Category Archives: Banking industry

Call Your Attorney General Tomorrow, February 3, to Call For Tough Penalties for Foreclosure Fraud

A number of national consumer groups are organizing calls to state attorney generals to stiffen their collective spines. As you may recall, the 50 state attorney general investigation into mortgage and foreclosure abuses started with the usual fanfare and promises of tough action and has been trying to beat a quiet retreat since them.

The AG leading the probe, Tom Miller of Iowa, made a public promise in December to put bank
executives in jail for the crimes they’ve committed against the American people. Last week, he backtracked almost completely, and is now claiming the matter is inherently civil, not criminal. The laws certainly haven’t changed since last year, only the party line has.

Florida Bar Says Attorneys Must Report Foreclosure Fraud to Judges

Florida, which has been Ground Zero of the foreclosure crisis as well as a hotbed of judicial abuses, ranging from the biggest and most active foreclosure mills to kangaroo courts known as “rocket dockets”, has taken a surprising step in the right direction. The state bar association has told foreclosure lawyers in no uncertain terms that they have a duty to report fraud to the court, and that supersedes their responsibilities to clients. And even more surprising, the duty is retroactive: lawyers are supposed to inform judges even if the home has already been sold!

This move will have the very salutary effect, if the new order were actually followed, of having judges know the extent of servicer abuses. And the side effect would be even greater skepticism on the behalf of judges (well at least those judges not bought and paid for by the banking industry). Even if lawyers complied in only, say, one-quarter of the abuses, the effect on servicer credibility, which has already taken a big hit, would be considerable.

How Servicer Junk Fees Push Borrowers into Foreclosure

A story at Huffington Post by Shahien Narisipour and Arthur Delaney, about how a couple lost their home as a result of the Administration’s HAMP program, actually serves to illustrate a broader issue, namely, how servicers’ dubious fees can put mortgage borrowers hopelessly under water.

It is critical to understand that it is not uncommon for borrowers to lose their homes thanks to servicer errors and abuses. And this bad practice has policy implications. Whenever we discuss “fix the housing mess” solutions that involve loss sharing, like giving viable borrowers a deep principal mod, some readers react that “deadbeat borrowers” are getting a free ride, and often will contend that they were irresponsible and need to take their medicine.

This black/white picture is simplistic and misleading.

A Whole Bunch of Prominent Economists Backs the Use of Capital Controls

A letter signed by over 250 economists opposing restrictions on capital controls is more of a shot across the bow than it might appear to be. The letter with signatories appears here, and it includes highly respected trade and development economists like Ricardo Hausmann, Dani Rodrik, Joe Stiglitz, and Arvind Subramanian; we are reproducing the text below:

FCIC Report Misses Central Issue: Why Was There Demand for Bad Mortgage Loans?

By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith

In common with other accounts of the financial crisis, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report notes that mortgage underwriting standards were abandoned, allowing many more loans to be made. It blames the regulators for not standing pat while this occurred. However, the report fails to ask, let alone answer, why standards were abandoned.

In our view, blaming the regulators is a weak argument.

A much more sensible explanation can be found by asking: what were the financial incentives for such poorly underwritten loans? Why would “the market” want bad loans?

All the report offers as explanation is that the “machine” drove it or “investors” wanted these loans. This is lazy and fails to illuminate anything, particularly when there are other red flags in the report, such as numerous mortgage market participants pointing to growing problems starting as early as 2003. Signs of recklessness were more visible in 2004 and 2005, to the point were Sabeth Siddique of the Federal Reserve Board, who conducted a survey of mortgage loan quality in late 2005, found the results to be “very alarming”.

So why, with the trouble obvious in the 2005 time frame, did the market create even worse loans in late 2005 through the beginning of the meltdown, in mid 2007, even as demand for better mortgage loans was waning?

More Judges Pushing Back on Dubious Foreclosure Documents

Even though this example involves only three judges in Ohio, don’t underestimate its significance. The fact that judges of their own initiative have started insisting that all attorneys provide certifications of foreclosure-related documents, a standard now in effect in New York state, shows how much their credibility has fallen.

From the Columbus Dispatch (hat tip reader Lisa Epstein):

How Banks Influence People in High Places

This e-mail to Congressional staffers speaks for itself. I am probably being far too nice by omitting the RSVP details. However, I must note the ethics rules for Congress are more lax than those of some private sector companies. I had one client, a Fortune 25 company, that forbade all employees from taking gifts or entertainment of any kind from vendors, down to a cup of coffee. And that’s not as nuts as it sounds. Research by social psychologist Robert Cialdini verifies that a gift as small as a can of soda predisposes the recipient to a sales pitch.

From: The Financial Services Roundtable

What if China’s GDP is Seriously Overstated?

Michael Pettis has released one of his carefully reasoned posts, this one on the dark art of guesstimating what China’s GDP really is, given the notorious unreliability of its official data.

The strength of Pettis’ approach sometimes works to his advantage. He does a great job in breaking down his arguments to clear, easy to understand, step-by-step reasoning. That tends to make his posts pretty long. In this case, that meant that the part I though was most provocative came towards the end, when impatient readers might have figured they had gotten the drift of his gist and moved on.

In this one, he starts with the last GDP release, and in particular, the implications the fact that its alarmingly high investment rate continues to increase at a stunning clip. But he then turns to the rather tiresome debate as to when China’s economy will overtake that of the US, and discusses the possibility that the GDP figures touted now could well be overstated by a considerable degree:

New York Times’ Joe Nocera Blames Crisis on “Mania”, Meaning Victims

I often enjoy Joe Nocera’s take on Wall Street, but like some other well known financial writers, he has become overly close to his subjects. No where is this more evident than in a stunning little aside in an otherwise not bad piece on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commision’s report, which points out that it is long on potentially helpful detail, short on analysis.

Here is the offending section:

But I wonder. Had there been a Dutch Tulip Inquiry Commission nearly four centuries ago, it would no doubt have found tulip salesmen who fraudulently persuaded people to borrow money they could never pay back to buy tulips.

Bank of America Fighting to Reverse Foreclosure Freeze in Nevada

Peculiarly (and I’ll have to admit I’m among the guilty), a state-wide halt of foreclosures by a Bank of America unit in Nevada earlier in the week attracted remarkably little notice. The number of foreclosures in involved is meaningful, over 8000. The reason may seem somewhat technical, and presumably would not apply to other BofA units, namely, that the entity, ReconTrust Co, is operating without a proper business license. But then it gets interesting.

First, we get Bank of America’s position, per the Las Vegas Review Journal(hat tip ForeclosureFraud):

Daniel Pennell: Mortgage Shenanigans in Virginia (The Wall Street – Washington – Richmond Axes)

By Daniel Pennell, a systems expert who has testified before the Virginia House of Representatives on MERS

This week demonstrated how financial special interests have created an obscene and incestuous relationship with the leadership in the state legislature and the Governor’s office in Virginia. This cabal managed to kill off a bill (HB-1506) proposed by Delegate Bob Marshall, a bill designed to protect the integrity of the county property records and preserve the integrity of home owner’s title to their property. Simultaneously they attempted to alter the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) with HB-1718, such that any “record” (the previous version said document) signed or unsigned by a person they claim owed a debt would be good enough for the banks to win a legal judgment against a person. In other words a spreadsheet from a bank would be good enough to take someone’s home or report someone to a credit bureau.

FCIC Insider: “I Can’t Believe They Suborned Brooksley Born”

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its report yesterday and went into PR overdrive. Journalists and the public are still digesting the weighty document, and various tidbits, like the report that Goldman did indeed profit from the AIG rescue, are touted as news when the basic facts were already in the public domain.

What is troubling about the report is the manner in which it hews to conventional wisdom. Its ten major findings are hardly controversial, yet they are still insufficient to explain why the financial system seized up and appeared close to failure. And telling a familiar-sounding story assures that the status quo will remain unchallenged, and serves to validate the inadequate reforms now underway. After all, they are premised on the very same superficial beliefs.

I participated in a blogger conference call with FCIC commissioners Phil Angelides and Brooksley Born. I’m clearly not cut out for public life. It was disconcerting to hear them thumping their talking points.

But the stunning part were Angelides’ and Born’s answers to my questions.

Ian Fraser: Is the House of Lords’ Crisis Inquiry Putting the FCIC to Shame?

Yves here. Although this post deals with a specific aspect of the House of Lords inquiry, note how it focuses on mechanisms that led to bank insolvency, in this case, how dubious accounting produced exaggerated profit reports, and along with it, looting (as in paying out funds to insiders to a degree that put the survival of the firm at risk).

By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance.

The many inquiries into the financial crisis have turned over plenty of stones but have failed to find any smoking guns. But the House of Lords economic affairs committee’s inquiry “Auditors: market concentration and their role” is making strides in identifying and maybe rooting out the accounting shenanigans that lay at the heart of the crisis.

At a recent session of the HoL inquiry, UK-based investors said that IFRS (international financial reporting standards) had encouraged imprudent, reckless and even illegal behavior by UK and Irish banks, enabling them to deceive investors, boost executive bonuses and ultimately destroy their institutions at taxpayers’ expense.