Posts Tagged ‘The Federal Reserve’

Week In Review: Foreclosure and the GOP; Banks May Lose HAMP Money; Bondi Stands Behind Settlement; Stern Wants Fries With That

Friday, January 27th, 2012

The South Florida Law Blog loves a good burger!

We’re finally starting to catch our breath, with the substantial amount of news we’ve seen come down the pipeline in the housing market this week.

President Obama’s State of the Union, and the apparent collapse of the federal government’s settlement with the banks have been our focus this week, and rightfully so. But there’s been lots of other stories that have crossed our desk this week, some big, some small, but all important.

 

Republicans Offer Unpopular Solutions for Housing Fix

Most of our attention has been on the President this week, but we’ve also been keeping our eyes of the Republicans as well. With the Florida GOP Primary just days away, the candidates have been descending on Florida as expected. Foreclosure, which has been long absent from the GOP discussion, has become a more focal issue this week.

Unfortunately, it feels like much of the talking points have focused on the candidates blaming each other for causing the housing crisis, and less on what they plan to do to fix it.

This excellent piece in The Street details all the remaining Republicans comments on foreclosure. They all have suggested a hands-off approach, and appear to be under the misguided notion that the market will correct itself on its own. Gingrich and Paul have made one-note villains out of the Dodd-Frank Act and The Federal Reserve, respectively.

Romney’s past comments about market correction have come back to haunt him as he tries to pass himself off as sympathetic to the homeowners’ plight. Frankly we don’t feel like any of the Republican candidates are looking out for the homeowners.
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Who gets the Golden Ticket? Charlie or the Banks?

Friday, April 29th, 2011

Who gets the Golden Ticket? Charlie or the banks?Financial Times Headline: Caution urged on US bank foreclosure fines

Who gets the golden ticket? We all remember the deserving Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka. In the end, Charlie gets the Chocolate Factory and the golden ticket.

This week’s Financial Times writer Tom Braithwaite reported a story: Caution urged on US bank foreclosure fines. The story focuses on how banks will be fined for failures that led to the foreclosure debacle. BUT…there is some sympathy and sugar coating happening. It seems regulators are pressing to avoid “dangerously large” penalties, according to one of the top officials participating in fractious settlement talks.

John Walsh, acting comptroller of the currency, told the Financial Times that he supported financial penalties for mortgage servicers, led by Bank of America and Wells Fargo, whose shoddy paperwork and improperly signed affidavits caused the repossession of delinquent borrowers’ homes to come to a grinding halt.

Here’s another BUT….

But the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has differed with some state attorneys-general, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which all want a more far-reaching settlement, with $20b in fines and at least some of the money used to reduce the debt owed by struggling homeowners.

The fact is this: if the government goes too light on banks; it will be an invitation for banks to continue to skirt the law and continue to believe that they are not just too big to fail, but too big to be regulated or stopped.
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