banks

National Mortgage Settlement is a Big Fat Pig in a Poke

pigpokeThere are new revelations on the 50 state mortgage fraud settlement. From The Financial Times:

A clause in the provisional agreement – which has not been made public – allows the banks to count future loan modifications made under a 2009 foreclosure-prevention initiative towards their restructuring obligations for the new settlement, according to people familiar with the matter.

The existing $30bn initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Programme (Hamp), provides taxpayer funds as an incentive to banks, third party investors and troubled borrowers to arrange loan modifications.

The settlement is estimated to be $40 billion. The fines are only $5 billion of this, which implies U.S. taxpayers are on the hook, not the banks, for $30 billion. So instead of getting any justice that using people's homes, their shelter and main life investment as a gambling chip and paper chase game is wrong, once again we get to pay for financial folly while banks pocket the cash.

Naked Capitalism has put up a top 12 list of things wrong with the foreclosure fraud settlement. Here's reason #1:

No Bank Prosecutions From Attorney General Who Used To Represent The Banks!

dojlogoWe all know there is no justice when it comes to criminal and even civil prosecutions for the financial crisis. We all know there is no justice when it comes to foreclosures. Are you aware the Obama administration is about to let the banks once again off the hook?

Maybe this has something to do with it. Reuters gives us just a little insight as to why their have been no criminal prosecutions of banks and civil penalties have been slaps on the wrist.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud.

Great, so the highest prosecutor in the land had the Banksters as clients for years.

Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm's clients included the four largest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co - as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

Reuters is really piecing together the implications with this paragraph. Wow!

Unpublished

Why Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand’s Objectivism glorified wealth-creators over moochers, but Wall Street traders might  surprise surprised to learn which category they’re in. <!--break-->

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Swipe Fees, Profits, Banks and the Politicians Who Love Them

Earlier we saw banks posted record profits for the first three months of this year.

Quarterly net income rose to a three-year high. Net income was the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007. More than half of all institutions (56 percent) reported higher net income than a year earlier. Fifteen percent reported negative net income, down from 19 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

Mortgage Deal Under Discussion - Obama Administration and Big Banks

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Even if the settlement being offered by the Obama administration is accepted, it doesn’t give the banks relief on the securities fraud claims or evasion of back fees for recording mortgages.

Reports have begun to appear in the American business press of a possible settlement among banks and their regulators over the mortgage mess in the U.S. The various players in this settlement are leaking stories to business reporters in order to place on the public square their negotiating positions, which can often serve to define the terms of the discussions taking place in private. For those of our readers who are not Americans, we need to apologize in advance for the convoluted, and you might even say ugly, manner in which policy is made in Washington when so many different players are involved. We’ll try to keep the description of what is going on basic and understandable, but don’t be surprised if you feel like you’ve wandered into an abattoir where sausage is being made. First, let’s go down the list player by player, and see what they want out of a possible settlement.

Delusions of Normalcy 2011 - Dismal Scientists Cheer Up

Could a recession occur in 2011? Under the current state of the US economy and its heavy reliance on federal spending, we could answer this question quite simply if we knew when the US government credit card will reach its limit. At some point it must; the compelling reality of mathematical compounding alone makes it impossible for any country to continue to rack up new principal and interest obligations.

The consensus is in and there is strong agreement: the US economy is on the path to a sustained recovery. 2011 will be a year of surprises on the upside, and 2012 will be even better. Among a list of the top 25 economists surveyed, not one of them predicts a recession in 2011. There is hardly any investment strategist or economist to be found who sees any risks serious enough to derail the US economy. Here is just a sample of the consensus thinking that is to be found in end-of-the year forecasts:

*Economists in universities and on Wall Street have raised their growth projections for next year. Retail sales, industrial production and factory orders are on the upswing, and new claims for unemployment benefits are trending downward. Despite persistently high unemployment, consumer confidence is improving. Large corporations are reporting healthy profits, and the Dow Jones industrial average reached a two-year high this week. – New York Times

Banking as the Scourge of Capitalism

By Numerian

Banksy

"The Federal Reserve is doing whatever it can – and some of this is against their charter – to revive the failed system of TBTF banks, securitization, and debt binges which will inevitably lead to another massive bubble, leaving the public on the hook for future bailouts." Numerian

Joe Nocera, financial columnist for The New York Times, had an interesting conclusion to his recent article on Bank of America:

I admit it: I want to see the banks feel some pain. Most people do, I think. Banks did terrible things during the subprime bubble, and they still haven’t paid any real price. I find myself rooting for judges to rule against banks in foreclosure cases. I would love to see these big investors put the serious hurt on Bank of America, which will encourage other investors to pile on. I know this colors my thinking. I can’t help it.

Yet I also know the flip side. If the foreclosure lawyers start winning a lot of cases, if judges halt foreclosures on a widespread basis, if investors start to extract billions upon billions of dollars from the banks — and if banks become seriously weakened as a result — we’ll be right back where we were two years ago. The banks will need to be saved for the good of the economy. The taxpayers will have to come to the rescue. That’s an appalling prospect too.

Banks: We can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them. It stinks, doesn’t it?

This brief flourish of disgust for the banking industry received a lot of attention, almost all of it favorable. Millions of Americans want to see “serious hurt” put upon the banks, especially the big banks that are in the Too Big To Fail category. Why do we hate the banks so?

Show me the title! Strategic Defaults and the Homeowners Revenge

By Numerian Posted by Michael Collins

If strategic defaults spread in part because of this new uncertainty over foreclosure and who has the title to the home, the banks and the mortgage backed securities market would be put in a dreadful position. The day in and day out cash flow expected from millions of mortgage principal and interest payments would be impacted far more than it is already, with the banks unable to access their collateral to stanch the bleeding. Insolvencies among the banks and the investors holding mortgage securities would certainly rise. Numerian

The Black Swans of Europe

The financial news from Europe is getting increasingly distressing.
A new EU report warns that economic conditions in Portugal and Spain could "result in a high ‘snowball’ effect on the government debt.”
French financial group AXA says "there is a fatal flaw in the system and no clear way out." They are predicting the Eurozone to break in half or completely disintegrate in the next 18 months.
Over 13% of Europe's investors are betting on a Black Monday-style collapse in stock prices (think 1987).

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