He called it an “egregious mistake”. He claims he want to get rid of “Too Big To Fail”, and that he supported “portions” of the Dodd-Frank rule.
It might be one of the best acting performances I’ve seen all year. I think his chances of taking home an Oscar are all but guaranteed.
Maybe he had David Gregory fooled, (The NBC host’s lack of tough follow-up questions would seem to indicate it) but I am not buying it.
The reality is had JP Morgan not lobbied so hard against Dodd-Frank, and paid the lobbyists as much as they did, Dodd-Frank would have been much, much tougher, and Dimon would have $2 billion more in his coiffures.
It’s irony in its purest form.
This loss, which came on some very risky trades, is a perfect symbol of Wall Street’s hubris and greed. And it just goes to show you that the big banks have learned nothing from the crisis of years past.
And neither has Dimon. His apology on Meet The Press was the vocal equivalent of crocodile tears. He is another Chameleon, another Two-Face, putting on a public show for the masses, while privately lambasting anyone who is really looking to end “Too Big To Fail” when he thinks we are not paying attention. (more…)
Like the characters in "The Blair Witch Project", the banks are running scared!
Well what a wild week it has been. When we came to work on Monday we feared President Obama would put the housing crisis to bed without ever holding the banks’ feet to the fire.
The settlement with the banks, which we have blogged about ad nauseam this week, seemed as sure as a chip-shot field goal.
But thanks to President Obama’s suddenly get-tough approach, as evidenced by his State of the Union speech, we’ve seen the banks’ kick go wide-right and now all bets are off.
Can There Be Real Change In Mortgage Industry?
Now we are not completely sold that things will play out exactly as homeowners would like, this is of course the federal government we’re talking about, but for the first time we have a true sense of optimism. The President may finally be seeing things our way, and we want to throw our full support behind him.
There is no doubt cages have been rattled in the mortgage industry, and nerves have been frayed. If Obama’s plan to re-write the foreclosure rules didn’t have some kind of teeth, then we doubt we’d be seeing the type of reverberation thorough the media and the top echelons of government that we’ve detected in the last few days.
Banks Are Fearful of Settlement Collapse
The settlement could be falling apart at the seems, at least JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon thinks so. He told CNBC this morning that Obama’s announcement to investigate the packaging and servicing of mortgage loans could stop the settlement cold. (more…)
We’ve all been reading with horror about the developing situation in Italy with the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that capsized last Friday, killing several people.
What really caught our attention is the actions of the ship’s captain Francesco Schettino, who reportedly abandoned ship in the middle of the evacuations. He’s been blamed for causing the tragedy by recklessly taking the ship off-course and too close to shore
We can not compare the loss of life with the foreclosure crisis, but an argument can certainly be made that there is a parallel between the captain’s actions and that of big banks.
Banks have also been reckless, taking the economy from its intended destination and showing a complete lack of disregard with their shady real estate and foreclosure practices. We believe they have abandoned the homeowner and the taxpayer, while failing to consider their well-being and solely worrying about their own self-preservation.
Whereas the cruise line’s executives have quickly held the captain accountable, we’ve yet to see our federal government do the same to the banks, despite countless opportunities to do so.
In this excellent editorial published in the New York Times, the paper calls on President Obama to steer this ship back on course by forming an inter-agency task force to investigate the banks for their actions, many of which could be considered criminal.
Yes there’s been investigations and settlements, but there’s been very little accountability for the top executives, who’ve been rarely held personally responsible. For example Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide, didn’t have to admit to any wrongdoing when he settled civil fraud charged level by the SEC. Yes he had to pay a 67.5 million dollar fine, but that’s a fraction of the 521.5 million he’s reported to have received between 2000 and 2008, according to the NY Times. (more…)
Florida homeowners might have a new definition for bank robbers… With details now coming to light on a possible deal between banks and the state governments, it’s seems the chances of these financial institutions being held accountable is less and less likely.
South Florida law blogger and foreclosure attorney Roy Oppenheim strongly opposed the deal, which is being sought by state Attorneys General including Florida’s Pam Bondi, in a recentFOXnewspiece. Now New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgensen has backed up Oppenheim’s assertion that the deal, in its current proposed form, is not worth the potential relief that it might provide to homeowners.
Oppenheim called the reported $20-25 billion dollars in principal that homeowners would be forgiven for “a drop in the bucket” and now Morgensenreports that deal would only cost the banks between 3.5 and 5 billion dollars in actual cash, to be paid by about a dozen or so institutions. The rest of the banks’ penalties would come in the form of credits.
While HUD secretary Shaun Donovan insisted in the Times article that the settlement will hold banks accountable, both Morgensen and Oppenheim remain unconvinced. Oppenheim told FOX the deal isn’t worth a “deal with the devil”, and that it robs homeowners of the chance to bring legal action against the banks.
And will it really provide the relief homeowners are seeking?? The Times piece points to a 2008 settlement involving Countrywide Financial that promised $8.7 billion in relief to borrowers in Illinois and California that failed to deliver anything close to that. And California is one of several states that has backed out of this current negotiation. (more…)
In an era in which almost every bank on Wall Street was entangled in financial scandal, millions of Americans are left in an impoverished hole and billions of dollars in wealth has been destroyed, no one has been held accountable.
Today’s article highlights a corrupt government culture in many of the agencies that were supposed to protect Americans from banks like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Particularly, there is a glaring problem at the SEC where a revolving door that sends government employees out into to private practice and then back to the government, blurring loyalties and breeding distortion.
And Wall Street’s punishment for their brazen schemes and artificial financial boom? According to Taibbi: “carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing.”
Americans who sense two sets of laws in this country are completely correct. One set has developed for the masses, and a second special set of rules exists for the wealthy and powerful. This is not the America many of us remember growing up in.
Join Oppenheim Law next Wednesday, March 9 at 6 PM as Roy Oppenheim discusses how the aftermath of Wall Street’s greed is still affecting homeowners across the country and what you can do to pull yourself out of the hole the banks created.
Tomorrow, we will examine the perspective of arguably the poster child of Wall Street greed with Bernie Madoff’s jailhouse interview.
Sharing my thoughts on Florida foreclosures yesterday with the NBC Nightly News team really brought back some past real estate scenarios.
Long before the Florida foreclosure meltdown and “double sold mortgage” became a widely used term, I represented a commercial pilot for a major airline who owned real estate in the Florida Keys. This client had a great house but wanted to live closer to mainland Florida so that he could be closer to work.
His decision? To sell his house. Nothing unusual… right?
Back then it took a few months to find a buyer, for the buyer to find a mortgage and then a few more weeks to close.
As the closing agent at Weston Title, my staff requested a pay-off letter from the lender and – to our utter surprise and the first time in my career – two banks lay claim to the loan. In other words the originating bank had sold the loan at least once, or twice, or maybe even more. Who really knows?
But as this client’s real estate defense counsel we could not figure out who owned the loan. Well… the real estate client lost the sale. We advised for him to rent out the property and place the monthly mortgage payments in escrow. He basically followed our advice, save the escrow.
Soon after, the banks started foreclosure. It became ugly and quite a mess. We counter-claimed and got real nasty. Even the judge and mediator could not believe the story. How could a well respected national bank have lost control of their real estate collateral and literally throw their good customer, a well respected professional, under the bus without any concern? (more…)
