By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus
I can’t emphasize enough how satisfying it is to see Timothy Geithner finally leave government. True, it would have been more enjoyable to see him leave in handcuffs, but I take my satisfaction where I can get it.
Read more...GMO, in a compelling analysis, not only confirms the skeptics’ case but provides reasons why the Chinese growth model faces an end game. While it may not be nigh, it seems to be closer than most people think.
Read more...In the executive summary to this series, we provided an overview of OCC/Federal Reserve foreclosure reviews which were abruptly settled at the beginning of January. Critics anticipated that the flawed design, of having supposedly “independent” review firms hired by the banks themselves, meant the reviews were highly unlikely to find much if any damage to homeowners. Leaks during the course of the reviews confirmed these concerns, revealing that the review process at many of the major servicers was chaotic and the reviews were designed and scored so as to make a finding of harm virtually impossible.
As bad as that sounds, the reality is even worse.
Read more...After extensive debriefing of Bank of America whistleblowers, we found overwhelming evidence that the bank engaged in certain abuses frequently, in some cases pervasively, in its servicing of delinquent mortgages. This is the first in a series of posts discussing our findings and providing support for these charges.
Read more...With the looming debt ceiling pigfight consuming a lot of financial media bandwidth, some important stories are not getting the attention they warrant. One is on the hard fought and finally settled qualified mortgage rules just finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin in a new post describes how the new QM rules are a defacto usury law for the 21st century. Despite his good discussion of the QM and the history of usury laws, however, he peculiarly does not explain why usury laws are a good thing. Perhaps it seems obvious, given the explosion of economically unproductive consumer debt since they’ve effectively been eliminated.
Let me give you the reason why well designed usury laws are desirable, then I’ll turn the mortgage-related issues specifically.
Read more...The Wall Street Journal has an exclusive story based on a whistleblower leak, apparently with supporting transaction records.
Read more...Never underestimate the greed of a billionaire. But I have to say separately that I will thoroughly enjoy the pigfight between former AIG chief Hank Greenberg’s C.V. Starr (now the biggest shareholder in AIG) versus the Federal government over the rescue of AIG. Any cost and embarrassment that the Administration suffers will be the direct result of the Bush-Obama policies of being concerned only about saving financial players rather than meting out any punishments, and for being incompetent negotiators.
Read more...It’s bad enough to see long suffering homeowners take it once again in the chin, thanks to the way the bank regulators prostrate themselves before their supposed charges. It adds insult to injury to see this type of ritualized sellout yet again presented as a boon for consumers.
The latest case study is the $8.5 billion foreclosure fraud settlement announced today.
Read more...Police are (still) poised to press charges against several HBOS bankers and consultants after a two-year investigation into large-scale fraud, money laundering and corruption involving the Edinburgh-based bank.
Read more...After too many years to count of regulatory failure and limp-wristed reforms, it’s hard to be surprised. Nevertheless, I hope to convince you that a yet another mortgage settlement, leaked on New Year’s Eve when hopefully no one would notice, achieves the difficult task of reaching a new level of dereliction of duty.
Read more...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. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.”
The financial sector promises that privatizing roads and ports, water and sewer systems, bus and railroad lines (on credit, of course) is more efficient and will lower the prices charged for their services. The reality is that the new buyers put up rent-extracting tollbooths on the infrastructure being sold. Their break-even costs include the high salaries and bonuses they pay themselves, as well as interest and dividends to their creditors and backers, spending on stock buy-backs and political lobbying.
Public borrowing creates a dependency that shifts economic planning to Wall Street and other financial centers. When voters resist, it is time to replace democracy with oligarchy.
Read more...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. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.”
Today’s economic warfare is not the kind waged a century ago between labor and its industrial employers. Finance has moved to capture the economy at large, industry and mining, public infrastructure (via privatization) and now even the educational system. (At over $1 trillion, U.S. student loan debt came to exceed credit-card debt in 2012.) The weapon in this financial warfare is no larger military force. The tactic is to load economies (governments, companies and families) with debt, siphon off their income as debt service and then foreclose when debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting government gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public infrastructure and other property in the public domain. Indebting companies enables creditors to seize employee pension savings.
Read more...The Obama Administration is planning to launch yet another mortgage refi program, this one targeting subprime borrowers who are current on their loans but underwater, extending the government support of the mortgage market to yet another borrower group.
Read more...After the media uproar about HSBC’s deep involvement in the dirtiest sort of money-laundering, UBS’s mere Libor-fixing might look a tad pale. But the notice by the FSA clearly states that it regarded UBS’s conduct as far worse than that of Barclays, where the chairman, CEO, and president all stepped down.
Read more...I’ve read the Department of Labor complaint of former Deutsche Bank employee Eric Ben-Artzi that, among other things, alleges that the German bank violated SEC, GAAP and IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) requirements and probably also Sarbanes Oxley, and have had follow up conversations with him and his counsel. The charges are specific and sufficiently well supported to merit serious investigation. In their efforts to dismiss his charges, defenders of the bank’s position overlook the public reporting requirements for complex financial transactions like the one in question, a leveraged super senior (LSS) trade. Nor does their Panglossian “everything worked out for the best” argument stand up to scrutiny.
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