Posts Tagged ‘banks’
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 »
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
What would he have said about the banks fraudulent acts?
Last weekend Chuck Coulson, the man once called Richard Nixon’s ‘hatchet man”, passed away at the age of 80.
Known both for his being one of the ‘Watergate Seven’ and his subsequent 2nd life as a born-again evangelist, I can only wonder what he thought of of our current foreclosure crisis.
I don’t know if he ever gave it much thought, but I suspect there would be a level of amazement.
Watergate, which started over a single break-in, landed almost 50 men in jail, including many top Nixon aides like Coulson.
The banks have broken into thousands of homes in their efforts to secure ‘abandoned properties’. Except you and I both know that most of these homes were anything but abandoned.
Sometimes they weren’t even in foreclosure. I’ve had about a dozen clients who’ve had their locks changed or had their homes ransacked by repo agents who were hired by the banks.
The banks, playing the role of Nixon and his cronies, have used aggressive tactics that Coulson, in his days as Nixon’s legal counsel, might have employed.
Coulson allegedly said he would walk over his own grandmother to get the president re-elected, which sounds appropriate because banks have done almost everything else in order to foreclose on homeowners who often didn’t deserve it.
Yet for crimes that would seem to fit in any file on Watergate, there is not a single banking executive who has been arrested.
I’ll bet good money Coulson would wonder why.
Coulson was convicted for his efforts in trying to discredit the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, but what would he have said about the ‘hatchet job’ banks have done on homeowners?
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Tags: 20th century in the united states, banking, banks, chuck coulson, conspiracy, coulson, foreclosure, foreclosures, hatchet job, hatchet man, homeowners, oppenheim, politics, presidency of richard nixon, richard, richard nixon, watergate, watergate scandal
Posted in Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
“Let me be frank. Our banks earn profit too easily. Why? Because a small number of large banks have a monopoly.”
Sounds like something I would have said. Or something our president SHOULD be saying.
Except here’s the thing. The elected official quoted isn’t talking about our own corrupt banking system.
The quote above came from the prime minister of China. And he’s talking about his own country’s state-run banking companies.
Wen Jiabao, during a recent broadcast of China’s state-run radio, said his banks need to be broken up to fix his country’s economy.
If China, a country not exactly known for embracing capitalism, wants to break up its banks, does the US have any other choice but to follow suit?
I believe our nation, as a people, is duty bound to do so.
I’m saying it. The Dallas Fed has said it. Even Bruce Springsteen has said it. And now the prime minister of China has said it.
When banks are not only ‘Too Big To Fail’ but too big to compete, we the people must step in and break them up.
There really is no other choice. It’s pretty shocking that China has come to that conclusion before us. In fact it’s an absolute disgrace.
The idea that it’s OK for the TBTF banks to continue operating at the size they now do is a fallacy and it’s a notion that’s only been propounded by the banking industry to basically preserve the status quo.
Just shows you whose pockets many of our politicians are in.
Only when we have competitive, nimble, smaller banks that are able to seize new opportunities as they arise are we going to be able to compete on the world stage.
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Tags: at&T, bank, banking, banking companies, banking in the united states, banking industries, banks, banks system, break up, breaks, china, dallas fed, economy of the united states, Federal Reserve, federal reserve system, finance, large banks, monopoly, politicians, real estate market, standard oil, steel, subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate, too big to fail, Wen Jiabao
Posted in Big Banks, Too Big To Fail | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Excuse me Jamie. Mr. Dimon, hello?
Do you really still think we’re fools?
How else can you explain your half-hearted apology over JP Morgan’s part in the robosigning scandal?
The CEO of JP Morgan Chase made some efforts towards reconciliation in his annual letter to shareholders, which is now out for all to see.
But it’s clear that Jamie Dimon is still delusional and suffers a full blown case of pass-the-buck disease, for which, apparently, there is no cure.
In the section titled “The Mortgage Business — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” (He should have just left out the first two) Dimon admits to JP Morgan Chase’s shareholders that his companies ‘servicing operations left a lot to be desired’
He adds his company ‘made too many mistakes’ and that the it was ‘not our finest hour’.
What’s sarcasm!
Let’s be honest, it was your worst hour and your lasting legacy.
Here’s the problem Mr. Dimon. You didn’t just make a mistake. If I forget to buy milk on the way home, that’s a mistake. Your company, your officers and your top executives all suborned fraud forgery and perjury, all federal crimes.
Robosigning was more that just, as you put it, ‘paperwork errors’.
Everyone from the tippy-top of your company on down, encouraged this kind of illegal activity to happen, in fact it became part of the operating procedures of your company! You just farmed it out.
Why not just own up to the homeowners, the taxpayers and your shareholders. You’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, I can still see the bruise.
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Tags: bank, banks, ceo, chase, dimon, explanation, finance, foreclosure, investment, investment banks, j. p. morgan, jamie, jamie dimon, jp, jp morgan, JP Morgan Chase, jpmorgan chase, morgan chase, offers, primary dealers, robosigning, shareholder
Posted in Robosigning | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Man I just love it when the banks eat their own!
It’s even better when they start using MY arguments to do it. The very same arguments I’ve used to defend my clients.
The essential problem is this, securitized trusts, the ones your homes were bought and sold into, weren’t always mortgage-backed!
I’ve long had questions about the validity of these REMICs, and now the banks are making my case for me! Thanks guys!
HSH Nordbank AG is now suing Barclays N.Y. after they bought $46 million in residential mortgage-backed securities from them.
Investigators for HSH Nordbank claim that none of the 2,000 mortgage loans they sampled had actually been assigned into the trusts when they were sold.
So if they tried to foreclose on some of these properties, it made it very difficult for them to do so, the lawsuit alleges.
Had they realized the mortgages weren’t properly assigned, they never would have bought the securities in the first place, HSH Nordbank’s lawyers say.
As I’ve always said, it goes back to making the banks prove who owns your mortgage. HSH Nordbank basically is admitting that they couldn’t do exactly that! Now this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.
I blogged about a similar lawsuit involving AIG and Bank of America last year. But the banks, it seems have, clearly have not learned their lesson.
According to the lawsuit, Barclays overstated the value of these loans in order to sell them off. It’s being alleged that these loans did not meet the underwriting standards of the mortgage securities that HSH Nordbank was buying into.
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Tags: bank, banking, banks, barclays, eric schneiderman, finance, fixed income securities, german banks, hsh nordbank, hsh nordbank ag, mortgage, mortgage backed security, mortgage loan, mortgage loans, mortgage security, mortgage-backed securities, mortgages, REMICS, residential mortgage backed security, rmbs working group, securities, securitization, structured finance
Posted in Eric Schneiderman, Foreclosure Defense, REMICS, Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, Securitized Trusts | No Comments »
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Too Big To Fail used to be a joke.
It became an insult hurled by Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party at the big banks, but that’s all it was.
It was never an expression that had any legitimacy. It was just a nice little way for the media to classify the banking industry in a ready-made slogan.
Guess what? Too Big To Fail isn’t a joke anymore. It’s actual policy towards our nation’s biggest financial institutions.
The Federal Reserve of Dallas has now legitimized my scathing criticisms of the banks in their annual report and it has resonated with with everything I’ve been writing in this blog.
It was a nice early birthday present when I got home yesterday and read the report, written by the head of the Dallas Fed’s research department. Harvey Rosenblum.
When Greg Smith published his critique of Goldman Sachs, the aftershocks rang through the halls of every office on Wall Street.
After reading Rosenblum’s report, which was subtitled “Why We Must End Too Big To Fail — Now”, I can only imagine what will happen now.
It’s about time that someone on the government side validated the anger and anxiety shared by the Occupy and Tea Party movements. Right there in an official Fed paper!!
So what did I find so appealing about his critique? He spells it out, clear as day, what Too Big To Fail really is, and what’s it’s led to.
What It Is: In 1970 the top 5 banks possessed 17% of the nation’s banking assets. In 2010? 52 percent.
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Tags: bailout, bank, banking, banking in the united states, banking industries, banks, biggest banks, dallas, dallas fed, dallas feed, economics, emergency economic stabilization act, fail, Fed, federal deposit insurance corporation, Federal Reserve, federal reserve system, harvey rosenblum, moral hazard, occupy, Occupy Wall Street, protestors, too big, too big to fail, top banks, united states federal banking legislation, wall street
Posted in Big Banks, Federal Reserve, Occupy Wall Street, Too Big To Fail | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
After you read the information in these audits, chances are you'll be screaming too!
Well what do you know.
Earlier this week I blogged about the mortgage settlement documents and their stunning lack of detail on the frauds committed by the banks during the days of robosigning.
I was frustrated because it seems like the complete recklessness of the banks was being whitewashed in order for the settlement to go through.
Turns out I was just looking in the wrong place.
Just as the Department of Justice announced that the mortgage settlement had been filed in court, Housing and Urban Development released the results of a series of stinging audits, one for each lender in the settlement.
It was HUD’s investigation that helped lead to the settlement in the first place.
The settlement is hundreds and hundreds of pages. Most of the audits were around 10 pages long. Yet there is more harsh truth about how far the banks went to rob people of their homes in those select pages than in the entire settlement.
So what’s in these audits that is so damning?
Facts. Numbers. Witness Statements. And just how far the banks went keep the lid on how pervasive robosigning was
In other words, plenty to make your skin crawl. There’s no whitewashing here.
In Bank of America’s case, their attorneys interfered with HUD’s investigation, refusing to allow some of their employees to answer questions, sometimes stopping them mid-sentence.
Ally Financial’s attorneys made 18 current employees plead the fifth and blocked them from talking to investigators.
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Tags: ally financial, auditing, audits, backroom, banking, banks, Citigroup, department of housing and urban development, document, exposed, finance, foreclosure, housing and urban development, HUD, investment, jpmorgan chase, mortgage settlement, newly released, release, settlement, Wells Fargo
Posted in Mortgage Settlement, Robosigning | No Comments »
