Posts Tagged ‘fixed income securities’

Schneiderman And Mortgage Fraud Task Force: Are We Being Hoodwinked?

Friday, April 20th, 2012

 

Are we being hoodwinked by the mortgage fraud unit?

Courtesy:Cesar Cabrera Photography

When President Obama stood before Congress and the American People three months ago and promised to hold those behind the housing crisis ‘accountable’, I was hopeful.

In the days that followed, his new field general Eric Schneiderman was unveiled and almost immediately action was taken.

When Schneiderman issued subpoenas, just days after the President appointed him to run his new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, I thought that perhaps, FINALLY, a corner had been turned.

But it’s becoming clear to me now that the train that is the RMBS Working Group hasn’t left the station, and depending on who you believe, there may not even me a station built yet!

After those few weeks of full-court press by Schneiderman, there hadn’t been a peep about the status of the Working Group’s investigation. Yes it may have only been three months, yet I fear that the bold vision you and I were sold might turn out to be just another empty promise.

The press only turned its attention back to the Working Group after a brutal Op-Ed in the New York Daily News. The co-directors of the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a citizens coalition group, called Schneiderman out and said they had yet to see any footprint of the RMBS Working Group’s investigation.

The 55 staff members promised by Attorney General Eric Holder were nowhere to be found, the pair claimed.

Yet even this Op-Ed could only draw Schneiderman’s mouthpiece out of the woodwork, rather than the Attorney General himself.

Spokesman Danny Kanner refuted their claims, saying that attorneys and other investigators had already been hired, that we shouldn’t draw any conclusions by the lack of public announcements.
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German Bank Accuses Barclays of Lying About Mortgage-Backed Securities

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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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Past Their Prime

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Just like Old Yeller, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae need to be put down

There were two players conspicuously absent when last week’s $25 Billion settlement was unveiled; two players that absolutely should have been front and center.

What are their names? If you’ve followed the housing crisis as closely as we have, then you probably know.

Our old and unwanted cousins Fannie and Freddie.

Their omission from the settlement was perhaps its biggest flaw.

There are millions upon millions of homeowners with mortgages controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, yet they aren’t getting a single penny.

We’ve been advocating principal reduction as one of the best ways to help beleaguered borrowers, and we’re not alone in that assessment. That’s why it was at the center of the settlement.

Yet Edward DeMarco, the man behind both companies, still clings to the outdated notion that principal reduction would lead to a moral contagion among homeowners otherwise known as a “moral hazard”.

He’s forbidden Fannie and Freddie to even entertain the idea.

While President Obama and others, such as Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley have turned up the heat on DeMarco, he hasn’t budged.

DeMarco is more concerned about his political ideology than helping the American homeowners, who are in essence, is his clients.

He’s like that annoying relative that no one invited, yet keeps showing up every Thanksgiving. But DeMarco is far from the only problem.

When you have Freddie Mac trying to profit from securities that paid more if homeowners couldn’t refinance, that is proof that we are just too far down the rabbit hole.
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Freddie Mac — Playing Two-Face to the American Homeowner?

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

 

Aaron Eckart as "Two-Face"

Aaron Eckhart might have played Two-Face in the last Batman movie, but Freddie Mac seems to have settled into the role these days.

Non-profit ProPublica and National Public Radio allege that Freddie Mac, which was set up to make home loans more accessible, was in fact betting against homeowners.

It’s a highly disturbing, and completely shocking report. ProPublica’s Jessie Eisinger and Chris Arnold of NPR claim that the government-owned mortgage company was investing in securities that paid substantially more if people continued to pay off high-interest mortgages.

At the same time, they were tightening the grip on credit, making it difficult for homeowners to refinance and get out of such mortgages.

So what was good for Freddie Mac’s bottom line was diametrically opposed to what was right for some people who had mortgages with them.

Heath Ledger as "The Joker"

It’s a scheme so devious The Joker wishes he thought of it first.

Now Freddie Mac officials claim there was a Chinese wall set up between the staffers responsible for their investments and those who dealt with credit regulations.

They deny there was any intent to manipulate credit regulations to enhance their pockets, and the investigation offered no evidence that there was.

Yet they’ve already agreed to stop making these risky investments, known as inverse floaters, after the Federal Housing Finance Agency leaned on them once the investigation became public.

Even if you buy Freddie Mac’s explanation, it doesn’t soften the blow. The conflict of interest here is unequivocal. The company is now essentially, owned by the taxpayers, and has a direct impact on who and who can not get a home loan.
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