Category Archives: Credit markets

Lehman, Resolution Regime Failure, and Credentialism as a Mask for Weak Arguments

It’s telling in extended blogosphere debates when one side starts resorting to cherry picking, distortions, ad hominem attacks, and projection as its main lines of attack. In his last offering on the FDIC’s paper which uses Lehman to show how it would use its new Dodd Frank resolution authority, Economics of Contempt proves only one thing: that he’s not interested in open or fair-minded discussion (see here to see what that might look like) and that he wants to put a stop to it.

So, mindful of the possibility that I might simply be feeding a modestly upmarket troll, it seems that all I can do now is illustrate how he has misrepresented my arguments; for instance, by absurdly suggesting that I missed the fact that the FDIC would be on site, in its Lehman counterfactual, when I raised a completely different issue, that their presence would become too large and too intrusive to keep secret (EoC seems blissfully unaware of the fact the word was all over the markets when the FDIC went in to kick the tires of Citi’s portfolio of loans to see-through buildings in the early 1990s).

Bank Tout Dick Bove Proves His Ignorance in Defending of His Meal Tickets

Is Dick Bove’s put-foot-in-mouth-and-chew exercise yesterday proof of the eagerness of the banking industry to push back against any and all interference in their ability to milk the public, or merely that Bove is a great negative indicator (one of his most famous calls was to buy Citi in early March 2008. You’d have lost more than 3/4 of your money if you’d followed his advice.)

News that New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the mortgage activities of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America sent Bove into a tizzy

New York AG Schneiderman Investigating Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Mortgage Operations

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has announced that he is investigating Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America on their mortgage securitization activities. His office made a broad document request in recent weeks and has also asked to meet with these banks.

It is not yet clear what the focus of the probe is, but since Goldman and Morgan Stanley were not lenders, it could relate to their mortgage originations, their servicing operations (Litton for Goldman Saxon for Morgan Stanley) or their role as CDO issuers. With Bank of America, the investigation could cover additional ground.

Note that this announcement effectively blows up the 50 state attorney general settlement talks.

HUD Audits Show Five Biggest Servicers Defrauded Taxpayers

This revelation, that HUD audits of the biggest servicers over a mere two-month period, showed extensive fraud, is proof that abuses were extensive. It also establishes that the effort by Tom Miller to settle the 50 state attorneys general investigation quickly and and the recent “see no evil” Federal consent orders are a cover up. The fact that HUD found extensive misconduct over a similar time frame as the Foreclosure Task Force, which Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr described as a ““11-agency, 8-week review of servicer practices, with hundreds of investigators crawling all over the banks” proves that the latter to be pure regulatory theater. And as we’ve noted, the Tom Miller-led effort has done no investigations, guaranteeing that the negotiators would have no bargaining power.

From Shahien Nasiripour at Huffington Post:

Doug Smith: Shock Therapy For Economics, Part 1

By Douglas K. Smith, author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me

In “Economics In Crisis”, professor Brad DeLong notes:

The most interesting moment at a recent conference held in Bretton Woods … came when Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf (asked) Larry Summers, “[Doesn’t] what has happened in the past few years simply suggest that [academic] economists did not understand what was going on?”

DeLong agreed with Summers’ response: “the problem is that there is so much that is “distracting, confusing, and problem-denying in…the first year course in most PhD programs.” As a result, even though “economics knows a fair amount,” it “has forgotten a fair amount that is relevant, and it has been distracted by an enormous amount.” DeLong then goes on to call for serious change in what economics departments do and teach.

In Part 2 of this post, I’m going to address the realities of ‘serious change’; and, in that context, what is troubling for INET about Summers’ presence at the recent Bretton Woods gathering. I’ll do this from my experience in leading and guiding real change as well as by contrasting INET with another, smaller, and more nascent effort called Econ4.

For now, though, let’s put aside the serious lack of self-respect in paying any attention at all to a world historical failure like Summers (Why is this arrogant sophist even on anyone’s C list, let alone A list? Why isn’t Summers wearing sack cloth and rolling in ashes?). Instead, let’s respond to DeLong’s ‘fessing up to the crisis in economics:

New Homeowner Scam: Mortgage Securitization Audits

Con artists who prey on people who are already in financial hot water deserve their own circle of hell. The latest sighting comes via April Charney: “mortgage securitization audits” which charge thousands of dollars for dumping public information into binders. From Brian Canupp’s website:

The New York Fed Working to Bend Real Estate Law to Suit Needs of Banks

I suppose the fact that the New York Fed hosted a meeting last week with a group of solons is a sign that it is finally taking mortgage documentation and resulting foreclosure issues seriously. But the Fed’s spin diverges from the reading I got from attorneys who have a vantage on the process. Per Housing Wire:

But the New York Fed said solutions are on the way. The Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute, which facilitated the recent meetings, seek to clarify and update federal and state laws governing the securitization process.

I suppose the fact that the New York Fed hosted a meeting last week with some solons is a sign that it is finally taking mortgage documentation and resulting foreclosure issues seriously. But the Fed’s spin is diverges from the reading I got from attorneys who have a vantage on the process. Per Housing Wire:

But the New York Fed said solutions are on the way. The Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute, which facilitated the recent meetings, seek to clarify and update federal and state laws governing the securitization process.

I’m bothered by the dishonest presentation, which a close reading of the related NY Fed document confirms. Let’s start with its opening paragraph:

US Trustee Estimates Servicing “Errors” at 10x Level Claimed by Banks (and Parroted by Federal Regulators)

Gretchen Morgenson has an important piece tonight which describes how US Trustee Program, which is the arm of the Department of Justice which oversees bankruptcy courts, has found ongoing servicing abuses in bankruptcy courts which are an order of magnitude worse than claimed by mortgage servicers and their mouthpieces among the Federal banking regulators. And it’s funny how a real prosecutor has managed to find significant problems in a mere six months, when the 50 state attorneys general effort, which has undertaken no investigation, is rushing to get a deal done. If the leader of that effort, Tom Miller of Iowa, instead had gotten to work when the effort was formed last October rather than having tea and cookies with the Treasury Department, they might have something to show by now.

Feds Reviewed Only 100 Foreclosure Files in Servicer Whitewash

Not only are the authorities engaged in a coverup of servicer abuses, they aren’t even bothering to pretend that the effort is serious. A post on Housing Wire offers some choice tidbits:

Mortgage Whistleblowers Say Servicers Foreclosed Rather Than Modify, HAMP Program Designed to Help Banks, Not Borrowers

A report at the Dylan Ratigan show confirms what we’ve argued for some time is happening: that banks are not making mods to viable borrowers because servicing is more profitable. In addition, an insider on the HAMP program says that the pressure to make trial mods to make the program look good wound up hurting […]

FDIC’s Bair Says Millions of Mortgages May Be “Infected,” Criticizes Consent Orders

We’ve said repeatedly that findings of the multi-agency Foreclosure Task Force review late last fall, which looked at 2,800 mortgages from 14 servicers, was a worse than stress test type review, with a deliberately narrow focus designed to find very little wrong.

One of its remarkable findings was that that banks were on solid grounds in foreclosing, both in the borrower owing the money (which would inevitably be the finding given the failure to investigate servicer-driven foreclosures) and that banks were able to find the borrowers’ notes, which was taken to be tantamount to them having the legal authority to foreclose. Anyone who has been following this issue here or on specialist legal blogs knows that mere possession of the note is often a not sufficient threshold for successful action if the foreclosure is challenged.

In a gratifying show of candor and independence (or perhaps because she recognizes that the facts on the grounds make the Administration/banking industry party line untenable) Bair took exception to the “nothing to see here” stance of the officialdom and took exception to the findings of the Foreclosure Task Force in Congressional testimony earlier today.

Banks are not Reserve Constrained

In a fiat money system, there is not a very good correlation between base money and M1 and credit because reserves don’t create loans. In practice, the lending operations of commercial banks have no interaction with reserve operations. Lenders simply take applications from customers who seek loans and assess creditworthiness and lend accordingly. In approving […]

On Dubious Defenses of the FDIC’s Lehman Resolution Plan

EoC has written a rejoinder to our post on FDIC’s paper on how it would have wound up Lehman with its new Dodd Frank powers. Since it’s a mix of smears and broken-backed arguments, it is nowhere near the standards he can attain when he is behaving himself. But as a tell about the officialdom’s propaganda preoccupations and methods, it isn’t entirely devoid of interest.

Before turning to the meat of his post, such as it is, I wanted to point out the biggest slur in the piece: his repeated assertion that Satyajit Das and I did not read the FDIC paper in full. That’s false, and brazenly so: somehow the fact that Das and I can crank out an analysis, quickly, gets twisted into anchoring a more general effort to discredit this site. Regular readers, including EoC, have no doubt seen other occasions where we’ve produced detailed and on target assessments before most of our peers. And Das is in Australia, giving him the ability to respond to evening releases in the US during his business day (in this case, one with specific page references).

EoC’s entire post fails when you look at its and the FDIC’s three central, obtuse misconstructions:

Quelle Surprise! 50 State Attorneys General Settlement Talks Beating a Retreat

As readers know, we’ve been very critical of the 50 state attorneys general mortgage “settlement” talks. The reason has been very simple. The leader of the negotiations, Tom Miller of Iowa, early on cast his lot with the Administration’s banking regulators, who are at best cognitively captured and at worst corrupt, rather than siding with the rule of law or the interests of the nation’s citizens. He took their lead and pushed for a quick resolution, when any “settlement” by definition depends on the prosecutors having a real case with decent odds of serious damages as a cudgel to bring the perps to the table and extract real concessions from them.

In the absence of doing investigations to develop a case, all the banks have to “settle” is robosigning abuses, which since they are sorta cleaning those up anyhow, does not add up to any kind of threat. Thus all the banks have to do is the obvious: call Miller’s bluff.

Seeking Reader Questions on Fixing Mortgage Securitization for the House Financial Services Committee Hearings

I participate in various e-mail threads where people chat among themselves (my hedgie bunch can be wickedly funny on slow market days) and one of the groups is focused on the mortgage mess.

I thought readers might be able to help with a query from one of the participants:

On May 23 the House Financial Services Committee will be having a briefing session on Securitization and risk retention proposals under Dodd-Frank. The following parties will be presenting and available for questions:

· David Moffitt, Global Head of Structured Solutions and Securitization, Morgan Stanley
· Tom Deutsch, Executive Director, American Securitization Forum
· Evan Siegert, Managing Director, Senior Counsel, American Securitization Forum
· Jim Johnson, Managing Director, Public Policy, American Securitization Forum

He is skeptical of the Dodd Frank risk retention rules and asked:

Does anybody who thinks differently have any questions regarding risk retention that should be asked of a person listed above? How about questions for any of these participants regarding securitization generally?

I find it impressive that the American Securitization Forum, which to date has been consistently in the wrong on foreclosure fraud and chain of title issues, is still treated with such deference, particularly since the sell side of the securitization industry, which is what the ASF represents (despite its pious claims otherwise) has fought meaningful securitization reform tooth and nail, with the result that the industry is almost entirely on government life support. Therefore I hope readers can come up with some suitable questions.