H/O Adversaries

Mary Schapiro, who led the Securities and Exchange Commission in the four years following the financial crisis, has landed at a Washington consulting firm.

For starters, complain to your Congressman and alert your local media outlets. Congressmen are sensitive to coverage in their district. And complain to the Treasury Inspector General, which supervised the OCC and the GAO, which previously criticized the servicers’ and Rust’s outreach efforts. The more people who complain (and it sounds like there are a lot of people with grounds to complain), the higher the odds that Rust will be pressured to remedy its disgraceful performance.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/more-foreclosure-review-fiasco-pa...

On August 20, 2009, plaintiffs J. John Marshall (“Marshall”) and Kimberly Wiley (“Wiley”) (collectively “plaintiffs”) were working at Marshall’s residence located at 1625 Brookwood Drive, Elkhart, IN (“the property”). The property was in foreclosure, but the foreclosure had not been completed. While plaintiffs were working at the property, an individual who did not identify himself entered the house in an aggressive manner, questioned plaintiffs about their right to be in the house, and demanded plaintiffs leave the house. This individual was later identified as defendant Robert Hashberger (“Hashberger”). Hashberger told plaintiffs that he owned and controlled the property, and also told plaintiffs that they should not be at the property.

http://mattweidnerlaw.com/blog/2013/03/banks-breaking-into-homes-the-jac...

Big investors are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into real estate hard hit by the housing crash, bringing those moribund markets back to life but raising the prospect of another Wall Street-fueled bubble that won’t be sustainable.

Drawn by the prospect of double-figure profit margins on rents and the resale of homes whose prices plummeted in the crash, hedge funds, Wall Street investors and other institutions are crowding out individual home buyers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-street-betting-billi...

The Florida Bar this week filed a complaint with the state supreme court against David J. Stern, the Broward County lawyer whose office was accused of rubber-stamping foreclosures.

The document alleges that Stern failed to manage his employees, which led to missed trials and improperly executed documents and left thousands of clients without adequate representation.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-david-stern-complaint-20130418,0...

Imagine you’re a finance lobbyist and want to move deregulation and other industry-friendly policies through Congress. While you might think the House Financial Services Committee would be the logical place to do it — since it has jurisdiction over financial issues, naturally — what if there were a sneaky way to maneuver it through a far less scrutinized committee, so most people would have no idea what you were doing?

This is the story of how the world’s largest banks came to love the House Agriculture Committee.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/j_p_morgan_is_not_a_farmer/

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest banks, reported Friday a decline in applications for home loans, a sign that the strength of the housing recovery may be waning.

The report was the latest worrisome indicator for the economy. The government on Friday said retail sales declined 0.4 percent last month, which was worse than expected and the biggest decline in nine months. The government also reported this month a dramatic slowdown in job creation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/is-the-party-over-for-mor...

More and more people are falling victim to online housing rental scams, especially in resort-areas like northern Michigan.

“They have become more prevalent in the last four or five years, as there have been more foreclosures on the market. It’s more challenging for people to get financing, so we've had a huge increase in the amount of people who want to rent,” said Ted Lockwood, RE/MAX Bayshore Properties.

Of course, Craigslist is a hotbed for rental scams.

http://www.upnorthlive.com/neighborhood/story.aspx?id=873453#.UWDiTleRf21

The six very large U.S. bank holding companies -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup (C) Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley (MS) -- share a pressing intellectual problem: They need to explain why they should be allowed to continue with their dangerous business model.

So far their justifications have been weak, and the latest analysis on this topic from Goldman Sachs may even help make the case for breaking up the financial institutions and making them safer. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/goldman-s-big-guns-fire-dud-in-...

Wall Street knew the craze wouldn’t last.

The nation’s biggest banks, capitalizing on government efforts to bolster the housing market, have raked in handsome mortgage profits of late. On Friday, that started to change.

Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest home lender, disclosed that it originated fewer home loans and recorded lower mortgage banking income in the first quarter of 2013. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank by assets, reported limited appetite for new mortgages and a drop in mortgage banking income.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/fewer-home-loans-start-to-affect-...

On March 14, ASF submitted a detailed comment letter to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (“BCBS”) in response to their December 18, 2012 consultative document entitled, “Revisions to the Basel Securitisation Framework.” ASF’s letter outlines several guiding principles that we believe should be embodied in any framework for determining capital for securitization purposes, including:

• promoting understanding by banks of the risks associated with their securitization exposures;

Peter Schiff, the eternal provocateur, suggests the Fed’s extraordinary support of bond and housing markets will lead to a market crash as interest rates rise, leaving banks, mortgage originators, and lenders stuck with homes and low yielding loans as the economy slows, exacerbating the decline and throwing the economy into a deeper crisis.

Paradoxically, the housing market is firing on all cylinders, with homebuilders like KB Home and Lennar trading close to their 52-week highs.  This is irrational exuberance, according to Schiff, as the market is fully subsidized by the Fed.  

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/03/05/peter-schiff-and-th...

Our system is rigged. Unfair. Hopelessly neglectful of the little guy.

All true. But do you really have a better choice? Did you honestly think Washington was going to let it all fail—and for good? After all, who’s backing Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), which are almost single-handedly backing the resurgent mortgage market? Who pumped more than $2 trillion into suppressing interest rates to record lows?

In retrospect, Wall Street has disproportionately benefited from the largesse of economic policymakers, from easy TARP terms to a long-stretch of largely free consumer deposits. But you knew it would, didn’t you?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-08/yes-the-financial-system...

Government-owned lender Ally Financial Inc. is sparring with its Residential Capital mortgage subsidiary over the unit's efforts to get out of a federal foreclosure-review program.

ResCap, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, said Ally would be on the hook for any amount of restitution the Federal Reserve is unable to recover from ResCap under the terms of an agreement Ally entered into with the U.S. government in 2011, according to a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Friday.

Ally disputes that because ResCap has to yet to satisfy its foreclosure-review responsibilities.

Banks aren't living up to pledges they made in last year's landmark government settlement of mortgage servicing and foreclosure abuses, according to an advocacy group's survey of California housing counselors and lawyers.

Throughout the review, the regulators provided inconsistent guidance to consultants, the report said. As a result, borrowers in similar situations were sometimes treated differently. For example, regulators ordered the consultants to comb through loans to spot whether borrowers had been charged fees for lawn care or property inspections that were not “reasonable” and “customary.” But the consultants were using different versions of what fees fell into those categories.

The report also faulted regulators for bogging down consultants with numerous metrics for identifying problems. One consultant reported having to answer 16,000 test questions regarding a single loan.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/blame-abounds-over-a-flawed-forec...

Private mortgage insurers are ready to play a role in the housing finance market, but that won't happen until federal housing agencies strike the appropriate balance between private insurers and the Federal Housing Administration, industry representatives claim.

Experts met on Wednesday and suggested to members of the House Financial ServicesCommittee that private mortgage insurers have the ability to play a significant role in mortgage finance. However, for that to happen, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s global footprint needs to shrink.

http://www.housingwire.com/news/2013/03/13/balancing-act-private-mortgag...

There’s new evidence that a $9.3 billion settlement to help homeowners is less beneficial than it might seem.

First, a little history. In 2011 the federal bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, signedconsent decrees with some of the U.S.’s major banks, ordering them to review their foreclosures and compensate borrowers where they found mistakes. That was separate from the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement coordinated by 49 state attorneys general. The federal settlement was supposed to be the first time borrowers would have an independent review of their foreclosures.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-04/a-home-foreclosure-settl...

Scavenging the remnants of South Florida's housing crisis, a partnership called Presscott Rosche appeared to gobble up almost three dozen foreclosed homes in Miami-Dade County last year. The company is currently listed as the owner of 12 homes worth about $3.5 million, according to the Miami-Dade property appraiser.

Finance scholars are not known for their sense of humor, but the irony of calling the world's largest and most harmful financial control frauds our "most reputable" banks is quite wondrous. The point the financial scholars make is one Edwin Sutherland emphasized from the beginning when he announced the concept of "white-collar" crime. It is the officers who control seemingly legitimate, elite business organizations that pose unique fraud risks because we are so loath to see them as frauds.

The PSW 2013 study confirmed one form of control fraud and provided suggestive evidence of two other forms that I will discuss in a future column. The definitive evidence of control fraud that PSW2013 identifies is by mortgage lenders who made, or purchased, mortgages and then resold them to "private label" (non-Fannie and Freddie) financial firms who were creating mortgage backed securities (MBS).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/mortgage-fraud_b_2780896.html