John Corrigan, who thinks that people deserve to have their home stolen by the banks:
That can lead to confusion over who had the legal right to process the foreclosure. But it doesn’t mean the foreclosure itself was unwarranted.
So, foreclosing on someone who doesn’t have a mortgage, or for a mortgage that doesn’t belong to you, or illegally evading billions in title fees, or defrauding investors in mortgage backed securities is all OK, because you are robbing bad people.
H/t Atrios.
Lehman and its its creditors have subpoenaed Timothy Geithner over his discussions with JPMorgan Chase over the time when the investment bank collapsed:
Lehman Brothers‘ bankruptcy estate and its official committee of unsecured creditors asked a court late on Thursday to compel Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to testify about the investment bank’s collapse.
The request for a subpoena comes as part of the estate’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, which asserts that the bank illegally took $8.6 billion in collateral from Lehman, precipitating that firm’s demise.
The lawsuit’s main argument is that JPMorgan, apprised of Lehman’s fragile condition, improperly profited from making its collateral demands — and also pushed Lehman into bankruptcy.
Lawyers for Lehman’s creditors wrote in a court filing that they and the estate served Mr. Geithner with a subpoena last August, ordering him to testify about conversations he had held with both JPMorgan and Lehman over the former’s calls for collateral in early September 2008.
Mr. Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, spoke with JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, 10 times in the week before Lehman fell, according to the filing. Many of those conversations, the lawyers contend, must have been about JPMorgan’s collateral demands.
Basically, Lehman is asserting that Jamie Dimon’s bully boys stole from them in order to push them over into bankruptcy.
The implication is that they did so because they knew that, in the event of a collapse, they would get to keep the money.
Note that they are not asking about deliberations at the NY Fed, but the content of his discussions with Jamie Dimon.
Still, I relish the though of Geithner in the dock forced to answer questions about his dealings with the big banks.
You may recall that he was convicted under the Economic Espionage Act for downloading some high frequency trading software from Goldman Sachs, where he worked.
Apparently, the judge in the trial completely bought into the prosecutions expansion of the law, intended to prosecute people for selling military secrets to the Chinese, to this case, and the appellate court came down hard on the judge. They did not just remand this back to the lower court, they ordered the lower court to enter a judgement of acquittal.
Felix Salmon explains why whole case was such an outrage:
The secrets at defense contractors, of course, are secret for reasons of national security. The secrets at investment banks and hedge funds, by contrast, are secret purely for reasons of profit: they reckon that if they have some clever algorithm which nobody else has, then that makes it easier for them to profit from it. Which is why it was always a stretch for the government to use the EEA to prosecute Aleynikov — indeed, it is why it was always a stretch for Aleynikov to be criminally prosecuted at all. Goldman could have brought a civil case against him, but instead they got their wholly-owned subsidiary, the U.S. government, to come down on him so hard that he ended up with an eight-year sentence. Violent felons frequently get less.
The forthcoming decision from the Second Circuit is likely to be a doozy; I’m told that the judges shredded the prosecutors during the oral hearing. And certainly their decision to enter a judgment of acquittal, rather than any kind of retrial, is a strong indication that they handed down this order with extreme prejudice against prosecutorial overreach.
(emphasis mine)
This has been a lose-lose for the Vampire Squid. They looked like bullies, they brought a lot of attention to the bit of front-running that is high frequency trading, and they have now lost the case.
That being said, I don’t expect Goldman, or the prosecutors, to give up just yet.
Background here.
San Francisco County has conducted an audit of 400 foreclosures, and found a morass of fraud and corruption:
An audit by San Francisco county officials of about 400 recent foreclosures there determined that almost all involved either legal violations or suspicious documentation, according to a report released Wednesday.
Anecdotal evidence indicating foreclosure abuse has been plentiful since the mortgage boom turned to bust in 2008. But the detailed and comprehensive nature of the San Francisco findings suggest how pervasive foreclosure irregularities may be across the nation.
The improprieties range from the basic — a failure to warn borrowers that they were in default on their loans as required by law — to the arcane. For example, transfers of many loans in the foreclosure files were made by entities that had no right to assign them and institutions took back properties in auctions even though they had not proved ownership.
Commissioned by Phil Ting, the San Francisco assessor-recorder, the report examined files of properties subject to foreclosure sales in the county from January 2009 to November 2011. About 84 percent of the files contained what appear to be clear violations of law, it said, and fully two-thirds had at least four violations or irregularities.
Kathleen Engel, a professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston said: “If there were any lingering doubts about whether the problems with loan documents in foreclosures were isolated, this study puts the question to rest.”
The report comes just days after the $26 billion settlement over foreclosure improprieties between five major banks and 49 state attorneys general, including California’s. Among other things, that settlement requires participating banks to reduce mortgage amounts outstanding on a wide array of loans and provide $1.5 billion in reparations for borrowers who were improperly removed from their homes.
(Emphasis mine)
And the settlement is going to let these guys off for about 2 grand a pop.
It looks like prosecutors in Wisconsin are closing the noose on corruption by now Governor Scott Walker during his tenure as Milwaukee County executive:
A recall from his position as Wisconsin’s governor could ultimately be the least of Gov. Scott Walker’s worry, if a criminal complaint quietly moving forward in the Badger State court system continues on its current trajectory. At the moment, Walker seems to be at the bottom of a mountain where an avalanche is just beginning to roll.
A 51-page criminal complaint [PDF] (the “Rindfleisch complaint”), which formally charges Kelly M. Rindfleisch with four felony counts of misconduct in public office, contains factual allegations which implicate a number of individuals, listed as “interested parties,” including WI’s controversial Republican Governor, in a wide-reaching criminal conspiracy to misuse public employees and resources for partisan political gain.
…………
The factual body of the Rindfleisch complaint suggests that prosecutors are painstakingly examining evidence that may well place Walker at the center of a criminal conspiracy to illegally utilize employees within the Milwaukee County Executive Office to engage in fundraising and campaign activities on behalf of the Friends of Scott Walker and others during office hours at the expense of Milwaukee taxpayers.
Each violation of the relevant WI criminal statutes at issue in the matter carries with it a potential imprisonment of up to 3.5 years. As that case moves forward apace, Walker could lose a great deal more than simply his hold on the governor’s office. His very freedom may prove to be at stake as well…
I don’t expect an indictment of Walker before the recall vote, but this is another well-deserved nail in the coffin for his political career.
H/t Kenneth Quinnell.
Yes, it’s Ken Starr, and it looks like he got yet another trumped up investigation, this time of a Jewish Studies professor who isn’t right wing enough for the Clinton era persecutor prosecutor:
It’s unclear what exactly Ellis is on trial for, as neither Baylor nor Ellis would comment on the record about the nature of the charges. (One clue: no criminal charges have been filed against Ellis.) Roger Sanders, Ellis’ lawyer, says Baylor’s lawyers told him the internal process mandates nondisclosure, though Baylor spokesperson Lori Fogleman disputes this, telling RD that the charges can only be released with Ellis’ written permission.
Sanders says the investigation hinges on “bogus allegations.” One can only hope the result will not be another 336-page Starr Report—the $40 million product of the independent counsel’s four-year investigation, for which the beleaguered Monica Lewinsky was interrogated over 20 times. “‘You’re a pervert, Ken Starr,’” Lewinsky’s father once said he’d like to tell the former independent counsel.
In late November Cornel West, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other luminaries launched a change.org petition addressed to Starr, which has thus far gathered over 5,000 signatures. The petition asserts that the controversy “looks more and more like a persecution to silence a Jewish voice of dissent.”
“The charges,” reads a petition update, “are about ‘abuse of authority.’…Many of us were contacted several times by institutional lawyers who tried to persuade us to tell them examples of ‘abuse of authority’ he has exercised.”
According to Sanders, the investigation consisted of “sort of announc[ing] to people, ‘Here’s what Marc’s guilty of. Now tell us what you know about him.’” Fogleman claims no knowledge of the investigation’s procedures and declined to recommend officials who could answer questions about it.
The fact that, but for his misconduct in l’affaire Lewinski, he’d probably be on the Supreme Court now, should scare the hell out of us.
We still have no written agreement, but we the North Carolina AG has released an executive summary, and it strongly implies that the immunity grant is a lot broader than has been implied:
This is the critical part:
The proposed Release contains a broad release of the banks’ conduct related to mortgage loan servicing, foreclosure preparation, and mortgage loan origination services. Claims based on these areas of past conduct by the banks cannot be brought by state attorneys general or banking regulators.
The Release applies only to the named bank parties. It does not extend to third parties who may have provided default or foreclosure services for the banks. Notably, claims against MERSCORP, Inc. or Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) are not released
.
This is sufficiently general so that it is hard to be certain, but It certainly reads as if it waives chain of title issues and liability related to the use of MERS. That seems to be confirmed by the fact that made by local recorders for fees are explicitly preserved (one would not think they would need to be preserved unless they might otherwise be assumed to be waived). This is exactly the sort of release we feared would be given in a worst case scenario. The banks have gotten a huge “get out of jail free” card of bupkis.
It’s gonna get worse.
Every time we get more information it’s gonna get worse.
We are going to discover that this precludes all sorts of remedies for bad acts, and there will be no enforcement mechanisms to prevent future bad faith actions.
It’s gonna be more extend and pretend, so the banksters can get their bonuses, and we get the shaft.
Seriously, we are seeing yet another hyped up bit of pants-wetting terror in order to create another way for defense contractors to rip the taxpayers off:
In last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to pass “legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber threats.” The Hill was way ahead of him, with over 50 cybersecurity bills introduced this Congress. This week, both the House and Senate are moving on their versions of consolidated, comprehensive legislation.
The reason cybersecurity legislation is so pressing, proponents say, is that we face an immediate risk of national disaster.
wired guest column“Today’s cyber criminals have the ability to interrupt life-sustaining services, cause catastrophic economic damage, or severely degrade the networks our defense and intelligence agencies rely on,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said at a hearing last week. “Congress needs to act on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation immediately.”
Yet evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent. In many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress’ passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn’t lead to war, it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial complex.
Every so called case of a major attack on meat-space infrastructure has turned out to be false, but we’re gonna spend billions on it.
I agree with him that the N.C.A.A. is little better than a cartel engaging in human trafficking:
The N.C.A.A. despises sports agents — hates them so much so that it once helped promulgate an anti-agent law. As of January 2010, according to the N.C.A.A.’s Web site, that law had been passed by 40 states. A player who takes an “improper benefit” from a sports agent loses his eligibility. A player who gets drafted out of high school — this happens in baseball as well as hockey — and engages an agent to talk to the pro team that drafted him loses his eligibility. Indeed, the mere act of signing with an agent is enough for a player to lose his eligibility. N.C.A.A. “scandals” involving agents and athletes are almost as common as recruiting scandals.
The N.C.A.A. claims — as it always does — that it is acting to protect its athletes “from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.” But this is classic N.C.A.A. Orwellian spin. Its true purpose in preventing athletes from engaging with agents while in college is to exacerbate their exploitation. The professional and commercial enterprise doing the exploiting, of course, is college sports itself.
“It’s all about control,” says Don Jackson, a lawyer who specializes in representing athletes who have run afoul of the N.C.A.A. Teenage athletes with agents are far more likely to make informed decisions about their lives than athletes acting on their own. Instead, athletes have to rely on coaches and athletic administrators, whose primary interest is the school, not the player.
And it’s not just hockey players who have to make important life decisions at a young age. When a baseball player gets drafted out of high school, he has a hard decision to make. Basketball players are usually eligible for the draft after one year of college; football players after three years. Yet N.C.A.A. rules force these athletes to make these major decisions without an agent at their side.
At some point, enterprising lawyer is going to find is going to use RICO, or the tax code, or anti-human trafficking statutes, or some combination of all these and other laws, and these folks will get taken down ……… hard.
Barry Ritholtz puts in his application to be head of corporate communications for the Vampire Squid:
To: Hiring Committee, Goldman Sachs
From: Barry Ritholtz
Re: Position, Head of Public Relations, Goldman Sachs
Date: February 13, 2012Gentlemen:
Now that your public relations chief, Lucas van Praag is (finally!) retiring, it is time for the executive committee to seriously rethink the position of PR head. To be blunt, your efforts have not been up to the level of excellence that one would expect from Goldman Sachs. It would be impolite to speak ill of the job done by LVP has done under challenging circumstances, but you gentlemen need to face the facts, and fast. On his watch, the firm’s reputation has suffered, its ability to recruit top talent has been compromised, and its market cap has gotten shellacked.
In short, your PR efforts have performed about as well as the ABACUS 2007-AC1 – the John Paulson created mortgage bundle that cratered. Or, about as well as John Paulson’s fund in 2011, which also cratered (I am seeing a pattern here).
All of which says, you guys have really stunk the joint up.Thus, it is with great pleasure that I toss my hat into the ring for the position of Director of Communications for Goldman Sachs. Not only do I have the requisite skill set to help rehabilitate the image of the 100+ year old firm — media savvy, legal smarts, netizen, with just a dollop of snark — but I believe I can help you move gracefully into the new century.
Just read the rest. It’s da bomb!
It turns out that Komen CEO Nancy Brinker has managed to generate 6 figures in reimbursable expenses from the charity while she was working full time for the Bush administration:
She billed her charity for $133,507 in expenses at a time when she had a full-time job elsewhere. Her staff is in turmoil. While her cancer-fighting work is undisputed, her managerial style is not.
Nancy Brinker, a socialite, powerbroker, and former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, has turned Susan G. Komen for the Cure into a cancer-fighting giant over the past three decades. Now, critics say, it may be time for her to go—if she wants to preserve the very charity she built.
The recent crisis over Komen’s decision to de-fund—and then re-fund—Planned Parenthood has put Brinker under intense scrutiny, with observers questioning everything from her management style to her earnings to her spending. “It has all become a diversion. It has itself become cancerous,” says Eve Ellis, a former board member of Komen in New York City. “Nancy has accomplished so much and provides so many millions in research dollars, but the foundation needs to get back to being strong. For that to happen, she needs to step down.”
In interviews with The Daily Beast, a half-dozen former Komen employees who held a range of jobs at the charity in the past five years expressed similar sentiments, saying the foundation has become dominated by its larger-than-life leader. These people strongly acknowledge Brinker’s accomplishments, praising her immense skill at raising funds for lifesaving cancer research. At the same time, they describe her as an imposing figure who flies first class, prefers five-star hotels, and generally exhibits an entitled air, which, they say, is at odds with the organization’s important mission. Employees don’t call her “Nancy,” these people say. They are expected to call her “Ambassador Brinker.”
In the 30 years since she launched the foundation, Brinker has raised some $1.9 billion for cancer research. More than 100,000 volunteers work in a nationwide network of affiliates. It was all Brinker’s vision—she started the charity after her sister, Susan G. Komen, died of breast cancer in her mid-30s.
………
The Daily Beast found that Brinker billed the foundation for $133,507 in expenses from June 2007 to January 2009, according to her filings with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. At the time, she was a full-time federal employee, serving as chief of protocol for the State Department. President Bush nominated her for the position in June 2007 and she held the job until January 2009.
But it gets better:
After Brinker’s term in the State Department ended in 2009, she returned full time to Komen. Her return coincided with a cultural shift within the foundation, former employees say. She was more distant and aloof, these people say. “It was like suddenly she expected someone to carry her purse,” says one person.
…………
At the Komen foundation, management turned over fairly rapidly from 2009 to 2011, at considerable expense to the foundation.
It appears that her stint in the Bush administration may have knocked a screw loose, a not unsurprising development.
It is interesting to see the knives come out. Just as few weeks ago, Komen was synonymous with the fight against breast cancer, and now the dam has burst.
Komen may survive, but Nancy Brinker won’t be at the helm. She’s done, even if she does not realize this yet.
As an aside, at the core of much of movement conservatism is a sense of entitlement, and a sense of entitlement is generally incompatible with a properly functioning charity.
This doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t do good charity work, it just means that their world view renders them more vulnerable to losing sight of their mission.
Because the details of the deal have not been released, and they may in fact not have actually been settled, which means that when they are finalized, they could be worse than what we have already heard.
In fact they almost certainly will be worse, because the state AGs and the Obama administration simply cannot afford pull defeat from the jaws of what they claim to be victory:
You know it’s bad when banks are the most truthful guys in the room.
Remember that historical mortgage settlement deal that was the lead news story on Thursday? It has been widely depicted as a done deal. The various AGs who had been holdouts said their concerns had been satisfied.
But in fact, Bank of America’s press release said that the deal was “agreements in principle” as opposed to a final agreement. The Charlotte bank had to be more precise than politicians because it is subject to SEC regulations about the accuracy of its disclosures. And if you read the template for the AG press release carefully, you can see how it finesses where the pact stands. And today, American Banker confirmed that the settlement pact is far from done, and the details will be kept from the public as long as possible, until it is filed in Federal court (because it includes injunctive relief, a judge must bless the agreement).
This may not sound all that important to laypeople, but most negotiators and attorneys will react viscerally to how negligent the behavior of the AGs has been. The most common reaction among lawyers I know who been with white shoe firms (including former partners) is “shocking”. Let me explain why.
Negotiating of large, complex deals (or even little deals) does not happen in one fell swoop. Even when the two sides have outlined the major terms, and in sone cases hammered out the really important ones in some detail, there is still a great deal of negotiating that takes place in finalizing the text of the contract. The negotiation over the definitive agreement makes a great deal of difference on how fair the pact turns out to be. For instance, one of the sayings of transaction lawyers is “He who controls the document controls the deal.” The party that writes up the initial version of the contract has undue influence because that becomes the default and the other side has to negotiate back from that language.
Politics is trumping both the law and mathematics, and this will not end well.
Yesterday, I talked about Dave Dayen and Yves Smith’s take on the settlement, and their take was “bankster bailout”, and I noted that Felix Salmon’s take was that it was a good thing.
Well, now the journalist who is I think the best person (this side of Jon Stewart, anyway) at distilling the complexities of Wall Street to you average reader, Matt Taibbi has weighed in, and not only is he calling bailout for Wall Street crooks, but he apologizes for his earlier optimism. What’s more, he distills what it all means in one paragraph:
But this deal not only doesn’t end robosigning, it officially makes getting caught for it inexpensive. Shame on me for ever thinking that might be a good thing.
That is the final word. Fraud and forgery have been given a price tag, and it’s less than 2 grand.
So, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, or more accurately the guy they hired to represent their position, has admitted that they want to ban coverage for all forms of contraception for everyone:
“There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular,” [Conference general council Anthony] Picarello said. “We’re not going to do anything until this is fixed.”
That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for “good Catholic business people who can’t in good conscience cooperate with this.”“If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate,” Picarello said.
They want to pull all coverage for contraception for everyone, and so we should take it seriously when they they say want to ban all contraception.
At least the Taliban does not find f%$#ing little boys to be a moral imperative.
Well, it looks like everyone (except Oklahoma) has signed onto Obama’s bank sellout settlement :
After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.
Despite the billions earmarked in the accord, the aid will help a relatively small portion of the millions of borrowers who are delinquent and facing foreclosure. The success could depend in part on how effectively the program is carried out because earlier efforts by Washington aimed at troubled borrowers helped far fewer than had been expected.
Still, the agreement is the broadest effort yet to help borrowers owing more than their houses are worth, with roughly one million expected to have their mortgage debt reduced by lenders or able to refinance their homes at lower rates. Another 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure from September 2008 to the end of 2011 will receive checks for about $2,000. The aid is to be distributed over three years.
An announcement was scheduled in Washington for Thursday morning. The final details of the pact, including how many states would participate, were expected to be announced then. The two biggest holdouts, California and New York, now plan to sign on, according to the officials with knowledge of the matter who did not want to be identified because the negotiations were not completed.
So, if a bankster steals your house, you get $2000, which might cover the cost of having all your furniture hauled to the dump.
And as for the write-downs, that’s about $17 billion for about one million home owners ($5 B goes to the states), or about $17k for homeowners, but there are 11 million homeowners under water, and on average it’s more than $50K each.
And, BTW, the banks get to do this for mortgages that they manage, but don’t hold, meaning that the money is coming from investors, pension funds, and the taxpayer, and this serves to strengthen the second mortgages, which the banks do hold.
I’m with Yves Smith’s take on this, “The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage-Settlement.html,” not Felix Salmon’s rather more optimistic take on this.
This is not a settlement, it’s another sellout and back door subsidy to the banksters.
I missed it, but the New York AG canceled a press conference about his position on the mortgage/foreclosure fraud settlement at the last minute:
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman late Tuesday postponed a much anticipated conference call with reporters that was set up to announce whether the state would participate in broad a settlement with five big banks over foreclosure practices. Schneiderman, who is co-chair of a new mortgage fraud task force, told reporters in late January that he was not ready to participate in state settlement negotiations. Observers had speculated that he might announce his participation.
This is happening despite the full court press from the Obama administration for this deal to go through.
The sticking point appears to be the MERS lawsuit, and the banks want this dropped before they sign off on any deal.
I think that this delay is a good thing because:
This should get interesting.
So, the SEC is giving the banksters a free pass when they defraud investors, but the SEC gives them a pass. Why? To protect the investors.
You know, for most people, letting the banksters steal with impunity is not protecting investor:
Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010.By granting those waivers, the S.E.C. allowed Wall Street firms to have powerful advantages, securities experts and former regulators say. The institutions remained protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which makes it easier to avoid class-action shareholder lawsuits.
And why are they doing this?
“The ramifications of losing those exemptions are enormous to these firms,” David S. Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman, said in an interview. Without the waivers, agreeing to settle charges of securities fraud “might have vast repercussions affecting the ability of a firm to continue to stay in business,” he said.
S.E.C. officials say that they grant the waivers to keep stock and bond markets open to companies with legitimate capital-raising needs. Ensuring such access is as important to its mission as protecting investors, regulators said.
…………
Thomas Lee Hazen, a securities law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that it is understandable that the S.E.C. might relax some potential sanctions on Wall Street firms — where it appears that lessons have been learned, or when a fine is thought to be sufficient punishment.
“The ripple effect of having a sanction that could shut them down or could seriously impede a company’s operations would seriously affect a lot of innocent customers,” he said. “It’s a very fine balance. That’s not to say that the S.E.C. is striking the balance properly. That is in the eye of the beholder.”
Let’s be clear here. The SEC is using regulatory forbearance to subsidize fraud.
If people stopped investing in firms that committed fraud, the firms would be less inclined to defraud investors.
Yes, the right wing hack hired by Komen as their VP for public policy, Karen Handel, has>called it quits, or as Erin Gloria Ryan so clearly states, Noted Liar Karen Handel Defensively Resigns From Komen, with a self-indulgent letter of resignation where she denies it being about politics.
I’d say, “Cry me a river,” but the letter was more like “Water Music”.*
The thing is, the folks at Komen knew that she was a right wing political hack. Not only had she campaigned for governor on defunding Planned Parenthood before Komen hired her, but she also has a long history of voter suppression and civil rights violations so bad that the Bush Justice Department called her out.
She was clearly a right wing political hack, and Komen chose to let Ari Fleischer pimp her for a cushy office job, and they knew what she was.
There are lots of better breast cancer charities out there.
Even ignoring politics, the corporate pink-washing Komen does for companies probably contribute to higher cancer rates (KFC? Seriously?) should look elsewhere.
When you add in their politics, any woman who gives them money is like a chicken donating to Colonel Sanders, because they are a a petri dish for right wing zealots who think that the problem with the world is that, “women [are] not being properly punished for having unapproved sex.”
*OK, that’s it for the Handel puns.
The Missouri AG has filed criminal indictments for felony forgery over “robo-signing”.
This is a remarkable development, because while what on pretty clearly was forgery, but I never expected someone to actually prefer criminal charges:
“Linda Greene” has become a household word to those on the foreclosure fraud beat. And it turns out, for once, that the work of diligent investigators such as the foreclosure attorneys around Max Gardner, and investigators like Lynn Szymoniak and Lisa Epstein led to press coverage which in turn spurred prosecutors to act.
What is striking about the indictment by a Missouri grand jury is that the Missouri AG Chris Koster has decided to challenge the banks’ party line that robosigning and related abuses were mere “paperwork problems.” He’s called robosiging what it is: forgery. The 136 count indictment is for forgeries and false declarations, and the targets are LPS subsidiary and its founder and past president, Lorraine Brown.
About f%$#ing time.
Well, over 40 states have signed onto the deal, but the biggies, New York, California, Nevada (highest foreclosure rate in the nation), and Delaware (all the banks are covered by Delaware law, and Beau Biden is Joe’s kid), are not (yet) a part of this deal, so the “deadline” has been pushed back two weeks.
We know the deal is bad.
We know that it’s a sellout because:
That being said, the fact that this deal is pitting one part of Wall Street against the other, with, asset management group of SIFMA frantically lobbying negotiators for a better deal, is a welcome development.
We also have the fact that the deal favors 2nd mortgages, generally held by the banks, would be favored over 1st mortgages, which the judge who has to approve the deal might see as an illegal taking.
FWIW, if any of the biggies move, it will be California first, because (when current Governor Jerry Brown when he was AG, thanks Governor Moonbeam) they already cut a deal with Bank of America/Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the state, which eliminated most pre-2008 liability, so they have the least to gain from holding out.