As much as a whole bunch of bank executives and securitization industry types have given Congressional testimony in which they maintained that they were duly concerned about “technical” errors like robo signing and would clean up their act, it appears that follow-through has been less than stellar.
Read more...f you thought that the rating agencies had cleaned up their act in the wake of the crisis, think again. Our Richard Smith reported on a couple of black eyes by Moody’s, one a rather implausible 180 degree turn on its take on the US tax deal, the other a suspiciously flattering take on whether Countrywide had indeed transferred notes (retaining them, as an executive testified they did on a routine basis, would confirm our suspicions about widespread problems in the securitization industry.
Now we have a big blooper by S&P, this one in the form of mass rerating, based on an admitted faulty analysis. That is code for “big error in the model that everyone missed.”
Read more...Shortly after Lender Processing Services became the target of class action lawsuits for alleged illegal legal fee-splititing in early October, an investor commented that he had never seen a company do such a poor job of crisis management. The company halted trading at 3:45 PM for the not legitimate reason that they didn’t like how […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal reports that Bank of America is in discussions with a group of investors headed by Pimco, Blackrock, and the New York Fed that sent a letter roughly 60 days ago that was setting the groundwork for possible litigation. The underlying issue is alleged breaches of representations and warranties in 115 Countrywide […]
Read more...Lordie, the Big Lie is with us in force.
The New York Times reports that the Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are going to pre-empt the report (due in mid-January) and issue their own 13 page screed later today focusing blame for the crisis on…Fannie and Freddie, and no doubt the CRA too.
Let’s look at a few inconvenient facts.
Read more...We asked readers to sign a letter to Iowa attorney general Tom Miller, who is leading the 50 state probe into foreclosure and mortgage abuses. Here is the official report from National People’s Action, which was part of the group that met with Miller earlier today: Leader of 50 State Foreclosure Probe Tells Struggling Homeowners: […]
Read more...When I worked for Goldman, and later McKinsey, professionals at each firm would joke about presentations that passed the weight test. That tag line referred to documents heavy enough to land on a client desk with an impressive “thunk” so as to seem intimidating even before opening them. The implication was that length could and […]
Read more...The Congressional Oversight Panel has issued another typically detailed report, this one focusing on the Administration’s widely criticized mortgage mod program, HAMP. HAMP is so widely recognized as being a failed program that when a group of bloggers met with Treasury officials last August, even Timothy Geithner didn’t try to pretend the program worked very well. The defense offered was that it “succeeded” by flattening what would have been a spike in foreclosures by getting some people into trial mods that failed and delaying the inevitable for a few months. Of course, that view conveniently omits the fact that servicers told borrowers that were current to quit paying so they could qualify for HAMP, plus the fact that the borrowers that did not get “permanent” mods also were assessed missed payments and late fees.
But the focus on HAMP has been mostly about how badly the program worked operationally, and less on the crappy design of the misleadingly-labeled “permanent” mods. Only in the US could a kick the can down the road strategy be branded as “permanent”.
Read more...Tomorrow, a group of homeowners is meeting with Iowa’s attorney general Tom Miller, who is leading the 50-state effort which is investigating foreclosure and mortgage lending abuses.
This group is presenting a letter to Miller asking them to prosecute bank executives for mortgage fraud and wants to show broad-based support for this idea via having concerned citizens sign it.
Here is the text of their letter:
Read more...There is a perfectly fine article up at the Wall Street Journal on the current, probably weakening, state of the housing market, save that it fails to discuss the elephant in the room, that of the continuing moribund conditions in the so-called private label securitization market.
Read more...We followed Chris Whalen, who gave a pretty apocalyptic prognosis for 2011.
You can view the segment here. Enjoy!
Read more...I suppose the latest efforts taken by the members of the foreclosure industry to silence and neuter critics represent a perverse form of progress. If you go by the Ghandi timeline, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,” opponents of bad foreclosure practices seem to have done enough damage as to now be worth fighting.
But what is telling are the desperate-looking but nevertheless potentially effective measures being deployed to hamstring the opposition. The vanguard of this effort are foreclosure defense attorneys, many of whom are solo or small firm operators, with not hugely lucrative practices or doing pro bono work (you don’t make a lot of money defending people who have no money).
Suing someone like that, even with a suit that seems spurious, throws a wrench in their operation….
Read more...ep. Marci Kaptur of Ohio has introduced a short bill, H.R. 6460, which would seriously restrict the operations of MERS by effectively removing Freddie, Fannie and Ginnie as users. The bill would bar the GSEs from guaranteeing or owning any mortgage that is either assigned to MERS or lists MERS as the mortgage of record. Note that those are the two roles typically set forth in the registrations at local courthouses which register mortgage in the name of MERS…..
Read more...By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith
As reported in the Financial Times, Senator Carl Levin of the Senate permanent investigations released damaging e-mails in which Goldman traders discuss “killing” some mortgage-related CDS shorts in May 2007. Levin understood the implications, that damaging the shorts would allow Goldman to buy CDS even more cheaply, but did not tease out the logical conclusion. This move was a likely a major step that allowed Goldman (and fellow dealers not under investigation who likely pursued parallel strategies) to package its remaining mortgage dreck into CDOs, which were launched as the reported squeeze evidently took place, and unload as much toxic inventory as possible before the wheels came hopelessly off the subprime bandwagon….
Read more...If you had any doubts about whose side the Administration is on, this story should settle all doubts. From the Nation:
Consider this: the recent Fed audit revealed over $3.3 trillion in emergency assistance to the banks and other corporate behemoths during the financial crisis–no strings attached….
Read more...
