Posts Tagged ‘banking’
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.
What was I thinking?
Turns out it’s just another example of how the soulless Wall Street culture is destroying American style capitalism.
We have barely gotten past JP Morgan Chase’s $3 billion catastrophe, and the outrage over their foolish decisions, but here we are again. The attention span on Wall Street seems equivalent to that of a small child.
Scott Udine, a broker friend of mine, said it best, “The brokerage firm community is made up of salesmen and people that mainly care about THEIR bottom-line….not yours!!! They will sell anything, say anything and do anything.”
Morgan Stanley over sold and over hyped too many shares of Facebook to an unsuspecting public, while quietly telling large institutional investors another story. And to add insult to injury NASDAQ had such huge headaches processing all the buy, sell and cancellation orders that they now admit the whole IPO was an unmitigated disaster.
So once again its heads, the banks win, and tails, you lose.
Morgan Stanley changed the game as the lineup was being announced. It reeks of impropriety. Anybody in the stock business will tell you it is practically unheard of.
I can only add this to the mounting list of evidence against the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail banksters and sigh in disgust.
If you’re wondering why a foreclosure defense attorney is up-in-arms about a stock offering, it is because the same shady tactics that have led homeowners to my office are the same ones on display here.
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Tags: banking, break bank, criticism of facebook, Facebook, google, initial public offering, investment banks, ipo, j. p. morgan, jp morgan, jpmorgan chase, matters, Morgan Stanley, online social networking, primary dealers, publics, social information processing, wall street, washington, why
Posted in Facebook, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 18th, 2012
States are taking settlement money right from under us!
It’s pretty hard to find a single housing advocate or foreclosure defense attorney, myself included, who didn’t find the national mortgage settlement to be, at the very least, flawed.
It may have been a necessary step to getting the housing market back on track, but we know that it didn’t come close to compensating homeowners who had been illegally kicked out of their homes, and in the end, the banks are getting off remarkably light for their robosigning crimes.
Which is why what a multitude of states are doing with some of the banks money is downright revolting.
At least a dozen states are taking tens of millions of dollars in direct payments from the settlement and treating them like a slush fund.
Let me explain.
Part of the settlement included $2.5 billion that was given outright to the states. Florida took in just over $334 million.
The settlement calls for these dollars to be used to “to avoid preventable foreclosures, to ameliorate the effects of the foreclosure crisis, to enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud, or unfair or deceptive acts or practices and to compensate the States for costs resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the Defendants.”
But much like much of the settlement overall, there is nothing in this language that has any real measure of enforcement. Some states are flat out ignoring these instructions and doing whatever they want with the money they are getting off the backs of good honest homeowners.
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Tags: banking, banking money, causes of the financial crisis of 2007 2009, charlie brown, enterprise community partners, foreclosure, foreclosures, housing crisis, housing market, jerry brown, money, mortgage, mortgage settlement, national mortgage, Pam Bondi, Real Estate, real property law, settlement, settlement money, settling, single house, spending, states, subprime mortgage crisis
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Mortgage Settlement, Pam Bondi | No Comments »
Friday, May 11th, 2012
I’m not a reader of tea leaves, so I am not about to guess how the Florida Supreme Court will ultimately rule on Roman Pino vs. The Bank of New York.
But listening to the justices attack Amanda Lundergan, Roman Pino’s attorney, while seemingly going much easier on Bruce Rogow, the bank’s very well-respected lawyer, was at best, discouraging.
It’s common for the justices to try to poke holes in an attorney’s case, and it does not always mean that you can predict what their decision will be.
But with the thousands surely watching Thursday’s hearing, I was hoping the Court would have been a little more sensitive to the perception that they were most certainly creating, that the banks already have this one in the bag.
As a whole I found the Supreme Court judges flippant to the obvious fraud that Bank of New York has brought before the court in this case.
And for the Court to downplay the importance of that fraud, and what it means to the integrity of the judicial system, was offensive.
If you were an average homeowner watching yesterday’s hearing, I am pretty sure you came away with a feeling that the playing field is not level, and there are two different sets of rules for the banks and for the rest of us.
That is truly unfortunate.
The Supreme Court has to be above the fray, and they must not abdicate their responsibility to police their own system.
Which is exactly what would happen if the Court allows the phony documents, the fraudulent backdating, the bogus notes and assignments to be brought before them without penalty.
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Tags: amanada lundergan, bank of new york, banking, bruce rogow, case, court, Florida, Florida Supreme Court, florida supreme court ruling, Ice Legal, integrity, new york, pino, roman pino, romans, supreme, supreme court, supreme court judges, supreme court of the united states, the bank of new york
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida Supreme Court, Roman Pino Vs Bank of New York | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
The banks are terrified they might actually be held accountable for their actions!
If you haven’t already heard, there is a monumental case that was heard Thursday morning in the Florida Supreme Court, and every single homeowner should be paying close attention to this case.
To watch a replay of the oral arguments, please click here.
The case is Roman Pino vs. Bank of New York. It involves all the customary fraud I have seen in countless cases.
Missing documents, fraudulent assignments, fraudulents notaries, and forged documents, and a bank once again trying to shuffle it’s dirty deeds under the rug like loose dirt.
When Bank of New York first tried to foreclose on Pino, a regular working guy from Greenacres who fell behind on his mortgage when his business dried up, there was no assignment of mortgage.
So Bank Of New York’s lawyers tried to re-file with a new assignment, one which was fraudulently backdated (AKA robosigned).
The bank’s original lawyers, by the way, were from David J. Stern’s office. You know their story.
When our good friend and colleague Tom Ice, Pino’s lawyer, challenged the documents, Bank of New York suddenly decided they didn’t want to foreclosure anymore, dropped their lawsuit and scurried back into their hole.
End of the story??
Not even close. Ice continued to dog Bank of New York like a pitbull, because he, believe it or not, also thinks the banks need to actually be held accountable! (Remarkable I know.)
He tried to have the voluntary dismissal overturned, so that Bank of New York could face sanctions for the forged documents they tried to use to swindle Roman Pino and the court.
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Tags: 4th district court of appeals, attorney, bank, bank of new york, banking, banking industries, banks, case, court, David Stern, district court, Florida, Florida Supreme Court, foreclosure, foreclosures, landmark, mortgage, new york, pino, real property law, roman pino, romans, supreme court, tom ice
Posted in Bank Fraud, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida Supreme Court, Roman Pino Vs Bank of New York | 3 Comments »
Monday, May 7th, 2012
A group from the Miami Workers Center clean up the area around an abandoned bank-owned house, as police officers wait nearby (Photo Courtesy:Miami Workers Group)
It never ceases to amaze me the glaring duality of the world I live in.
I am constantly reminded that we live in world where you and I have to play by one set of rules, yet the vast financial complex that resides on Wall Street isn’t held to even a fraction of those standards.
The latest example comes way of a small protest in Liberty City last week.
A few members of the Miami Workers Center, a grassroots organization, arrived at an abandoned foreclosed home, a property that like countless others is nothing more than a glorified trash dump.
Their nefarious plot? To clean the home up, and try to make it a little less of an eyesore.
Scary right?
And what did this group, which included a grandmother and an pregnant woman, encounter when they arrived at that home?
About a half dozen cops, who threatened to arrest any of them if they stepped foot on the Bank Of America-owned property.
The protesters, to their credit, didn’t give up and cleaned up the public areas around the home. Not once was a burglary tool spotted.
The officers watched over these men and women like mother hens as they picked up beer bottles and broken glass, among other fabulous ‘accessories’ the home had accumulated over the last few years. (Bank of America took the home in 2010.)
But when the banks not only trespass, but break into my clients homes? How many police officers can I get on the case? Not a single one.
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Tags: bank, bank fraud, banking, breaks, citizen, cleaning, federal reserve system, foreclose, foreclosed homes, foreclosure, foreclosures, gets, GMAC, miami workers center, police, protest, wall street
Posted in Big Banks, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Fraud | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 4th, 2012
- Banks make bad neighbors.
It’s been one of my mantras for years, and it’s a statement that is again reverberating across the country thanks to The Sun-Sentinel’s 3-part series “Bad Neighbor Banks”.
Thanks to the Sentinel, 60 Minutes, and the National Fair Housing Alliance, we are seeing the hard data that back up my assertion that banks, once they foreclose and take control of a property, just leave them to rot.
The grass no longer gets cut,the garbage accumulates, and before too long you end up with widespread blight not just in urban neighborhoods, but suburbia as well.
It’s the reason why I fight so hard to keep people in their homes. You and I are just better off when you have homeowners, vested in their houses and the neighborhoods they live in, keeping up their homes.
In the Sun-Sentinel’s series there is example after example of banks not doing even the most basic of maintenance. And their argument is usually, ‘It’s not our job’.
A bank has no investment in the neighborhoods you live in, beyond their own bottom line, and the banks have all but admitted it.
“The bank itself has no economic interest or ownership stake in the properties,” a spokesman for Deutsche Bank told the Sun-Sentinel.
So I ask you again, why would you ever want a bank as a neighbor?
The numbers don’t lie. The Sun-Sentinel found 10,300 code violations in bank-owned homes in South Florida since 2007. In the cities they tracked 40 percent of bank-owned homes were cited last year.
So chances are you are living next to one of these eyesores. And I’m betting you’re not too happy about it.
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Tags: bad neighbors, bank, bank owned homes, banking, Deutsche Bank, florida governor, foreclosure, neighbor, neighbors, Pam Bondi, Real Estate, Rick Scott, rotten, sentinel, slumlord, slums, South Florida, Sun Sentinel, suns, urban decay
Posted in Big Banks, Florida foreclosures, Foreclosure Defense | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is now asking for the public’s input on what she should do with the $300 million the state will be receiving directly from the national mortgage settlement.
She is openly soliciting your suggestions through her website from now until May 14th. As a foreclosure defense attorney and one of the people on the front lines of the housing crisis, I have more than a few ideas.
So Pam, please consider this my open letter to you and your office.
First and foremost, here is what you should NOT do with the money. Don’t throw it at principal reduction. It will have virtually no impact on Florida’s communities, it would be like throwing the money into quicksand.
So far, Florida’s efforts to offer financial relief to homeowners have just fallen flat.
Florida’s Hardest Hit program just hasn’t worked, and even recent changes to the program’s requirements will not help it reach enough people.
Move The Banks Out of Your Cities
What you need to do Ms. Bondi, is use the money to make systemic changes to Florida’s housing market.
First, give the money to your towns and cities to clear out Florida’s foreclosure blight. Blight caused by the abundance of abandoned homes the banks own, but refuse to take care of.
I’ve long told my readers that banks are bad neighbors, and the Sun-Sentinel now has the numbers that make my case.
Ms. Bondi, despite what your boss says, banks are the problem and you need to get them out of your cities and towns. Give your local governments the ammo to do it.
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Tags: banking, bondi, consumer fraud, defense attorneys, directly, federal reserve system, Florida, Florida Attorney General, foreclosure, MERS, million, mortgage, mortgages, national mortgage, open letter, pam, Pam Bondi, real property law, settlement
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Mortgage Settlement, Pam Bondi | 7 Comments »
