“So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not to inform the families who were illegally foreclosed upon?”

Warren: So I just want to make sure I get this straight. Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. … You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law and you’re not going to tell the homeowners or at least it’s not clear yet whether or not you’re going to do that?

Response: We haven’t made a decision what we’re going to tell the homeowners.

Warren: You know, I just have to say, I thought this was about transparency. That’s what this is all about. People want to know that their regulators are watching out for the American public, not for the banks. And the only way that we can evaluate whether or not you’re doing your job is if you make some of this information publicly available. And so far, you’re not doing that, and without transparency, we can’t have any confidence either in your oversight or that the markets are functioning properly at all and that people are going to receive proper compensation for what went wrong.

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s opening statement and Q&A at the April 11, 2013 Senate Banking Committee, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Hearing. Panelists include:

Mr. Daniel P. Stipano
Deputy Chief Counsel
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Mr. Richard Ashton
Deputy General Counsel
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

Image: AP

CNN-

Five firefighters had gone inside the home — a two-story structure, one of many in the neighborhood about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta — with a stretcher, then a single firefighter ran out about 30 minutes later, according to neighbors. Rutledge said one firefighter was let go so he could move the fire truck from in front of the house.

The house was foreclosed upon in November and was being prepared for sale, said Brad German, a spokesman for Freddie Mac. It was not clear what, if anything, that fact had to do with what unfolded Wednesday.

[CNN]

April 11, 2013

WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, announced today that she has introduced legislation to reform the use of independent consultants in banking regulation and enforcement processes.   She is joined by Representatives Elijah E. Cummings, Al Green and John Conyers, Jr. as original cosponsors.

The Stop Outsourcing Banking Enforcement and Examination Act would impose significant transparency measures on banking enforcement by requiring that consent orders between federal banking regulators and companies subject to their oversight be made public whenever the use of outside consultants in involved.

The legislation is primarily intended to address conflicts of interest in the use of independent consultants which are paid by the institutions whose work they have been hired to investigate.  For example, in the Independent Foreclosure Review, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency instructed mortgage servicers to hire outside consultants to determine the degree of harm those companies had done to borrowers who had been foreclosed upon improperly.

The bill mandates strict conflict of interest rules by requiring the disclosure of any business relationship between consultants, banking regulators, and financial institutions. It would also bar independent consultants from reviewing their own work, or from participating in a consent order when their work will be concurrently reviewed by other consultants.

“There are clear conflicts of interest in the use of private consultants which are paid by the companies they oversee,” said Congresswoman Waters.  “This is not “independence” – it is work for hire. It is not an academic issue.  In the case of the Independent Foreclosure Review, when “independent” consultants fail to accurately assess error rates for improper foreclosures, it means that regulators may vastly underestimate the damage done to aggrieved borrowers.  This conflict of interest favors the companies which pay outside consultants over the consumers who have been wronged.  The situation clearly requires a legislative remedy.”

Other enhanced oversight provisions mandated by the legislation include:

• Requiring that consultants be paid directly by the government, rather than the company or companies subject to the consent order.
• Requiring that the regulators provide detailed cost estimates and methodologies for fulfilling consent orders.
• Creating a private right of action whereby a person or class of persons harmed by an independent consultant’s failure to carry out consent order can bring a civil action against the consultant.
• Allowing regulators to claw back fees paid to independent consultants in the event that they fail to carry out a consent order.

Ranking Member Waters has repeatedly and outspokenly criticized the Independent Foreclosure Review (IFR) process, which she has closely monitored since its inception in early 2011.

Resources

Legislative text of the Stop Outsourcing Banking Enforcement and Examination Act — 4/11/2013

Letter by Congresswoman Waters and Colleagues to the GAO requesting a report on the Independent Foreclosure Review – 1/13/12

Waters’ statement on the settlement which effectively ended the IFR – 1/7/13

Waters’ letter to the Federal Reserve and the OCC raising questions about the settlement with mortgage servicers – 1/31/13

Press release — Waters requests hearing on the IFR process – 2/5/13

Waters’ letter to the Federal Reserve and OCC requesting additional information about the Independent Foreclosure Review – 2/15/13

Waters Responds to GAO Report – Calls the Independent Foreclosure Review Process “Flawed” – 2/4/13

###

source: http://democrats.financialservices.house.gov

This is ridiculous and a complete failure over and over. Just recently they told us they didn’t need no stinking bailout and we always knew this was BS.

Reuters-

The cash-strapped Federal Housing Administration will likely require a $943 million taxpayer bailout to cover expected losses on loans it insured as the U.S. housing bubble was deflating, the Obama administration said on Wednesday.

It would be the first bailout of the government’s mortgage insurer in its nearly 80-year history.

The White House estimated the FHA has about $30 billion on hand, but said its cash reserves would likely be swamped by souring loans.

[REUTERS]

Outsourcing Accountability? Examining the Role of Independent Consultants

Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection

Thursday, April 11, 2013
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
538 Dirksen Senate Office Building

COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND CONSUMER PROTECTION

will meet in OPEN SESSION to conduct a hearing entitled “Outsourcing Accountability? Examining the Role of Independent Consultants”. The witnesses on Panel I will be: Mr. Daniel P. Stipano, Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and Mr. Richard M. Ashton, Deputy General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The witnesses on Panel II will be: Mr. Konrad Alt, Managing Director, Promontory Financial Group, LLC; and Mr. James F. Flanagan, Leader, U.S. Financial Services Practice, Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP. Additional witnesses may be added at a later date.

Add To My Calendar (vCal)

Witnesses

Panel 1

• Mr. Daniel P. Stipano [view testimony]
  Deputy Chief Counsel
  Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
• Mr. Richard Ashton [view testimony]
  Deputy General Counsel
  Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

Panel 2

• Mr. Konrad Alt [view testimony]
  Managing Director
  Promontory Financial Group, LLC
• Mr. James F. Flanagan [view testimony]
  Leader
  U.S. Financial Services Practice, Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP.
• Mr. Owen Ryan [view testimony]
  Partner, Audit & Enterprise Risk Services
  Deloitte & Touche LLP

Wall Street on Parade-

If President Obama is trying to make it clear that he reports to the 1 percent, not the average Americans who elected him, he’s earning an A+ on his report card.

At 6:46 p.m. last evening, the White House sent out the President’s schedule for today. One item on the agenda reads as follows: “Later in the morning, the President will meet with members of the Financial Services Forum as part of the organization’s daylong Spring Meeting. This meeting in the Roosevelt Room is closed press.” There is no mention in this press announcement that the President will be meeting with the CEOs of the too-big-to-fail banks – certainly a detail worthy of the public’s attention.

Early this morning, the Wall Street Journal’s link on the front page of its web site to its story on the President’s meet-up with members of the Financial Services Forum tells us the following: “PAGE UNAVAILABLE — The document you requested either no longer exists or is not currently available.” Fortunately, Google has cached the article and from it we learn that Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase (whose firm is under an FBI investigation for losing $6.2 billion of depositors’ money in a derivatives trading scheme) is expected to meet with the President at the White House today as part of the Financial Services Forum. Also expected to attend is Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America.

[WALL STREET ON PARADE]

image: Reuters

GOOD TIMES….NOT!

Yahoo News!-

Executives of the biggest U.S. banks are expected to meet with President Barack Obama on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. 

President Obama is expected to make a drop-by appearance at a meeting of the executives and White House staff.  The group includes the chief executives of the three biggest U.S. banks by assets – Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co , Brian Moynihan of Bank of America and Michael Corbat of Citigroup Inc , according to the sources who declined to be identified.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc , also plans to be there, according to two of the people.The

White House had no comment.

[YAHOO NEWS]

VIA – Dubin Law Offices

SCWC-11-0000444

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF HAWAII

MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS, INC.,
soley as nominee, Respondent/Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

SHARON KEHAULANI WISE and BLOSSOM ILIMA NIHIPALI,
Petitioners/Defendants-Appellants

and

EWA BY GENTRY COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION,
Respondent/Defendant-Appellee.

ORDER ACCEPTING APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI

[ipaper docId=135254008 access_key=key-x26gt2a70q2iai2rb68 height=600 width=600 /]

© 2010-19 FORECLOSURE FRAUD | by DinSFLA. All rights reserved.

Letter Challenges Decision to Withhold Documents from Congress on

Illegal Foreclosures, Inflated Fees, and Fraudulent Court Filings

Washington, DC (April 10, 2013)—Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry challenging the decision by agency staff not to provide any documents in response to a request from the Members of Congress seeking documents relating to violations of federal and state law by mortgage servicing companies.

At a meeting yesterday, Warren, Cummings, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, were informed by staff from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that they would not produce any documents relating to specific mortgage servicers involving illegal foreclosures, inflated fees, or fraudulent court documents.  Staff from the agencies claimed these documents are the “trade secrets” of mortgage servicing companies and should be withheld from Members of Congress because producing them could be interpreted as a waiver of their authority to withhold proprietary business information from the public.

“We strongly believe that documents should not be withheld from any Member of Congress based on the flawed argument that illegal activity by banks is somehow their proprietary business information.  Breaking the law is not a corporate trade secret,” wrote the Members.  “As regulators, you identified systemic and widespread abuses two years ago, and concealing important information about these violations limits our ability to fulfill our responsibility to conduct oversight over the actions of mortgage servicing companies and to develop legislation to protect our constituents from further abuse.”

Two years ago this week, the regulators issued a public report announcing that 14 mortgage servicers were engaging in “violations of applicable federal and state law,” that these abuses have “widespread consequences for the national housing market and borrowers,” and that they had identified illegal foreclosures against our nation’s men and women in uniform who are protected by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA).  After directing the 14 servicers to hire independent consultants to conduct a review that would identify as many harmed borrowers as possible, in February the regulators terminated the review and finalized settlement agreements with 11 of the servicers.

The request from Warren and Cummings on January 31, 2013, sought documents detailing what the review actually found, such as the number of improper foreclosures, the amount of inflated fees, or the extent of abusive practices by each mortgage servicer.  Yesterday, the regulators’ staff refused to provide any documents that would identify wrongdoing by any specific bank.

Today’s letter calls this decision a “mistake.”  After citing the legal definition of a “trade secret,” the Members wrote:  “Obviously, this definition does not encompass illegal activity.  It would be very surprising indeed if mortgage servicing companies argued that their ability to engage in illegal foreclosures and charge inflated fees is a commercially viable plan derived from corporate ‘innovation.’”

The letter also points out that the agencies have clear regulatory discretion to provide Members of Congress with the documents, and that the agencies could protect against a potential waiver by sending a simple cover letter, as other agencies have done routinely. The members conclude: “For these reasons, we hope that you will reconsider your staff’s positions and work with us to achieve a mutually agreeable accommodation that serves both of our interests.”

source: http://democrats.oversight.house.gov

[ipaper docId=135242150 access_key=key-27e4ke7lokolf5nfvn77 height=600 width=600 /]

NYT-

The consulting firm is filled with so many former bureaucrats and political insiders that it has become known as Wall Street’s shadow regulator.

Nearly two-thirds of its roughly 170 senior executives worked at agencies that oversee the financial industry. The founder, Eugene A. Ludwig, is a former comptroller of the currency and a law school friend of Bill Clinton; the latest hire, Mary L. Schapiro, ran the Securities and Exchange Commission until late last year.

Building off those connections, the Promontory Financial Group has emerged as a major power broker in Washington, helping Wall Street navigate an onslaught of new rules and regulatory scrutiny. Promontory accompanied Morgan Stanley when the bank urged regulators to rethink limits on risky trading, records show. It also joined Bank of America, Citigroup and other big banks at the Treasury Department to discuss plans for dismantling failing financial firms.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

I would rip them a new _____________!

Hearing Entitled “Outsourcing Accountability? Examining the Role of Independent Consultants” will Include Testimony from Regulators and Leading Independent Consultants

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, will chair a hearing of the subcommittee entitled “Outsourcing Accountability?  Examining the Role of Independent Consultants.” The hearing will examine the role of independent consultants in the financial services industry and how to ensure proper oversight when they are hired by federal regulators.

“If our financial watchdogs are going to entrust their responsibilities to private companies, then the public must better understand how these companies are selected and directed, how they go about their work, and whether regulators are providing adequate oversight,” Brown said.

The hearing will examine the independence, oversight, and quality of services provided by private consultants, which are routinely hired by banks at the behest of regulators. A report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed gaps in the quality of banking regulators’ oversight of work provided by independent consultants hired to oversee the Independent Foreclosure Review Process (IFR) established in the wake of widespread mortgage servicing errors.

                        WITNESSES:           Panel I:

Daniel P. Stepano, Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Richard M. Ashton, Deputy General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Panel II:

Mr. Konrad Alt, Managing Director, Promontory Financial Group, LLC

Mr. James F. Flanagan, Leader, U.S. Financial Services Practice, Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP

                        WHEN:                      Tuesday, April 11, 2013 at 10:00 AM

                        WHERE:                    538 Dirksen Senate Office Building

                                                            Washington, DC 20510

###

source: http://www.brown.senate.gov

via Dave Krieger

Superior Court of California
County of Los Angeles
Department 51

Honorable Abraham Khan

LOCKETT,
Plaintiff(s),

v.

BANK OF AMERICA,
Defendant( s).

EXCERPTS

With regard to fraud, actionable representations of entitlement to enforce the deed of trust are no
pled with sufficient particularity, including as to identities, times and methods, and knowledge
the time of a forged assignment (e.g., First Amended Complaint, ~~61-66), and many allege
nondisclosures are not supported by any case-recognized duty, such as the alleged duty t
disclose splitting the note from the deed of trust that is merely legal conduct (id. at ~44), or t
disclosure changes in loan character to an investment that are simply legal transactions (e.g., id.
11at ~~45-49, 67).

Further, California law has never recognized a cause of action for fraud based upon a forge
assignment or a scheme of conduct, but instead defines actionably fraud claims as bein
misrepresentations, concealment, promissory fraud or fraudulent inducement of contracting.

With respect to an accounting, the pleading sufficiently alleges unknown payments to one no
entitled to the funds (e.g., First Amended Complaint, ~~22-23, 91-92).

Regarding a tender, an exception applies, based on allegations that Defendant lacks any
beneficial interest in order to conduct a future foreclosure sale– here due to an alleged forgery.

Concerning cancellation, the Plaintiff sufficiently alleges a void assignment of a deed of trust,
based upon a forgery (e.g., First Amended Complaint, ~40).

[…]

All In w/ Chris Hayes–

Banks are foreclosing on military members, on people who had been approved for a loan modification, and even on people who were never behind in their payments–all part of an astounding settlement that shortchanged millions of homeowners and left hundreds of thousands wrongfully ejected from their homes.  Former Governor Elliot Spitzer; Alexis Goldstein, former Vice President at Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, now an Occupy Wall Street activist ; and Faith Bautista, who was the victim of wrongful home foreclosure in 2009, join Chris Hayes and paint a stark picture of what happened, who is responsible and why there isn’t more justice from the government.

EconomicMonitor-

Here are a few recent tidbits from the press, just in case you were feeling a bit overly optimistic.

1. MERS Helps Wall Street Steal Your Home

Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried to explain how the financial sector created MERS to destroy property records so that it would be easier to steal homes. In the old days, property records were maintained at county recorder offices. But that was so old-school. It made it too easy to find out who owes whom and who owns what. Wall Street wanted to make this as complicated as possible so that no indebted homeowner would ever know who she/he owes. Wall Street took the mortgages and sliced and diced them, separating origination of mortgages from the ownership of the right to receive payment, and as well separated that ownership from the servicing of the mortgages. And then the bankers burned all the records.

In the old days, you had to keep all the documents together, in physical form. And when a mortgage was sold, you had to go back to the recorder’s office to change the record. With the creation of MERS, most of those documents were destroyed and the banksters never bothered to tell the recorders who owned what. The indebted households have no idea who owns their note and who services the mortgages. Even if they write that monthly check, the banks claim they never received it—the dog ate it, you know.

[ECONOMIC MONITOR]

HuffPO-

Nearly a third of all foreclosed borrowers who faced proceedings brought by the biggest U.S. mortgage companies during the height of the housing crisis came to the brink of losing their homes due to potential bank errors or under now-banned practices, regulators have revealed.

Close to 1.2 million borrowers, or about 30 percent of the more than 3.9 million households whose properties were foreclosed on by 11 leading financial institutions in 2009 and 2010, had to battle potentially wrongful efforts to seize their homes despite not having defaulted on their loans, being protected under a host of federal laws, or having been in good standing under bank-approved plans to either restructure their mortgages or temporarily delay required payments.

More than 244,000 of those borrowers eventually lost their homes, government data show.

The estimates, disclosed Tuesday, far exceed projections made over the past few years after document abuses known as robosigning gained widespread attention in late 2010.

[HUFFINGTON POST]

HuffPo-

Land records across the country have been polluted, diluted, laundered and rendered useless by MERS (the Mortgage Electronic Registration System), and Landtegrity.com has posted a petition demanding answers from the White House. The site is here and the petition can be found here.

One of the paragraphs from the petition reads:

Our Counties are being robbed of billions of dollars in recordation fees through unrecorded MERS assignments and we the people demand that they be paid. From the first MERS loan to the very last one. These are fees that pay for our policemen, our firemen and our roads and schools and you let the banks plunder it through slight of hand. We demand that these recordation fees NOT be paid with 1 dollar out of the US treasury but rather by the banks who premeditated and perpetrated this illegal MERS sponsored tax evasion and fraudulent foreclosure scheme.

MERS was purportedly and partially the brain child of Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide and is essentially a scheme that allows banks and servicers to evade fees normally associated with registering mortgages at local county registries of deeds.

[HUFFINGTON POST]

Reviewers get nearly $2 BILLION (10K per file) and most homeowners get $300.00. What is wrong with this picture??

NEW FORMALISM IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE
HOUSING CRISIS

NESTOR M. DAVIDSON
Professor, Fordham University School of Law

The housing crisis has left in its wake an ongoing legal crisis. After housing markets began to collapse across the country in 2007, foreclosures and housing-related bankruptcies surged significantly and have barely begun to abate more than six years later. As the legal system has confronted this aftermath, courts have increasingly accepted claims by borrowers that lenders and other entities involved in securitizing mortgages failed to follow requirements related to perfecting and transferring their security interests. These cases – which focus variously on issues such as standing, real party in interest, chains of assignment, the negotiability of mortgage notes, and the like – signal renewed formality in nearly every aspect of the resolution of mortgage distress.

This new formalism in the aftermath of the housing crisis represents
something of an ironic turn in the jurisprudence. From the earliest history of
the mortgage, lenders have had a tendency to invoke the clear, sharp edges of
law, while borrowers in distress have often resorted to equity for forbearance.
The post-crisis caselaw thus upends the historical valence of lender-side
formalism and borrower-side flexibility.

Building on this insight, this Article makes a normative and a theoretical
claim. Normatively, while scholars have largely embraced the new formalism
for the accountability it augurs, this consensus ignores the trend’s potential
negative consequences. Lenders have greater resources than consumers to
manage the technical aspects of mortgage distress litigation over the long run,
and focusing on formal requirements may distract from responding to deeper
substantive and structural questions that still remain largely unaddressed more
than a half decade into the crisis. Equally telling, from a theoretical
perspective, the new formalism sheds light on the perennial tension between
law’s supposed certainty and equity’s flexibility. The emerging jurisprudence
underscores the contingency of property and thus reinforces – again, ironically
– pluralist conceptions of property even in the crucible of hard-edged
formalism.

[ipaper docId=134822160 access_key=key-2kh49mfowela5bcvx5lo height=600 width=600 /]

JEFFREY FOERSTER and TAUNYA FOERSTER, Appellants,
v.
REGENT BANK, Appellee.

Suzanne M. McLean of Webber, Hinden, McLean & Arbeiter, P.A., Pembroke Pines, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

Appellants Jeffrey and Taunya Foerster, defendants below, appeal a final summary judgment of foreclosure in favor of Appellee Regent Bank. We reverse the summary judgment because there remains a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether appellee complied with the condition precedent contained in the mortgage to provide pre-suit notice of acceleration. See Finnegan v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l Trust Co., 96 So. 3d 1093, 1094 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) (reversing summary judgment as letters sent to appellant were not properly considered on motion for summary judgment and bank’s affidavit did not address compliance with pre-suit notice of default).

Reversed.

STEVENSON, CIKLIN and GERBER, JJ., concur.

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

HuffPO-

Wall Street has a new top watchdog, but it isn’t clear whether she will be in the room as her agency makes key decisions about whether to pursue some of the financial sector’s biggest stars.

Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor who has spent the last decade as a lawyer defending banks, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Monday as the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. White pledged not to participate in SEC decisions for one year in matters involving former clients, which include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. She also vowed not to return to the New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.

[HUFFINGTON POST]

via WND-

The slippery slope to confiscation has begun.

Gold and silver buyers could soon have to register with the state of Illinois.

Rick Santelli provides an update on legislation that requires every gold and silver transaction to be registered with the State.

Here are the basics. The bill, officially called SB-3341, was introduced in 2012, immediately passed the Illinois Senate and is now awaiting action by the House.

[ipaper docId=68021034 access_key=key-1nl4ftnuwzk41ls4om9x height=600 width=600 /]

image via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki