are Concerned About Mortgage Slowdown

An old Yankee saying: “Fool me once, shame on thee. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

It seems not to have occurred to the banking industry that relying people to be fools on an ongoing, large scale basis is not a viable business model. Investors have come to realize a bit late in the game that private label securitizations were structured so as to be far too favorable to the originators and servicers: too little disclosure, too many abuses, too little accountability, combined with impediments to seeking redress in court. Borrowers feel every bit as stung between deteriorating housing markets, foreclosure malfeasance, and doubts over chain of title.

It isn’t simply that banks have been slow to ‘fess up and clean up; instead, they’ve kicked and screamed at every possible reform measure, from pro investor reforms such as a very good FDIC proposal that got watered down to nothingness and a weak 5% risk retention rule (which Dean Baker estimates will add all of 0.13% to the yield on a mortgage) to pretty much anything that would help borrowers. And that’s before we get to widespread evidence of incompetence (continuing stories of foreclosing on people who don’t have mortgages is the tip of the iceberg) and fraud.

It’s yet another sign of Banker Derangement Sydrome that the industry can think anyone outside of cash buyers in markets that have arguably bottomed would be keen about buying a house. But this American Banker reports reveals how they appear unable to recognize their role in creating this mess. They seem simply puzzled and a tad depressed that super low interest rates are producing only refis as opposed to home sales:

Michael Hudson: Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy?

Yves here. This is a long and important post. Hudson reports that he has gotten a great deal of correspondence from Greece saying that articles like this arguing against the pending stripping of Greece by banks are being translated and circulated widely to provide moral support. If you cannot read this piece in full, please be sure to read the discussion at the end of how Iceland stared down its foreign creditors.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from CounterPunch.

Promoting the financial sector at the economy’s expense

When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. The hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that the stumbling point was tax policy. Greece was excluded from the eurozone the previous year as a result of failing to meet the 1992 Maastricht criteria for EU membership, limiting budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, and government debt to 60 percent.

The euro also had other serious fiscal and monetary problems at the outset. There is little thought of wealthier EU economies helping bring less productive ones up to par, e.g. as the United States does with its depressed areas (as in the rescue of the auto industry in 2010) or when the federal government does declares a state of emergency for floods, tornados or other disruptions. As with the United States and indeed nearly all countries, EU “aid” is largely self-serving – a combination of export promotion and bailouts for debtor economies to pay banks in Europe’s main creditor nations: Germany, France and the Netherlands. The EU charter banned the European Central Bank (ECB) from financing government deficits, and prevents (indeed, “saves”) members from having to pay for the “fiscal irresponsibility” of countries running budget deficits. This “hard” tax policy was the price that lower-income countries had to sign onto when they joined the European Union…..

At issue is whether Europe should succumb to centralized planning – on the right wing of the political spectrum, under the banner of “free markets” defined as economies free from public price regulation and oversight, free from consumer protection, and free from taxes on the rich.

The crisis for Greece – as for Iceland, Ireland and debt-plagued economies capped by the United States – is occurring as bank lobbyists demand that “taxpayers” pay for the bailouts of bad speculations and government debts stemming largely from tax cuts for the rich and for real estate, shifting the fiscal burden as well as the debt burden onto labor and industry.

“Debtors’ Prison”: Bob Kuttner on the Costs of Rentier Rule

Bob Kuttner has an elegant and important article at American Prospect, “Debtors’ Prison“. It’s an evocative, historical form of the argument made here and elsewhere: that advanced economies have gone down a disastrously bad path in not writing down debt that can’t realistically be paid.

The usual poster child for “why not writing down debts is a bad idea” is Japan, but that isn’t gripping enough to evoke the right responses. Even though its post-bubble growth has been dreadful, Japan is still a well-run, tidy country with a low crime rate, universal health care, long life expectancy, and tolerable unemployment. That in turn is due to factors that do not obtain much of anywhere else: Japan was very cohesive to begin with, and its elites chose to have their incomes fall relative to everyone else to save jobs. Wage compression at large companies has increased dramatically. This is the polar opposite of what has happened in the rest of the world, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened.

Kuttner provides another set of examples as to why we need to get the creditor boot off all our necks:

Larry Platt, Prominent Securitization Lawyer, Made False Statements About BofA Mortgage Transfers

I wanted to follow up on an important article by Abigail Field, in which she did some serious spade work on the mortgage securitizations. Among other things, its shows prominent securitization attorney Larry Platt, who accused judges who interfered with the imperial rights of banks to foreclose of engaging in an “assault on the legal system,” to be a liar. Funny how that type is eager to try to say everyone else is engaged in bad conduct.

Florida Homeowner Forecloses on Bank of America Branch

I suspect readers will get quite a bit of pleasure from this news story.

Bank of America tried to foreclose upon the home of a Florida couple who had paid cash for their house and therefore did not have a mortgage. The wronged pair not only got the suit dismissed, but the judge awarded them legal fees. After five months of Bank of America ignoring letters and calls to the bank about their failure to pay up, their lawyer foreclosed a BofA branch.

See the CBS video for more details:

Philip Pilkington: Debt, public or private?: The necessity of debt for economic growth

By Philip Pilkington. Journalist, writer, economic anti-moralist and aficionado of political theatre

‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? – Falstaff, ‘Henry VII’

The Anxieties of Government and Debt

Apart from debt, there is perhaps one other economic phenomenon that generates exceptionally large amounts of emotive nonsense both on the internet and in real life – and that is government. So it’s quite unsurprising that when government debt is the discussion of the day, passions flare, accusations are hurled and the coming apocalypse is invoked.

It would be interesting to undertake a psychological study of modern man’s aversion to government and to debt. If I were to guess I would say that many people tend to associate government with authority and debt with obligation. Authority and obligation – surely in our era of selfish hedonism no other potential restraints are so terrifying to so many. These phenomena intrude rudely on one of our most cherished contemporary ideological myths: individualism. More specifically, that outlandish individualism conjured up by marketing men to flog their wares and crystallised in novels and narratives written by lonely and isolated individuals like Ayn Rand. It is, of course, a fantasy individualism; one that few truly adhere to in their day-to-day lives – but it is, like the religions of days gone by, an important determinate in the messages people choose to accept and those they choose to reject.

To put the questions of individualism and of liberty aside though, from an economic point-of-view debt is inevitable.

Fortune Confirms Pervasive Defects in Bank of America Mortgage Documents

Do you remember the brouhaha over testimony by a senior executive in Countrywide’s mortgage servicing unit last year? It called into question whether mortgages had been conveyed properly to securitizations, which in turn would impair Bank of America’s ability to foreclose.

Let me refresh your memory. As we wrote last year:

Testimony in a New Jersey bankruptcy court case provides proof of the scenario we’ve depicted on this blog since September, namely, that subprime originators, starting sometime in the 2004-2005 timeframe, if not earlier, stopped conveying note (the borrower IOU) to mortgage securitization trust as stipulated in the pooling and servicing agreement….

As we indicated back in September, it appeared that Countrywide, and likely many other subprime orignators quit conveying the notes to the securitization trusts sometime in the 2004-2005 time frame. Yet bizarrely, they did not change the pooling and servicing agreements to reflect what appears to be a change in industry practice. Our evidence of this change was strictly anecdotal; this bankruptcy court filing, posted at StopForeclosureFraud provides the first bit of concrete proof. The key section:

As to the location of the note, Ms. DeMartini testified that to her knowledge, the original note never left the possession of Countrywide, and that the original note appears to have been transferred to Countrywide’s foreclosure unit, as evidenced by internal FedEx tracking numbers. She also confirmed that the new allonge had not been attached or otherwise affIXed to the note. She testified further that it was customary for Countrywide to maintain possession of
the original note and related loan documents.

Countrywide tried, in a thoroughly unconvincing manner, to retreat from the damaging testimony.

Abigail Field, an attorney who has regularly written on the mortgage mess at Daily Finance, published an article at Fortune that looks into whether DeMartini was simply being truthful and the notes were not conveyed correctly, which would mean Bank of America has a very big mess on its hands. Her conclusions are damning:

Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name

Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts back in December. While it seems counter-intuitive that a left-leaning organization would support illiberal extensions of corporate power, in fact, that is the role of the DC pet liberal. This dynamic of rent-a-reputation is greased with corporate cash and/or political access. As the entitlement fight comes to a head, it’s worth looking under the hood of the DC think tank scene to see how the Obama administration and the GOP are working to lock down their cuts to social programs.

And so it is that the arch-enemy of Social Security, Pete Peterson, rented out the good name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the reputation of the Center for American Progress, and EPI. All three groups submitted budget proposals to close the deficit and had their teams share the stage with Republican con artist du jour Paul Ryan. The goal of Peterson’s conference was to legitimize the fiscal crisis narrative, and to make sure that “all sides” were represented.

Now this tidy fact is not obvious if you check the Peterson Foundation publicity for its “Fiscal Summit:”

Michael Hudson: Replacing Economic Democracy with Financial Oligarchy

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from CounterPunch.

Soon after the Socialist Party won Greece’s national elections in autumn 2009, it became apparent that the government’s finances were in a shambles. In May 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead in rounding up €120bn ($180 billion) from European governments to subsidize Greece’s unprogressive tax system that had led its government into debt – which Wall Street banks had helped conceal with Enron-style accounting.

The tax system operated as a siphon collecting revenue to pay the German and French banks that were buying government bonds (at rising interest risk premiums). The bankers are now moving to make this role formal, an official condition for rolling over Greek bonds as they come due, and extend maturities on the short-term financial string that Greece is now operating under. Existing bondholders are to reap a windfall if this plan succeeds. Moody’s lowered Greece’s credit rating to junk status on June 1 (to Caa1, down from B1, which was already pretty low), estimating a 50/50 likelihood of default. The downgrade serves to tighten the screws yet further on the Greek government. Regardless of what European officials do, Moody’s noted, “The increased likelihood that Greece’s supporters (the IMF, ECB and the EU Commission, together known as the “Troika”) will, at some point in the future, require the participation of private creditors in a debt restructuring as a precondition for funding support.”

The conditionality for the new “reformed” loan package is that Greece must initiate a class war by raising its taxes, lowering its social spending – and even private-sector pensions – and sell off public land, tourist sites, islands, ports, water and sewer facilities. This will raise the cost of living and doing business, eroding the nation’s already limited export competitiveness. The bankers sanctimoniously depict this as a “rescue” of Greek finances.

Goldman Subpoenaed Over Levin Committee Hearing Findings

On the one hand, this is just a subpoena of Goldman from the Manhattan DA’s office, but on the other, after all the crisis investigations, we finally have a prosecutor somewhere deciding to take some abuses during the crisis seriously enough to see if they add up to a legal case. (Yes, the SEC did file a suit against Goldman on one synthetic CDO, one transaction out of 25 in its Abacus program, which Goldman settled for $550 million, but this was litigation on one deal, not on broader patterns of misconduct).

And it came not out of the splashy but designed not to accomplish much FCIC, but the quieter and more tenacious Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I hardly ever do media briefings, but I was on the blogger call for both reports, and the contrast was night and day. The FCIC briefing was softball PR, with Phil Angelides and Brooksley Born (who by definition had not done the work and therefore were not big on detail) leading the call. The Senate call was led by staffers who demonstrated impressive command of the products and industry economics and transmitted information at a very high bit rate.

Not surprisingly, the information request comes from a local prosecutor. The DoJ continues to be missing in action.

Banker Derangement Syndrome I: Lawyers Offer to Get Rid of Their Profession to Save the TARP Banks

We’ve decided to publicize the rapid rise of a dangerous ailment, Banker Derangement Syndrome, which has become so widespread that the media is publicizing examples on virtually a daily basis.

Banker Derangement Syndrome occurs when someone who might once have been sensible is acting as a mindless mouthpiecs of particularly rancid banking industry propaganda. Note that financial services industry employees by definition do not qualify; they are simply engaging in the time-honored industry practice known as “talking your book” when they say something that is patently ridiculous and self serving. No, Banker Derangement Syndrome occurs when an independent party say something so blatantly and embarrassingly wrong in support of the banking industry, whether to curry favor or via having taken an overdose of its Kool Aid, so as to do severe damage to their credibility. In other words, if the questionable behavior could be explained as an over-zealous effort to win points with our new financial overlords, it backfired big time.

Banker Derangement Syndrome II: William Cohan Can Give No Reason for Not Appointing Warren, Except Some People Don’t Like Her

As we indicated, this is the second post in a series on Banker Derangement Syndrome, in which people who might once have been sensible are acting as mindless mouthpieces of particularly rancid banking industry propaganda. We suspect it has to do with being too long in close proximity of zombie banks; they probably need to suck grey matter out of the living to keep functioning.

William Cohan wrote a particularly wretched piece for Bloomberg on why Elizabeth Warren should do everyone a favor and put herself on the next train out of DC. There is a decent case to be made against having Warren head the CFPB, but that’s not what Cohan provided. He instead made a weak argument (if you can even call it that) and got screechy to cover for it.

Affordable Housing Groups Once Again Acting As Human Shields For Banksters

I’m not going to quote George Santayana tonight, as much as his famous saying verging on cliche fits. But will some people never learn?

Another useful cliche is that politics makes for odd bedfellows. But that notion is misapplied in a New York Times article tonight, which tries to convince readers that affordable housing advocates and mortgage financiers playing on the same team is a new development. Huh? Per the Times:

The weight of the mortgage crisis fell heavily on lower-income and minority communities…..That left consumer advocates and civil rights groups frequently at odds with bankers, mortgage lenders and their lobbyists during the debate over the financial regulation act last year, which aims to rein in the subprime mortgage excesses that inflated the housing bubble.

Now, as banking regulators are rewriting the rules for the mortgage market, unusual alliances have sprung up in opposition to tighter lending standards. Advocacy groups like the N.A.A.C.P. and the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization, on the one hand, and the American Bankers Association on the other, are joining together to fight rules they say could make home loans less affordable for minority and working-class Americans…

Will China’s bad debt problem affect employment?

The major talking point this morning has been the Chinese bad debt cleanup. Following Yves’ post on China, this post is the second of three on China from Credit Writedowns this morning. Read Michael Pettis’ take and my take on that action here. This post is going to be more about where China and the […]