Boy, you have to love the way beleaguered companies strain to create the impression that unfavorable revelations are “mischaracterizations.” And Lender Processing Services certainly has its back to the wall. Its stock traded down 5% on Friday and another 8% today before it halted just prior to the close of trading on Monday. (for more […]
Read more...Barack Obama is purported to have studied the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan presidencies in depth before he took office, yet he appears to have ignored one of Lincoln’s best known sayings: “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you […]
Read more...More revelations from one of the epicenters of the housing implosion. 4ClosureFraud has published an eyepoppingly long list of affidavits of lost summons in foreclosure cases. This is a teeny extract from their sample, so readers can see what their roster looks like: I spoke to the individuals who compiled this sample; the roster on […]
Read more...A bombshell has dropped in mortgage land. We’ve said for some time that document fabrication is widespread in foreclosures. The reason is that the note, which is the borrower IOU, is the critical instrument to establishing the right to foreclose in 45 states (in those states, the mortgage, which is the lien on the property, […]
Read more...Australia has less income disparity than the US (not that that is saying much, the US is the most extreme among advanced economies) by virtue of having relatively high minimum wages and cultural opposition to big pay packages. Australians are pretty egalitarian; for instance, they are skeptical that large paychecks are fairly earned (ie. they […]
Read more...This post first appeared on February 22, 2008 Man, not only does the Administration tell whoppers, but it is completely shameless about them. The latest sighting comes from Reuters: Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel told the Reuters Housing Summit it is proper for homeownership to hold a special status…. “If I default on my credit card […]
Read more...More bad news for banks and servicers on the foreclosure improprieties front. The latest report, that Bank of America is stopping foreclosures in 23 states, confirms the suspicion that problems with foreclosure procedures for residential home loans in securitizations are widespread. From the AP via Washington Post: Bank of America says it is delaying foreclosures […]
Read more...This story on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s inquiry into possible mortgage servicer improprieties was released last night by the Washington Post; oddly Bloomberg had not picked it up when I trolled it, apologies for not catching it sooner. Note that this development supports our contention that servicing problems are widespread. Note […]
Read more...Only been a few Congressmen have weighed in on the mortgage documentation mess so far, since wrapping up the current Congressional session and campaigning consumes a lot of bandwidth. Nevertheless, I am getting reports from DC that people on the Hill are starting to take the issue of foreclosure document fabrication, errors, and improprieties seriously. […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Detox Cures In the first half of 2010, angst about European sovereign debt receded and market volatility eased. In the second half of 2010, concerns about Greece, […]
Read more...Boy, if Fitch thinks servicer problems are limited to affidavits, it is gonna learn a lot more in the coming weeks and months. This report comes via BusinessWeek: Fitch Ratings said Wednesday it’s asking mortgage servicers about their foreclosure practices in the wake of GMAC Mortgage LLC’s recent disclosure of procedural errors. The agency believes […]
Read more...See this video ofthe deposition of GMAC’s famed robo signer, Jeffrey Stephan, who estimates that he signs 10,000 documents a month. If nothing else, you need to watch from 5:00 to the end of the first segment. Hat tip reader Barbara W, from 4closureFraud.org. I wish the sound quality were better; you can also read […]
Read more...More shoes are dropping on the foreclosure improprieties front. Let’s not forget the throughline: the parties in the securitization pipeline were so keen to rip out fees and maximize profits that they allotted too little in the way of expense dollars to executing tasks required both by statue and contractual agreements. The result was that […]
Read more...For those of you old enough to remember the Vietnam War, one of its aspects was an effort at what would now be called spin management. When Richard Nixon, who had promised in his 1968 Presidential campaign to exit the conflict but instead escalated it (the movie Patton had a bad effect on his decision […]
Read more...As Satyajit Das remarked, our post global financial crisis malaise has some troubling elements in common with Japan’s post bubble era. One biggie is denial of the seriousness of the hangover, which per Das lasted for five years in Japan. The bizarre aspect of the crisis response in the US was the speed and recklessness […]
Read more...