This is going to raise many eyebrows…

American Banker-

The Federal Reserve Board made history Friday by invoking special powers to shut down a Colorado bank, stepping into a role normally reserved for state regulators.

The central bank appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. the receiver for the $1.38 billion-asset Community Banks of Colorado in Greenwood. The FDIC then sold the bank’s operations to Bank Midwest NA in Kansas City, Mo.

[American Banker]

People NEED JOBS ..!! I don’t care if you refi or reduce the mortgage 50%… “people” need jobs.

Do all the math you want and all these mortgages will head back into default. Is anyone paying close attention to the economy? Just because AG’s have security and banker back ups, there are millions who can barely put food on the table. So this refinance plan WILL NOT WORK for all!

Again, if anyone does this… you will create new paper to correct any issues that may exist with the original paper trail.

It’s a trap and no wonder this world is failing.

LA Times-

California is reemerging as a central focus for state attorneys general hoping to reach a nationwide wrongful-foreclosure settlement with major banks, even though the Golden State walked away from talks three weeks ago.

Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who is leading the negotiations on behalf of the states and federal agencies, met with representatives of the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers in Washington on Friday to discuss details of a new plan aimed at enticing California back into the fold.

[LA TIMES]

What are your true feelings about America and its dream of home ownership? Do you believe it will survive the economic meltdown? Do you think most people will keep paying their mortgages and not walk out on their homes?

NY MAG-

If so, you might want to join me in buying mortgage-backed securities, commonly lumped into that odious investment category known as “toxic assets.” Years ago, on Wall Street, I helped create these securities with computer software (which I described in “My Manhattan Project”). Now, I farm oysters out in Long Island. But like a lot of people, I’m always on the lookout for a good investment opportunity. And for a few months now, I’ve been thinking that the economic panic has been overblown and that, if you look carefully, bargains can be found in toxic waste.

I’m hardly the only one—with the hand-holding of the Treasury Department, two large companies have recently started buying them as part of the once-ballyhooed …

[NY MAGAZINE]

“You put chicken into the grinder”—he laughed with that infectious Wall Street black humor—“and out comes sirloin.”

 NY MAG-

I wanted a piece of that. But first, I kept a promise to my wife—that if she recovered, we would backpack around the world.

Returning to New York a year later, I had an interview at Shearson Lehman’s mortgage-research department. Again, I sought advice from Professor Gesiak. I drove to his apartment in Greenpoint and confessed to him that I had never studied finance, and I had only taken one course in computers. Over the kitchen table, while his wife minded the toddlers, he gave me a quick tutorial on the “present value of future cash flows.” It was only freshman calculus, after all.

Out the back window, clotheslines on pulleys ran across the courtyard to adjoining apartments, like a scene from The Honeymooners. Once I demonstrated that I understood how to discount a cash flow, Leszek brought out the hard stuff. Over glasses of vodka chased by raw garlic and butter on rye, he recounted how he had black-marketed goods in communist Poland. Halfway through the bottle, he claimed that the Polish zloty had been on the vodka standard—that is, the conversion ratio of zlotys to dollars on the black market was always the same as the price, in zlotys, of a half-liter of vodka.

Heading back to Manhattan that night, I smashed my car on the ramp up to the BQE. But the good news was that I got the job. I was in the mortgage-packaging business.

[NY MAGAZINE]

MyFoxHouston-

HOUSTON – It was a simpler time when Edward Mahar bought his home in 1980. He has lived there ever since in southwest Houston.

“It was procedurally easy and we had a Realtor involved and basically the process was getting bank approval to buy the property,” says Mahar.

There were no mortgage swaps or complex transactions in the financial market that could leave your head spinning as is the case currently. For years, he knew exactly who held the note on his property.

“Since two years ago, everything is complicated,” says Mahar.

Just breaking from Daily Business Review…

The Bar alleged in a complaint that Stern willfully ignored a request in February by the 5th DCA to produce documents in a lawsuit between SunTrust Bank and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems. Stern had been listed as counsel for SunTrust.

Funny thing because FHFA and other have found this firm to be the highlight of their investigations.

[All posts related to Law Offices of David J. Stern]

REUTERS-

The key paragraph in Manhattan federal judge William Pauley III‘s 21-page ruling Wednesday in Bank of America’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with Countrywide mortgage-backed-securities investors is the last one.

“The settlement agreement at issue here implicates core federal interests in the integrity of nationally chartered banks and the vitality of the national securities markets,” Pauley wrote. “A controversy touching on these paramount federal interests should proceed in federal court.”

[REUTERS]

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