The dearth of meaningful solutions to the housing crisis has local officials considering a complex, controversial loan modification proposal that has piqued the interest of several municipal governments across the nation. The proposal has a component that taps into local government’s constitutional authority and power to take private property for…
Amy Johnson, now 93 and facing foreclosure, thought the loan she purchased from Lehman Brothers, the now disgraced and defunct investment bank, was a fixed mortgage loan for $140,000. She and her late husband hadn’t had a mortgage on the home since they’d paid it off sixty years ago. After…
Professor Mary K. Ramirez wrote a white paper in 2011 titled Criminal Affirmance. She writes, “Recent financial scandals and the relative paucity of criminal prosecutions in response suggest a new reality in the criminal law system: some wrongful actors appear above the law and immune from criminal prosecution. As such, the criminal prosecutorial…
Six Easy Steps to a Government of the Banks, For the Banks, By the Banks Maintain a spinning revolving door between big finance and legislators, law enforcers, and regulators to ensure friends are in powerful positions. Fund an army of lobbyists ready to provide rapid-response, detailed, Wall Street-friendly analysis of proposed legislation and regulation (here,here, here,here,…
Our elected state officials (49 State Attorneys General) and appointed banking regulators (FDIC, Fed, OCC, Treasury) have already sold out the American people with a farcical, weak, and insulting settlement with Chase, Wells, Citi, BoA, and Ally/GMAC. Now those same farcical, weak, and insulting terms seem to be under consideration with…
America’s economic crash was caused by financial industry middlemen. They sold hundreds of mortgage-backed investment scams to pension funds, 401k managers, municipalities, non-profit endowments, and international investors like small towns in Europe. The investment scams, bonds based on fraudulent ratings and assurances of soundness, seemed to be a safe, secure…
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, MERS, is a mortgage database that was created in the mid-1990s by the nations’ top financial institutions and mortgage lenders. Back then, a few county level elected officials, who were tapped with the responsibility to guard the integrity of their local land records, voiced deep concerns over MERS. …
Following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the U.S. economy had gone into a depression, and a large number of banks failed. The Pecora Investigation sought to uncover the causes of the financial collapse. Lasting from 1932 through 1934, and named for the Commission’s fourth and final chief council, Ferdinand Pecora, the Commission…
If at any time since the year 2000, you purchased an American home financed with a mortgage, you most likely will have a MERS(Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) or MOM(MERS as Mortgagee) Mortgage. If you are in South Florida, you can look up mortgages online on the following County Official Records…
William Edinger, 44, and his wife, Laura Mannetta, 35, moved their son, Billy, 12, and two daughters, Jessica, 10, and Melissa, 2, to a hotel, when they could no longer afford their $975-a-month home. Jessica often asks if she will go back to her school. “We tell her the truth,…