Category Archives: Credit markets

MSM Distancing Itself From Bank Party Line on Foreclosure Crisis

We’ll see next week whether two articles, one in the Wall Street Journal, the other in the New York Times, are a sign of a sea change in the media posture towards the banking industry’s spin efforts, at least as far as the securitization mess is concerned. Let’s face it, the banks have lied so […]

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Foreclosure Crisis Finally Hitting Banks Where it Hurts: Their Stock Prices

I’m surprised it has taken this long for Mr. Market to wake up and smell the coffee. Major bank suspending foreclosures in a whole passel of states, overwhelming evidence of fraud on courts (commemorated in sworn testimony), and increasing evidence that these developments are mere symptoms of much deeper problems had been spun by the […]

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Guest Post: Tim Geithner’s Magical Mystery Tour Of TARP Propaganda Has Little Use For Truth

By Dr. Pitchfork, an iconoclast who writes at Daily Bail. In “5 Myths About TARP,” Tim Geithner joins Steve Rattner and Herb Allison in the parade of Washington insiders who have gone out of their way to tout the great success of TARP, calling it the “most effective government program in recent memory.” If you […]

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Extreme Measures: Currency/Trade Tensions Rising, Will Action Follow?

After the in retrospect not that terrible first acute phase of the financial crisis, August-September 2007, this blog began taking note of Extreme Measures. These were proposals by respectable people for dealing with the burgeoning mess that were usually very creative and had zero chance of happening. The fact that so many normally sound people […]

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Are the Bank Foreclosure “Moratoriums” More PR than Real?

Bank of America announced a foreclosure halt in all 50 states; JP Morgan and GMAC have stopped in 23 judicial foreclosure states. Or have they? Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, and local reports suggest the banks are still moving forward with foreclosures. Note the inconsistencies between the statements of the bank employees versus the […]

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The Wheels Are Coming Off in MBS Land: All 50 State AGs Join Probe; Banks Abandoning MERS Foreclosures

I get on an airplane, and there are more dramatic developments by the time I land. Even though the headline item is the fact that the attorneys general in all 50 states are joining the mortgage fraud investigation, the real indicator that the banks are stressed is that they have started abandoning MERS, the electronic […]

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Banks Looking Further Than Robo Signers; “Lost Note” Affidavits a Point of Failure

As readers no doubt know, we’ve indicated from early on in the foreclosure crisis that problems with foreclosures of mortgages held by securitizations went well beyond the now well known “robo signer” issue. The most difficult to resolve and apparently widespread problem is the failure to convey the note (the borrower IOU) properly to the […]

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Banks “Nothing to See Here” Versus Grim Reality on Foreclosure Front

It’s time to resurrect that 1960s expression, “credibility gap,” since it applies so well to the bank and Administration posture towards the foreclosure mess. The banks continue to insist, despite the unheard specter of foreclosure freezes, that they just need to check some things and tweak some processes and they will be back to normal […]

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Title Insurance Woes Illustrate Liabilities of Foreclosure Mess Concentrated in TBTF Banks

There are so many fronts to the foreclosure crisis that it’s now becoming difficult to stay on top of all of them. One development Monday that didn’t get the attention it deserved is the fact that Bank of America is now eating title insurance liability on foreclosed properties sold by its servicer. Per Bloomberg: Bank […]

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Josh Rosner: “Could Violations of PSA’s Dwarf Lehman Weekend?”

Josh Rosner, a well respected bank analyst (he describes himself as “a recovering GSE analyst”) is circulating a client note and it takes the foreclosure crisis very seriously. The critical part is his discussion of the conveyance chain. As we indicated before, the minimum chain for a recent mortgage securitization is is A (originator) => […]

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Bank Disinformation III: Obama Throws Weight Behind Banks, Housing “Market” Over Borrowers

I should have expected this, Team Obama is so predictably bank friendly that it was inconceivable that the Administration would ever decide against them on anything other than the occasional sop to maintain plausible deniability. But this morning’s news stories reveal the officialdom isn’t even bothering to keep up appearances. First, from Politico writer Ben […]

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Bank Disinformation I: PR Machine in Overdrive on Foreclosure Fraud Front

A DC contact warned me last week that the banks were readying a massive pushback on the foreclosure crisis. It went into full swing over the weekend. Obama, admittedly through his proxy, David Axelrod, threw his weight in behind the banks on Face The Nation: Q: I guess the first question I would have is […]

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