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.
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