Several regular readers were kind enough to send congratulatory e-mails on our New York Times op-ed, which appears in the Sunday edition. I hope you enjoy it. The text follows: In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the […]
Read more...Joe Nocera has a very hopeful piece at the New York Times on the potential scope and impact of the investigation by all 50 state attorneys general into the robo signing scandal. Nocera stresses that the leader of this effort, Tom Miller of Iowa, and a core group of assistant AGs with long standing working […]
Read more...I’ve harbored the sneaking suspicion that JP Morgan Chase is the worst behaved of the big US retail banks, based on a couple of experiences with them a bit more than two years ago. Not to bore readers with details, but basically, bank staff lied to me persistently regarding the terms of various products. Of […]
Read more...Reader MBSGuy wrote to express his disgust with the mortgage industry’s efforts to pretend that nothing is rotten in Denmark. His object of contempt was an article in Bloomberg which dutifully recited the current talking points. The flacks have clearly been working full time: the headline, “Mortgage Industry Bristles at ‘Robin Hood’ Foreclosure Theories,” is […]
Read more...A story at the New York Daily News on a foreclosure case dismissed by Judge Arthur Schack illustrates that the problems that banks are having with foreclosures, which they are characterizing as “technical” or “paperwork” run deeper than that. And that is before you get to the issue that we have discussed at length on […]
Read more...When we’ve discussed the woes afflicting residential mortgage securitizations, in particular, the deep seated problems arising from the frequent if not widespread failure of the original parties to the deal to take the steps stipulated in their own agreements needed to convey the notes (the borrower’s promissory note) to the securitization legal vehicle, a trust. […]
Read more...The latest SIGTARP (Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program) report is, if such a thing is possible, even more damning than its previous quarterly reports. It slams the Treasury for abject failure to meet the program’s own objectives, its lack of proper control and metrics, its “Mission Accomplished” declarations, its phony accounting, […]
Read more...By masaccio, first posted at FireDogLake. Yves here. Note that masaccio uses “indorsed” when laypeople would use “endorsed”. For some weird reason, in bankruptcy matters, the term of art is “indorse”. To masaccio’s post: The administration and the banks want you to believe that there is nothing more to foreclosure fraud than just mere paperwork. […]
Read more...Readers may find it odd that I keep returning to the matter of the widely touted letter last week signed by investors Pimco et al pushing Countrywide as servicer to put back loans on some 115 mortgage securitizations totaling $47 billion, of which the letter-writers holdings represent roughly $16.5 billion. The big reason is that […]
Read more...Back in the 1980s, a colleague was getting a doctorate at Harvard Business School and had to take a seminar in statistical methods. Each participant was assigned a paper and was required to present to the class a critique of the statistical approaches employed. The paper he was given was a dissertation that had caused […]
Read more...After the dramatic multi-state foreclosure halts by three major servicers, GMAC, Bank of America, and JP Morgan, over the use of improper, “robo signed” affidavits, the new party line from these banks and others who also used robo signers, like Wells Fargo, is that this was a mere “technical” problem, that they had reviewed ten […]
Read more...Gretchen Morgenson has written an uncharacteristically cautious piece, “One Mess That Can’t Be Papered Over,” which in a rather abstract manner, discusses the issue we’ve been harping on for over a month, that the trusts that were established to hold the promissory notes for residential real estate loans and the related liens (the mortgage) may […]
Read more...I hope readers will forgive the overweight reporting on Florida, but it is serving as a test ground for how battles over foreclosures and mortgage fraud will play out around the US. Florida is not only one of the states with the highest level of foreclosures, but it also has the most cohesive group of […]
Read more...The Obama Administration is entirely predictable. It ever and always sides with large corporate interests, while trying to create the impression that it is actually concerned for the welfare of the average citizen. Admittedly, the occasionally tough talk with little follow through feeds a perverse spectacle of plutocrats sulking, pouting, and claiming that they are […]
Read more...As much as state attorneys general could be an effective force in acting for consumers and investors against banks, the fact that an attorney general has saddled up does not necessarily mean the effort is serious. At a minimum, it might just be a gambit to garner some good PR without seriously inconveniencing the perps; […]
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