Frauds, Scams and Greed

05/16/2012 - JPMorgan Allegedly Forecloses On Home Two Months After Its Purchase - Allan Danforth of Kansas City claims that he bought a house in a short sale in September 2010 from homeowners whose mortgage was held by JPMorgan, KMBC reports. Then two months later and without warning, JPMorgan foreclosed on the home, changing the locks and taking away his furniture, appliances and family items. Danforth is now suing JPMorgan for trespassing and theft. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/15/2012 - Wells Fargo Accused Of Offering Deceptive Modifications - U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero dismissed some of the lawsuit's claims on Wednesday, but gave the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint about the alleged breach of contract. He also let the unfair competition claims stay. The Sutcliffes aren't the only homeowners struggling to secure a permanent loan modification. A number of banks have already been proven guilty of "dual-tracking," or evaluating homeowners for mortgage modifications while simultaneously initiating foreclosure proceedings on them. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/15/2012 - Taxpayers Fund $454,000 Pay for Collector Chasing Student Loans - ECMC, a Minnesota nonprofit group, owes its success to an 18-year-old agreement with the U.S. government. The company charges fees to borrowers and earns commissions from taxpayers -- totaling as much as 31 percent -- when it collects on defaulted student loans. Those rich rewards, which are approved by Congress, are sparking criticism that ECMC and similar collection agencies are reaping a bonanza from former students’ pain. - www.bloomberg.com

05/10/2012 - JPMorgan Trading Loss Suggests Little Has Changed Since The Financial Crisis - If you thought Wall Street had learned its lesson four years after the global financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading debacle suggests you should think again, investment bankers and industry experts say. To some, it suggests that the need for financial reform is still just as urgent as it was the day the crisis broke out. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/10/2012 - JPMorgan Trading Loss Suggests Little Has Changed Since The Financial Crisis - If you thought Wall Street had learned its lesson four years after the global financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading debacle suggests you should think again, investment bankers and industry experts say. To some, it suggests that the need for financial reform is still just as urgent as it was the day the crisis broke out. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/10/2012 - How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform | The scary part is the way the banks strangled Dodd-Frank, with a big assist Congress and the White House. - The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government's inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while – but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. - www.rollingstone.com

05/09/2012 - Florida Supreme Court to review dismissed foreclosure lawsuit against Greenacres man - At issue is whether a bank can escape punishment for filing flawed or fraudulent documents in a case by voluntarily dismissing it. (A voluntary dismissal allows the bank to refile at a later date.) That's what Royal Palm Beach-based foreclosure defense attorney Tom Ice said happened when he challenged a document created by the Law Offices of David J. Stern and sought to question employees about its veracity. On the eve of those depositions, the bank moved to dismiss the case, blocking the court's ability to address any sanctions. "The objective here was to hide from punishment for the wrongdoing," Ice said. - www.palmbeachpost.com

05/09/2012 - PUSHED OFF THE CLIFF Exorbitant Insurance Policies Tipping Homeowners Into Foreclosure -
The situation has caught the attention of state regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is considering rules to help homeowners avoid unwarranted “force- placed insurance.” The U.S. ought to go further and limit commissions, fine any company that knowingly overcharges a homeowner and require banks to seek competitive bids for force- placed insurance policies. Because insurance is not regulated at the federal level, states also need to play a stronger role in bringing down rates. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/08/2012 - Yolanda Quesada Fired From Wells Fargo For Shoplifting 40 Years Ago -
Quesada, who is now 58, was fired shortly after receiving a report from an FBI background check in the mail, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. A Wells Fargo spokesman told the Journal-Sentinel that the company began performing thorough background checks on all existing mortgage unit employees last year "due to legal requirements and changes in the regulatory environment." - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/08/2012 - Sandy Weill, Builder Of Too Big To Fail, No Longer Accepts Blame For Crisis -
The man who brought you Too Big To Fail has had just about enough of everybody blaming him for big banks failing. In an interview with Fortune's Nin-Hai Tseng, Sandy Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup, said his lumbering beast of a bank, and other lumbering beasts like it, aren't to blame for the crisis. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/08/2012 - JPMorgan Chase Whistleblower: Standing Up To Banks Is 'Essentially Suicide' - -
Some schools are overstating how much money prospective students will actually be held accountable for by including student loans in their accounting of financial aid, Bloomberg News reports. For example, Drexel University sent one accepted student a letter with "offered financial aid" that consisted mostly of student loans including a large amount that was expected to be borrowed from private lenders. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher: Too Big To Fail Banks Should Be Punished - -
Fisher, who has argued repeatedly for the end of too-big-to-fail banks, on Tuesday posted a presentation on the Dallas Fed's web site explaining why the biggest U.S. banks are dangerous and what should be done about them. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - Fake Collectors Are Scaring People Into Paying Debts They Don't Owe | Use Payday Lender Info To Scare People Into Paying Debts They Don't Owe - -
Another day, another story of debt collectors acting shady. Some California residents recently started getting threatening calls from fake debt collectors about debts they didn't actually owe, according to a column by Paul Muschick at The Morning Call, a newspaper based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: That debt collector may be a fake Crooks are posing as debt collectors.

04/29/2012 - Bank CEOs Try To Strong-Arm Fed On 'Unrealistic' Regulations - -
The banking industry is getting personal in its tireless fight against regulation. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and the industry's regulation-basher in chief, has called for a sit-down next week between the heads of four of the nation's biggest banks -- JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley -- and Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - Colleges Employ Deceptive Financial Aid Tactics | College Financial Aid Letters Deceive Prospective Students -
Some schools are overstating how much money prospective students will actually be held accountable for by including student loans in their accounting of financial aid, Bloomberg News reports. For example, Drexel University sent one accepted student a letter with "offered financial aid" that consisted mostly of student loans including a large amount that was expected to be borrowed from private lenders. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - KeyBank Agrees To Forgive Student Loans Of Christopher Bryski, Dead Rutgers Student [UPDATE] -
Update:
Thursday morning, Joseph Bryski -- who had cosigned the loan of his son Christopher, who died in 2006 -- received a letter from KeyBank stating that the bank decided to forgive his debt, according to an email from Christopher's brother Ryan Bryski to The Huffington Post.
Previously
When Christopher Bryski, a Rutgers University undergraduate student, died from a traumatic brain injury in 2006, his family wasn't thinking about his student loans. That is, not until KeyBank, a Cleveland-based institution with nearly - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - Robert Whitten Wins Battle With Bank Of America Over Lifetime Free Checking Account (VIDEO) - Robert Whitten said as a 17-year-old he signed up for a lifetime free checking account with Virginia Commonwealth Bank, which after a series of acquisitions came into the ownership of BofA. One day, Whitten says, he noticed he was getting charged fees, according to ABC News. Whitten then called BofA, only to be told the lifetime free promotion had expired. "But I haven’t," he responded. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/29/2012 - North Carolina Hospitals Sued 40,000 Patients Over Unpaid Bills - Hospitals in North Carolina are taking debt-collection to a whole new level. Certain North Carolina hospitals sued 40,000 patients for unpaid bills between 2005 and 2010, including bringing a $200,000 case against a Vietnam veteran whose leg was amputated. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Hospital suits force new pain on patients

04/27/2012 - Citizens Bank Settles Overdraft Fee Lawsuit For $137.5 Million - Wednesday's agreement puts Citizens in the company of 12 other banks, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, who have agreed to pay out settlements to customers who were charged unfair overdraft fees. At issue is the financial institutions' method of reordering debit-card transactions from highest to lowest amount--rather than in the order that the transactions occurred--in order to maximize the number of overdraft fees that could be charged to a customer. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/26/2012 - Eileen Foster, Former Countrywide Executive, Calls For Investigation Into Cover-Ups - "Overwhelming evidence of perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice exist in the numerous claims, court filings and trial and investigative transcripts," Foster said. She herself was fired after reporting that falsified income documentation and faked signatures had been used to steer borrowers into bad mortgages. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/26/2012 - Venture Capitalist Forced To Defend Only Making 31,200% Return - Two years ago we invested $250,000 in Instagram. Thanks to the spectacular vision and effort of Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team, the investment will be worth $78,000,000 when the Faceboook acquisition closes. The work that Kevin and team did will go down as legend in the industry and we thank them immensely. We also thank our co-investors Steve Anderson of Baseline and Matt Cohler of Benchmark. - www.marketwatch.com

04/26/2012 - Goldman CEO: I've Got 30,000 Reasons The Defector Is Wrong - In an interview with CNBC, Blankfein said the response from clients was "overwhelmingly positive" to the infamous op-ed in the New York Times, in which Greg Smith, a former Goldman vice president, said the firm placed its own interest above that of its clients. "We had one person who was very earnest about what he had written, but 30,000 people who felt the opposite," Blankfein said, referring to other Goldman employees, "and clients who were unbelievably supportive." - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/26/2012 - Banks Aggressively Courting Poor Customers With High-Fee Products - An increasing number of the nation’s large banks — U.S. Bank, Regions Financial and Wells Fargo among them — are aggressively courting low-income customers like Mr. Wegner with alternative products that can carry high fees. They are rapidly expanding these offerings partly because the products were largely untouched by recent financial regulations, and also to recoup the billions in lost income from recent limits on debit and credit card fees. - www.nytimes.com
Read More: When Banks Compete With Check-Cashing Stores

04/25/2012 - New Jersey Church Burns Credit Card Offers In Protest Of Predatory Lending Practices - Last Sunday, members of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in New Jersey gathered to burn mailed credit card offers following church services in an act of protest against predatory lending, myCentralJersey.com reports. The group was led by Rev. DeForest B. Soaries Jr., an outspoken activist against aggressive lending practices and a proponent of debt-free living. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/25/2012 - STARTUP COP Gas Stations Charge More Than $2 Per Gallon Credit Card Fee: Report - Gas prices may be falling nationwide, but some people on Long Island are shelling out mind-boggling sums at the pump. Eighteen gas stations in eastern Long Island are charging more than $2 per gallon credit card fees, according to CBS 2 New York. (H/t Consumerist.) - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/17/2012 - STARTUP COP Fake BofA Website: 'Banking Too Complicated For Ordinary People' - Fake Bank Of America Website, YourBofA, Asks People How They Would Run BofA - A spokesman for YourBofA, who identified himself as Bengo Guenther, told The Huffington Post that the site is a collaboration between the Yes Lab -- the Yes Men's incubator for culture-jamming projects -- and a number of other parties, including the Rainforest Action Network, "people with Occupy Wall Street" as well as the New Bottom Line, a pro-labor coalition that advocates for the use of credit unions and community banks. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/17/2012 - STARTUP COP Former FBI Agent On How To Spot A Crowdfunding Scam | Post-JOBS Act, Investors Brace For Startup Scam Artists - Signed into law earlier this month, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act makes it easier for the general public to invest in startups by removing rules that previously allowed only wealthy investors to buy stakes in young companies. Under the new law, effective early 2013, a startup can raise up to $1 million in small increments from large groups of everyday people. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/13/2012 - Feds Investigate Allegations Of Racial Discrimination At Wells Fargo - Wells Fargo & Co., the nation's largest mortgage lender, is facing the second of at least two federal probes into how it treats minority borrowers and the properties it owns in minority neighborhoods. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials confirmed this week that the agency will investigate allegations lodged against the bank Tuesday by the National Fair Housing Alliance. The alliance complaint accused Wells Fargo of working to maintain and market bank-owned foreclosed properties in predominantly white communities far more aggressively than it does in mostly black and Latino neighborhoods. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/13/2012 - Big Companies Collecting State Taxes From Workers And Keeping The Money - Why do state governments do this? Public records show that large companies often pay little or no state income tax in states where they have large operations, as this column has documented. Some companies get discounts on property, sales and other taxes. So how to provide even more subsidies without writing a check? Simple. Let corporations keep the state income taxes deducted from their workers' paychecks for up to 25 years. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/13/2012 - Thanks To BofA You Can Now Buy Foreclosed Homes In Bulk | Bank Of America To Sell Off Hundreds Of Foreclosed Homes In Second Bulk Offering - The bulk deal, which includes foreclosed homes in California, Florida, Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and Georgia, is one of the biggest block offerings of foreclosed homes ever done by a bank, these sources say. The bulk sale comes at a time that institutional investors, including private equity firms and hedge funds, are raising money to invest in a bulk offering of 2,500 renter-occupied foreclosed properties being auctioned by Fannie Mae. The government-sponsored mortgage finance firm is currently accepting bids for that bulk sale under a trial project by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/13/2012 - JPMorgan Will Almost Certainly Play Role In Next Financial Crisis | TITANIC JPMorgan Chase: The Standard Bearer For 'Too Big To Fail' - JPMorgan is now the country's biggest commercial bank by assets, with nearly $2.3 trillion, a number that has increased since the financial crisis. It is also now the biggest investment bank in the entire world, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a report by a research group called Coalition. Second on the list? The first loser, in other words? Goldman Sachs. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/12/2012 - Lack of Competition Stifles Refinance Program for Underwater Homeowners - Some homeowners are getting stuck with relatively high interest rates even after they participate in the government's program to help them refinance their mortgages. The biggest banks are not lowering rates as much as they could be - and homeowners have few options to go elsewhere. Analysts say that the big banks are set to make major profits off of the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, also known as HARP, which allows homeowners with loans backed by government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance if they owe more than their home is worth. - www.propublica.com

04/12/2012 - Secret Docs Show Foreclosure Watchdog Doesn't Bark or Bite - Documents obtained by ProPublica-government audit reports of GMAC, the country's fifth-largest mortgage servicer-provide the first detailed look at the program's oversight. They show that the company operated with almost no oversight for the program's first eight months. When auditors did finally conduct a major review more than a year into the program, they found that GMAC had seriously mishandled many loan modifications-miscalculating homeowner income in more than 80 percent of audited cases, for example. Yet, GMAC suffered no penalty. GMAC itself said it hasn't reversed a single foreclosure as a result of a government audit. - www.propublica.com

04/12/2012 - UBS Wins Ruling In Tax Evasion Suit Brought By Billionaire Igor Olenicoff - A U.S. federal judge ruled on Tuesday in favor of Swiss bank UBS AG in a lawsuit brought by Igor Olenicoff, a billionaire former client who ran afoul of the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and tried to blame the bank. Olenicoff sued UBS in 2008, accusing the bank of fraud, conspiracy and other charges in handling some $200 million he kept in offshore accounts and claiming that UBS had wrongfully advised him that he did not have to report them to the IRS. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/12/2012 - At Goldman Sachs Servicer, "Total Disaster" - Yesterday, we published "The Great American Foreclosure Story," our latest Kindle Single. The narrative gives readers a comprehensive look at the foreclosure crisis. Part of that story is the government's inadequate response, particularly its Home Affordable Modification Program, HAMP. In the excerpt below, Chris Wyatt, a former employee of Litton Loan Servicing, then a Goldman Sachs subsidiary, tells what it was like at the company during the program's first, crucial years. In 2009, during the first few months of its participation in the program, Litton put tens of thousands of homeowners into trial modifications. That was easy, because nothing had to be documented. Under the agreements, if the borrower made the lowered payments for the three-month trial period, they'd receive permanent modifications. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Kindle Edition E-book $0.99: The Great American Foreclosure Story: The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home (Kindle Single) [Kindle Edition]

04/11/2012 - The Great American Foreclosure Story: The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home - Note: This story is not subject to our Creative Commons license. This story is also being published as an ebook for all devices in partnership with Open Road, and is being made available in partnership with Amazon.com as part of Amazon's Kindle Singles program. - www.propublica.com

04/09/2012 - Webster Bank Charges Elderly Woman $2,500 In Fees After Bouncing 70 Checks - But this seems to be a pattern for Webster Bank. In 2010, the bank agreed to pay $2.8 million to settle in a class action lawsuit over the bank's predatory overdraft practices. And this latest story further highlights how vulnerable the poorest are to bank fees--9 percent of bank customers pay nearly 85 percent of all overdraft fees, according to a 2008 report from the FDIC. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/09/2012 - Wells Fargo Slapped With $3.1 Million Fine For 'Reprehensible' Handling Of One Mortgage - In a scathing opinion issued last week, Elizabeth Magner, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, characterized as "highly reprehensible" Wells Fargo's behavior over more than five years of litigation with a single homeowner and ordered the bank to pay the New Orleans man a whopping $3.1 million in punitive damages, one of the biggest fines ever for mortgage servicing misconduct. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/08/2012 - Bank Of America Refunds John McDevitt, Veteran, Money From Debit Card Fraud Claim - McDevitt, a U.S. Army reservist, was on leave in Greece in November 2010, when he said purchased a couple of drinks at an Athens club. He later noticed several debit card charges totaling about $25,000, and although he filed a fraud claim with Bank of America, representatives eventually said there was nothing they could do. But on April 4, after months of complaints and protests, McDevitt received a call from a bank representative who told the veteran he'd receive the money, ABC News reports. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: What prompted Bank of America's change of heart?

04/01/2012 - BofA Customer Told To Pay Her Credit Card Debt All Over Gain | Borrower Beware: B of A Customer Repaid Her Bill Yet Faced a Collections Nightmare - Karen Stevens spent nearly $1,900 paying off delinquent credit card debt she owed Bank of America in 2006. She then spent another three years fending off demands from collections agencies that she repay the debt all over again. Neither a cancelled check or creditor's letter stating that she'd fulfilled her obligations deterred the collectors. Stevens ended the nightmare only by hiring a lawyer and counter-suing her pursuers. Bank of America was not directly involved in the legal contretemps, but it appears to have set them off by selling rights to Stevens' account, even after assuring her she'd paid up in full. Bank of America and other large institutions have for years sold off batches of charged-off accounts to outside collections specialists. The practice usually generates relatively small amounts of revenue and in many cases is entirely appropriate. - www.americanbanker.com

04/01/2012 - John McDevitt, Afghanistan War Veteran, Says He'll Struggle To Pay For Daughter's Wedding Thanks To Bank Of America - McDevitt says he was charged more than $25,000 by an Athens nightclub even though he claims he only bought a few drinks there, but BofA's investigation has conluded that he'll have to take the charges up with the Greek merchant if he hopes to recoup the lost funds, according to WKTV. The loss is that much more painful since McDevitt says he planned to use that money for his daughter's wedding. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/01/2012 - Fannie Mae Home Insurance Rules Won't Curb Many Abuses, Critics Say - In the current system, insurance companies pay commissions to banks in exchange for the right to provide one of these "forced-place" policies. The commissions, a percentage of the total cost of the policy, give the banks a financial incentive to choose the most expensive policy or to require unnecessary levels of coverage -- for instance, imposing hurricane and flood coverage on homeowners with existing policies that already offer that protection. The American Banker found that the cost of bank-imposed policies could reach 10 times the normal market rates and that many of the largest financial institutions, including Bank of America, own forced-place insurance subsidiaries. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2012 - JPMorgan Chase Reps 'Not Aware' Of Mortgage Settlement, Says Housing Advocate - Mira Tanna, a housing advocate in Orlando, Fla., doesn't expect everyone to know the details of the recently announced $25 billion mortgage settlement, but she was taken aback, she said, when two JPMorgan Chase employees who work directly with homeowners recently told her that they were not aware of the deal nor of their bank's pledge to consider principal reduction for underwater borrowers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2012 - Big Mortgage Deal Gives Banks Credit For Things They Were Doing Anyway - In February, JPMorgan Chase donated a home to an Iraq war veteran in Bucoda, Wash., and Bank of America waived the $140,000 debt that a Florida man still owed after the sale of his foreclosed home. Over the last year, Wells Fargo has demolished about a dozen houses in Cleveland. Banks do things like this — real estate transactions that do nothing to prevent foreclosure — all the time. But beginning this month, they can count such activities as part of their new commitment to help people stay in their homes. - www.nytimes.com

03/26/2012 - Home Loans Can Walk, Your Mortgage Nightmare Explained - These days home loans, especially loans in default or otherwise in distress, get traded around more often than a mid-career relief pitcher. The lender that makes the loan may sell it to an investor, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or another bank. Sometimes the original lender gets bought out by another bank and the loan is transferred. For homeowners who remain current on their payments and can avoid financial distress, it rarely matters who owns or services their home loan. But when times get tough, that changes. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/16/2012 - Banks Worsening Foreclosure Crisis By Overvaluing Homes: Study - It's not clear how or why banks are getting an inflated idea of the value of so many properties -- especially since foreclosed homes tend to drag down real estate prices for the whole neighborhood -- but the trend seems to be real. Fitzpatrick and Whitaker note that at foreclosed-home auctions in the Cleveland area, banks routinely sell their properties for much less than what they paid to buy them from the sheriff, meaning banks are high-balling their estimates of what those homes are worth. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Bank Managers Reportedly Ignored Widespread Foreclosure Errors | Bank Officials Cited in Churn of Foreclosures - Managers at major banks ignored widespread errors in the foreclosure process, in some cases instructing employees to adopt make-believe titles and speed documents through the system despite internal objections, according to a wide-ranging review by federal investigators. The banks have largely focused the blame for mistakes on low-level employees, attributing many of the problems to the surge in the volume of foreclosures after the housing market collapsed and the economy weakened in 2008. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Big Banks Consistently Hindering Mortgage Investigation: Watchdog - The findings, based on a review of foreclosure practices at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial over a two-year span from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2010, essentially confirm what has been reported extensively for nearly two years. Bank employees, in order to speed foreclosures, signed hundreds of legal documents a day without reviewing the accuracy of the foreclosure information, notarized signatures on documents that purported to verify a bank's legal right to foreclose without ever checking whether that was true, and hired law firms that forged signatures en masse -- all with the encouragement of management. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Ex-Employees: Bank Used Shortcuts, Faulty Records To Sue Customers - JPMorgan Chase & Co. took procedural shortcuts and used faulty account records in suing tens of thousands of delinquent credit card borrowers for at least two years, current and former employees say. The process flaws sparked a regulatory probe by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and forced the bank to stop suing delinquent borrowers altogether last year. The bank's errors could call into question the legitimacy of billions of dollars in outstanding claims against debtors and of legal judgments Chase has already won, current and former Chase employees say. - www.americanbanker.com

03/13/2012 - Encore Capital, Debt Collector, Sued For Alleged Robo-Signing Practices - Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves. All told, including dividend, interest and other payments, U.S. banks have repaid the government $211.5 billion under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the first phase of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), according to a report Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. That's more than the $204.9 billion the banks initially got under TARP. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2012 - Neat Trick: Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report - Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves. All told, including dividend, interest and other payments, U.S. banks have repaid the government $211.5 billion under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the first phase of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), according to a report Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. That's more than the $204.9 billion the banks initially got under TARP. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/05/2012 - Senior Citizens, Low-Income Earners The Targets Of New Tax Scam: IRS - The Internal Revenue Service issued a notice on Monday warning of a new piece of financial fraud that's making the rounds. According to the IRS, the fraud informs taxpayers that they might be eligible for a refund under the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which awards tax rebates to people paying college tuition expenses. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/05/2012 - Bank Fee Nightmare: Fifth Third Account Reopened, Fees Piled Up | BANK-FEE HELL: The Account That Wouldn't Die - checking account at Fifth Third Bank, an automatic $10 payment for his commuter pass re-opened his account. Over the next few days, other automatic payments were processed without his consent: a utility bill, an iPad app, a PayPal purchase. The bank added fee after fee for each overdraft and returned item. About 10 days later, by the time McKinley noticed the Cincinnati-based bank's fee spree on his "closed" account, he owed $438.35. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - Ex-Plantation, Florida cop goes to federal prison for multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud - A former Plantation police officer was sentenced to three years and seven months in federal prison on Friday and ordered to pay close to $3 million in restitution for his role in a South Florida mortgage fraud. Joseph Guaracino was the central target in the $16 million mortgage fraud investigation, code-named "Operation Copout," but a jury was unable to reach a verdict on the original 33 criminal charges against him after a five-month trial last year. - www.sun-sentinel.com

03/03/2012 - Banks Trying To Charge You Pesky Fees | Bank Fees Quietly Coming Back Even After Backlash - Big banks, facing declining revenues and a regulatory climate that leaves them fewer creative ways to make money, are quietly introducing or experimenting with fees that are sure to outrage customers. Bank of America was shouted down by angry customers last fall when it tried to impose a $5 monthly fee for using a debit card. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo backed off plans to impose their own fees. - www.cnn.com

02/10/2012 - SEC May Target Big Banks In Lawsuit Over Mortgage-Backed Securities - The Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to formally warn a number of firms that sold mortgage-backed securities in the years leading up to the meltdown of an impending enforcement action, the Wall Street Journal reports. At issue is whether banks knew at the time that the mortgages backing their securities were of poor quality -- and whether the banks nevertheless presented a picture of the loans that was misleadingly reassuring. - www.cnn.com

02/09/2012 - First Premier's $400-a-year credit card - First Premier's Platinum credit card comes with a 36% interest rate and fees that could easily add up to more than $400 a year. Among the most outrageous fees: a 25% penalty if your credit limit is raised. - www.cnn.com

02/08/2012 - For First Time Since Robo-Signing Crisis, Senior Executive Faces Jail | In DocX Case, Robo-Signing Forgery Charge Hits Top Executive - A grand jury in Missouri handed up the 136-count indictment late last week charging Georgia-based DocX -- a subsidiary of the massive mortgage processor Lender Processing Services -- and its founder and former president Lorraine O. Brown, with forgery. The indictment alleges that DocX employees fabricated signatures on hundreds of real estate documents, some used in foreclosures. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2012 - Consumers Mostly Complain About Credit Cards To New Agency - There is no clear winning category among credit card complaints. "Billing disputes" edged out "Identity theft/fraud/embezzlement," but collectively accounted for about a quarter of all complaints. More than half of all consumers who contacted the CFPB with a complaint about mortgages reported issues over making payments, or problems they experienced when they were unable to pay, such as related to loan modification or foreclosure. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2012 - Fight Against Abusive Debt Collectors Continues - The government's efforts to police debt collectors -- an ongoing battle that has drawn in countless ranks of cash-strapped consumers in recent years -- continued Monday, when the Federal Trade Commission announced that a Michigan-based debt collection company would pay $2.5 million to settle charges of misconduct. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/24/2012 - STRONG-ARM 'EM Bailed-Out Companies Pressured TARP Pay Czar To Keep Executive Pay High: Report - The official overseeing executive pay for bailout firms limited cash compensation and made some reductions in pay, but still approved compensation packages in the millions, the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) inspector general said in the report. Former U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg approved pay packages worth $5 million or more from 2009 to 2011 for 49 top earners, the report said. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/19/2012 - Banks Move Ahead To Increase Overdraft Protection Fees - The cost of not having enough money just got steeper. The median overdraft fee banks charge customers surged to $30 from $27.50 last year, according to a study released Tuesday by Moebs Services, an economic research firm that tracks pricing at financial services companies. The survey looked at overdraft fees from more than 2,500 banks and credit unions of all sizes across the country. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/15/2012 - BofA Allegedly Sends False Statements To Paralyzed Man After Repeatedly Threatening Eviction - Robert Galanida, a 41-year-old man living in Oregon, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, received the first bank statement for his loan modification due January first -- a deal two-and-a-half years in the making, The Oregonian reports. The problem? He received a second statement asking for a different amount but also due the first of the year. Neither statement "agrees with the terms of the modification agreement," his lawyer wrote to Bank of America shortly after receiving the erroneous documents. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/30/2011 - Banks Likely To Get Creative With Fees Next Year } Bank Fees Predicted To Rise In 2012, As Banks Try To Boost Revenue - Squeezed by regulations under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, banks are looking to find new ways to wring fees from customers. In 2012, expect to see higher minimum balance requirements and an ongoing push to increase customers' credit card spending, according to a "2012 U.S. Banking Sector Outlook" report from Trepp, an analytics company that provides information to the banking industry. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/28/2011 - BofA May Get To Move Its $8.5 Billion Settlement Back To State Court - An appeals court on Tuesday granted an appeal of a controversial ruling that moved consideration of Bank of America Corp's $8.5 billion settlement over mortgage debt to federal court. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said it plans to rule within a 60-day period on whether U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan correctly took the case from a New York state court. It asked the parties to address several issues, including whether the settlement qualified as a "mass action" allowing federal court review. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/28/2011 - 11 most bizarre foreclosures of 2011: - CT Family Never Missed A Payment | Man Gets Free Home After Lender Shutdown } BofA Forecloses On Building With Own Branch Office | Threatened Over $0.00 Unpaid Mortgage Payment | Mortgage Payment Made Too Early } Investigative Journalist Becomes Foreclosure Victim - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/13/2011 - Rosalee Green, 90-Year Old Miami-Dade Resident, Facing Foreclosure - "Where am I going to go? I'm 90 years old!" said Rosalee Green, who raised 11 children in the single-story home in Perrine. Green said a reverse mortgage allowed her to take a lump payment against the home's equity that she wouldn't have to pay back, but the lending company that loaned the money now claims debris near the home is a code violation that nullifies the mortgage, her attorney said. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/07/2011 - Balance Transfer Day Linked To Company That Profits Off New Credit Users - Millions of homes in America are standing vacant, and in many cases they represent a financial sinkhole for their communities. Local governments -- forced to absorb the costs of maintaining or razing these homes, and seeing property taxes plummet in response to the spread of urban blight -- are increasingly shouldering the burden of the country's slumping housing market, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/17/2011 - JPMorgan Chase To Sell Mortgage-Backed Securities Backed By Loans In Default - The newly-minted largest bank in the country plans to sell mortgage-backed investments backed by loans in default, the WSJ reported. Other banks also are considering selling securities backed by distressed loans at bargain prices -- mimicking a plan the government used to help pull the nation out of the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s, according to the WSJ. - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/02/2011 - Brad Gana's Texas Home, Destroyed By Hurricane Ike, Faces Foreclosure [WATCH] - Brad Gana, of Seabrook, Texas is being threatened with foreclosure over a home that hasn't existed since it was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008, local Houston 2 News reports. Furthermore, after the hurricane, which cost the Texas shoreline an estimated $11 billion in damages, reduced the property to an empty slab of concrete, Gana alleges he continued to make payments. - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/02/2011 - Banks Extract Fees On Unemployment Benefits - Out of work and living on a $189-a-week unemployment check, Rob Linville needs to watch every penny. Lately, he has been watching too many pennies disappear into the coffers of the bank that administers his unemployment check via a prepaid debit card. - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/02/2011 - Seniors Face Foreclosure After Making Mortgage Payment Too Early - A senior couple in Pasco County, Florida is facing the prospect of foreclosure. But the reason doesn't have to do with missed mortgage payments. This time, it's reportedly because they paid too early one month, and used the wrong routing number the next. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/31/2011 - Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Want Details Of $8.5 Billion BofA Mortgage Settlement - The federal agency that is administering the two government-controlled mortgage buyers filed papers on Tuesday saying it wants to preserve its rights for a possible future objection to the settlement. The Federal Housing Finance Agency says it does not expect to object, though. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/31/2011 - Many Top CEOs Earn More Than Their Companies Pay In Income Taxes - It also found many of the companies spent more on lobbying than they did on taxes. At a time when lawmakers are facing tough choices in a quest to slash the national debt, the report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-leaning Washington think tank, quickly hit a nerve. He also asked "why CEO pay and corporate profits are skyrocketing while worker pay stagnates and unemployment remains unacceptably high," and "the extent to which our tax code may be encouraging these growing disparities." - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/29/2011 - Bed-Stuy Great-Grandmother Still Praying for a Deal - A few dozen neighbors and housing advocates over the weekend traded shifts in and around the Bedford-Stuyvesant home of Ms. Mary Ward, a reported victim of a predatory lending scheme, following Friday's successful eviction blockade. - www.bed-stuy.patch.com
Read More: Eviction blockade VIDEO

08/25/2011 - Billions Meant For Struggling Homeowners May Go Elsewhere. Billions Of Bailout Dollars Meant For Struggling Homeowners May Pay Down Deficit Instead - With housing prices dropping sharply, and foreclosure filings against more than 1 million properties in the first half of this year, the Obama administration is scrambling for ways to help homeowners. One place they won't be looking: an estimated $30 billion from the bailout that was slated to help homeowners but is likely to remain unspent. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2011 - Pasco County Florida couple fear losing home to foreclosure for paying mortgage too early - Seventy-year-old Sharon Bullington may lose her home because she paid her mortgage a week early. That may not make much sense to the thousands of homeowners who are behind on their mortgages in Florida. But it seems it does to Bank of America, which has filed to foreclose on Bullington and her husband, James, 78, who is terminally ill. - www.tampabay.com

08/01/2011 - Homeowner Asked To Pay $0.00 In Order To Avoid Foreclosure (VIDEO) - Earlier this year, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a man, referred to in reports only as Mark, received a notice demanding that he pay $0.00 to his mortgage lender, Bank of America, or his home would be seized, according to local television network News 22 WWLP. The notice surprised Mark, who had consistently made his mortgage payments, yet it was indeed no joke, as Mark found his credit score had been downgraded. - www.huffingtonpost.com

I-Team:Man gets a $0 foreclosure notice: wwlp.com

08/17/2011 - 'HISTORY-ALTERING PRACTICES' Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? - A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations - $8,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction - have apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history. - www.rollingstone.com

08/17/2011 - Wells Fargo to test $3 a month debit card fee - At the end of last year, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) announced a similar test, in which it charged customers in northern Wisconsin a $3 fee for using their debit cards. The tests are still underway, a Chase spokesman said Tuesday. - www.cnn.com

08/08/2011 - BofA Faces $10B Lawsuit For Allegedly Cheating Insurance Giant - Bank of America denied the allegations, saying AIG "recklessly" chased investments with high returns, and was big and sophisticated enough to know the risks. Banks have been hit by a series of suits over misrepresentations of mortgage-based securities. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2011 - Wells Fargo To Settle Class-Action Investor Lawsuit For $590 MIllion - The settlement would end a suit filed in 2008 in federal court in Manhattan, charging that Wachovia misled investors in its bonds and preferred securities by understating losses associated with risky mortgages. Wells Fargo bought Wachovia that year at the height of the financial crisis. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2011 - Bank Of New York Mellon Will Charge Clients To Hold Over $50M In Deposits - The bank said it has seen such a large increase in deposits over the last month that it will charge a 0.13 percent fee to clients with "extraordinary high deposit levels." Bank of New York Mellon, which has $23.6 trillion in client assets under its custody, said customers have moved money to cash as a safe haven in the past month as investments like stocks and bonds have become increasingly volatile. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/22/2011 - One Year After Reform, Overdraft Fees Remains Steep At Big Banks - The fees can be triggered if customers overdraw their checking accounts by as little as $5. In addition, the survey found that two-thirds of banks continue piling on fees if customers fail to balance their accounts within a set time. For example, JPMorgan Chase charges an "extended overdraft" fee of $15 after each five-day period that an account stays in the red. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/22/2011 - Banks Increasingly Use Payday Loans Despite Crackdown On Predatory Lending: Study - Payday loans have long been offered by non-banking establishments, such as shops that cash checks and money orders. But in recent years, well-known banks have started offering them too. Here's how a payday loan works: You, the customer, borrow money from the bank. The bank lends it to you at a high APR, or annual interest rate. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Payday Loans by Banks are Expensive, Long-term Debt
FULL REPORT - Big Bank Payday Loans - Center for Responsible Lending

07/22/2011 - 'A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS' As Layoffs Hit Wall Street, Lowest-Paid Workers Fall First - "Wall Street is a cutthroat business. That's how the capital market system works," said Sung Won Sohn, a former Wells Fargo chief economist who is now a finance professor at California State University Channel Islands. "The more seasoned, experienced, higher-paid people have a lot more connections and contacts. That is very, very valuable. Whereas junior, younger people are more replaceable." - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/20/2011 - Borrower Nightmares: Small town teacher seeks help for big debt, ends up in bankruptcy - More than 500,000 Americans with about $15 billion of debt are currently enrolled in debt settlement programs, said Andrew Housser, executive board member of the American Fair Credit Council. The industry group represents about 45 debt settlement companies which together handle about $2 billion in consumer debt. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/20/2011 - Wells Fargo Illegally Pushed Borrowers Into Subprime Mortgages, Falsified Loan Documents, Fed Says - The bank, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, agreed to pay $85 million to settle civil charges. On Tuesday, the company announced that it turned a $3.9 billion profit last quarter. It's made $7.7 billion in profit thus far this year. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/20/2011 - Borrower Nightmares: Small town teacher seeks help for big debt, ends up in bankruptcy - More than 500,000 Americans with about $15 billion of debt are currently enrolled in debt settlement programs, said Andrew Housser, executive board member of the American Fair Credit Council. The industry group represents about 45 debt settlement companies which together handle about $2 billion in consumer debt. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/15/2011 - Illegal Cash-Back Deals Worsened The Housing Bubble, Drove Up Foreclosures: Report - Residents of Arizona, Florida, and California, where cash-back deals were common during the height of the housing bubble, might not be surprised to learn how prevalent this practice was in Cook County. In 2007, a broker at a Phoenix realty company predicted to The Arizona Republic that cash-back deals "will hurt everyone in the industry and the housing market." - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/09/2011 - Wells Fargo Agrees To Pay $125 Million To Investors In Mortgage Lawsuit - The proposed settlement was filed Wednesday in a California federal court and represents lawsuits filed by the pension funds of Detroit, Alameda County, New Orleans, Guam, and other plaintiffs. The settlement is subject to court approval. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/29/2011 - Bank Of America Reaches $8.5 Billion Settlement On Mortgage-Securities Claim - The largest U.S. bank by assets said it intends to record an additional $5.5 billion provision to its representations and warranties liability for both Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) and non-GSE exposures in the second quarter of 2011. - www.palmbeachpost.com

06/28/2011 - South Florida No. 2 on mortgage fraud risk list - South Florida's mortgage fraud risk index spiked 10 percent during the first part of the year, shooting the region to second place nationally for potential housing scams. It ranked 20th during the same time last year. The region, comprising Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, was the only high-risk area to see an overall increase, according to a report released this month by fraud analysis company Interthinx. Top-ranked Modesto, Calif., experienced a 23 percent decrease in the first quarter compared with the same time in 2010. - www.palmbeachpost.com

06/24/2011 - An old mortgage scam aims to hijack a payment or two - A simple scam aimed at hijacking just one or two mortgage payments from unwary homeowners is making the rounds once again. Con artists send letters telling borrowers they should begin sending their mortgage payments to a fictitious company that has begun servicing their loans. By the time borrowers find out they've been had, they're out one or possibly two payments. - www.latimes.com

06/24/2011 - BofA customer says she never authorized insurance fee - A Rancho Palos Verdes resident found she'd been charged $20 a month for about two years for accidental death coverage by a Bank of America affiliate. The bank alleges she authorized the coverage by phone. We've all heard about ďż˝ and many of us have experienced ďż˝ unexpected charges showing up on phone bills. But what about fees siphoned from your bank account? What about those fees being taken by an affiliate of your bank? - www.latimes.com

06/24/2011 - Life sentence sought for mortgage fraud mastermind - Lee B. Farkas was the majority owner of mortgage firm Taylor Bean, which collapsed in 2009 when the fraud scheme unraveled, contributing to the failure of Alabama-based Colonial bank. Taylor Bean collapsed in 2009 when the fraud scheme unraveled, putting its 2,000 employees out of work. The fraud also contributed to the failure of Alabama-based Colonial bank, which had been one of the country's 25 largest banks. - www.latimes.com

06/23/2011 - Paul Allen, Ex-Mortgage CEO, Sentenced To Prison For $3B Fraud - The CEO of what had been one of the nation's largest privately held mortgage lenders was sentenced Tuesday to more than three years in prison for his role in a $3 billion scheme that officials called one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. The 40-month sentence for Paul R. Allen, 55, of Oakton, Va., is slightly less than the six-year term sought by federal prosecutors. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/23/2011 - Bank Settles For $210 Million Over Misleading Its Own Investors - James Kelsoe, a former Morgan Keegan portfolio manager, agreed to a $500,000 fine and permanent securities industry ban, the SEC said. A Morgan Keegan comptroller, Joseph Thompson Weller, agreed to a $50,000 penalty, it added. Regulators from Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee were also part of the accord. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/16/2011 - JPMorgan Settles Claims Of Using High-Pressure Tactics On Customers - The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Treasury Department agency that oversees national banks, announced the fine Wednesday for how the credit protection product was marketed in 2008 and 2009 by its Chase Auto Finance division. The bank neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing under the settlement agreement. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/16/2011 - Homeowner Can't Escape Unwanted Mortgage Modification - Wilson, who works as a researcher for the California Postsecondary Education Commission, said Bank of America repeatedly lost his paperwork before finally offering a trial modification in January. After reading news stories about HAMP's potential pitfalls for homeowners, Wilson reconsidered. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/14/2011 - 9 most annoying bank fees - Given the recent restrictions placed on fees and interest rates, the nation's banks are looking for extra pennies anywhere they can get them. As a result, it's now costing you to do everything from redeeming your own reward points to receiving money in your account. - http://www.cnn.com

06/13/2011 - New short-sale contracts upsetting Realtors - New short-sale contracts issued by two of the largest banks in the country are causing concern in the local real estate community. Though real estate agents acknowledge flopping is a legitimate concern for banks, they see the new contracts as another way in which banks are shifting more of the financial burden and liability of making sure mortgage fraud does not occur onto them. - http://www.heraldtribune.com

06/13/2011 - Bill collector calls rise, but so do borrower lawsuits - Krieg, a Sarasota stockbroker whose business suffered in the economic downturn, never had to deal with collection calls before. He started documenting the calls when it interfered with his job, and bank representatives referred to him as a "deadbeat" and "worthless." Attorney Billy Howard, who started the consumer protection division there, said complaints from homeowners about harassing calls have tripled in the last year as banks and collection agencies get more aggressive. - http://www.heraldtribune.com

06/13/2011 - Research Links Financial Crisis To Revolving-Door Lobbyists (CHARTS) - Tracking the fate of federal legislation during the six years before the mortgage-driven financial crisis, the economists found that what mattered even more than the amount of lobbying was whether legislators were being lobbied by former members of their own staff. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/13/2011 - Commentators Change Tune After Goldman Sach's PR Blitz | Goldman Sachs Pushes Back Against Senate Report As Commentators Flip - Goldman Sachs is quietly pushing back against accusations that it may have broken the law, as employees of the firm have met with a pair of famous financial commentators and helped convince them the "vampire squid" is actually a victim. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/13/2011 - Deutsche Bank Drops Legal Pressure On Foreclosure Fraud Expert's Family - The bank had added Szymoniak's son, Mark Cullen, to the foreclosure suit this May, a move that many experts saw as an act of retaliation against Szymoniak, who has publicized banks' widespread use of forged signatures in the foreclosure process to improperly give borrowers the boot. On June 8, lawyers filed a "Notice of Dropping Party" with the Florida court dismissing its previous claims against Cullen. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/10/2011 - God bless ... Bank of America? Bruce Berkowitz, BofA's flag-waving fan - JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, have spent months apologizing for illegally foreclosing on the homes of active-duty military members currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers have an extra layer of legal protection in mortgage lending. Even if you miss payments, a bank cannot evict your family while you fight for your country. - http://www.cnn.com

06/10/2011 - Foreclosed From Iraq: Father Seeks To Preserve Home As Son Fights Abroad - BofA has many problems, from new regulations that are slashing its lucrative fee revenue to a thick legal file stemming from its horrendous mishandling of foreclosures. But to listen to Berkowitz, the real explanation for the sharp decline in its stock lies in anti-Americanism. - http://www.cnn.com

06/09/2011 - How to Tell When the Moving Man Is Really a Con Man - The Better Business Bureau received more than 8,900 complaints against movers in 2010, a 5% increase over 2009, primarily about damaged or lost goods and final prices in excess of original estimates. In a too-frequent worst-case scenario, reports the BBB, a moving company holds the customer's belongings "hostage" and requires potentially thousands of dollars to unload the van. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/09/2011 - Naples Attorney gets another $3,000 from Bank of America for bad foreclosure - The Naples attorney who "foreclosed" on a Bank of America branch last week will receive another check from the lending giant, this time for his own fees in the case. Allen made national news when he arrived at the bank last week with Collier County sheriff's deputies, a moving company and plans to have property inside the branch--including desks, computers and cash in the drawers--seized to satisfy the $2,500 judgment. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/09/2011 - Wells Fargo's New Fixed-Rate Student Loans Come With High-Interest Catch - Wells Fargo says its fixed rates will range from 7.75 percent to 14.25 percent, depending on the credit background of the applicant or co-signer, who is often a parent. Even on the low end, however, Wells Fargo's fixed rates are higher than the 6.8 percent fixed rate on most federal student loans. Federal loans also offer safeguards that do not come with private student loans. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/09/2011 - SEC Examining If Goldman-Libya Connection Violated Bribery Laws - Enforcement lawyers at SEC are reviewing documents that detail the firms' relationships with the Libyan Investment Authority controlled by the nation's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, the paper said. The regulators are interested in a $50 million fee that Goldman initially agreed to pay the fund, but the payment was never made as discussions were halted before violence erupted in Libya early this year, the paper said. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/09/2011 - 'BAIT-AND-SWITCH SCHEME' Goldman's Small Business Program Off To Slow Start - Mitchell said she was skeptical that Goldman's initiative and similar programs serve a purpose beyond providing good public relations. "You see all these full-page ads from Chase and Goldman touting their small business work but the lending they provide is a drop in the bucket." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

06/09/2011 - Bank Not Responsible For Letting Hackers Steal $300K From Customer - A judge in Maine has ruled that a bank that allowed hackers to steal more than $300,000 from a customer's online account isn't responsible for the lost money, saying the customer should have done more to protect the account credentials. Small and medium-sized businesses around the United States have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to such activity, known as fraudulent ACH (Automated Clearing House) transfers. But he nonetheless concluded that the law does not require the bank to implement the "best" security measures available, and that the bank is clear to customers when they sign up about the level of security it provides and the amount of liability - http://www.wired.com

06/02/2011 - Scammer Must Stop Selling "Dirty Deeds" - Washington state residents who responded to a bogus letter ordering them to cough up nearly $100 for a copy of their deeds will be refunded, and the scammer who sent them the letter has settled with the Washington Attorney General's office. - http://www.walletpop.com

06/02/2011 - How to Avoid Contractor Scams When Rebuilding or Remodeling - Get Referrals and Do a Background Check. Pay the Smart Way. Use a Written Contract as Your Guide. Before you agree to do business with any contractor, be sure to get at least three referrals from his most recent clients. Then call those homeowners and make sure they were completely satisfied with the work that was done. You should also check out a contractor with the Better Business Bureau to see if other consumers have lodge complaints against the business. - http://www.walletpop.com

06/02/2011 - Citigroup Shuts Down Hedge Fund Because Of Financial Regulations - Citigroup Shuts Down $400 Million Hedge Fund In Wake Of Regulations. Citi, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, closed the Quantitative Strategies fund after it named fund manager Shakil Ahmed as the head of electronic market-making in April, the news agency said. Citigroup Inc (C.N) shut down a $400 million hedge fund that used the bank's money and mathematical models to bet on stocks, in the wake of new regulations aimed at stopping proprietary trading, - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/31/2011 - Only Single Goldman Employee Prosecuted Over Mortgage Fraud - How Mr. Tourre alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government's investigations have been into Wall Street's role in the mortgage crisis. In the fall of 2009, when Mr. Tourre learned that he had become a target of investigators for helping to sell a mortgage security called Abacus, he protested that he had not acted alone. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/28/2011 - Ex-GOP Senator Hired By Goldman Sachs. Judd Gregg Hired By Goldman Sachs As International Advisor - In the wake of the financial crisis, which has been partly blamed on the excesses of Wall Street banks such as Goldman, Gregg was an outspoken critic of the Obama administration's effort to tighten oversight of the financial industry. He was also a defender of Goldman during the heated congressional debate over the $700 billion bank bailout. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/27/2011 - Wellington, Florida man accused of filing questionable quit-claim deeds - Kesner Joaseus, 41, was arrested Thursday and charged with one count of organized fraud following a nine-month investigation that found 30 questionable quit-claim deeds giving Joaseus' company ownership of the properties. - http://www.palmbeachpost.com

05/25/2011 - Did Washington Connections Help Big Banks Get Bailouts? Big Bank Bailouts Tied To Previous Lobbying Efforts, Study Suggests - A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests so. The paper, from three economists at the International Monetary Fund, finds that financial institutions and lenders who actively lobbied the federal government in the years leading up to the financial crisis were more likely to benefit from government bailouts beginning in 2008. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/23/2011 - Prepaid Credit Cards Being Used To Launder Money Across The Border - No one knows how big a role the cards play in moving the more than $20 billion in drug earnings that U.S. authorities estimate crosses from the U.S. to Mexico annually. Yet while anyone crossing that border with $10,000 or more in cash must declare it, prepaid cards are legally exempt. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/20/2011 - NY AG Schneiderman Asks For Wall Street Records For Mortgage Investigation - Schneiderman is meeting with representatives of the Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, according to the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Those meetings are expected to focus on mortgage securities operations during the boom on Wall Street that ultimately cost banks billions of dollars. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/20/2011 - Gold Scams Rise On High Prices And Investor Anxiety - The case against American Precious Metals marks the third gold-related case brought by the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission since March. The agency has also issued a fraud advisory for investors interested in precious metals. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/12/2011 - States Shortchange The Unemployed With Junk Debit Card Fees - Of the 40 states that have switched from paper checks to prepaid debit cards, 22 states' cards charge ATM fees, 24 charge balance inquiry fees, and 28 charge inactivity fees. The cards in Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Ohio, and Oregon come with overdraft fees ranging from $10 to $20. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/11/2011 - The People vs. Goldman Sachs. A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges - Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/09/2011 - Reports Of Mortgage Fraud Rose To Record Level Last Year - The number of reports of suspected mortgage fraud rose to its highest level on record last year, as 70,472 reports were submitted. The number of verified cases of mortgage fraud declined from 2009 to 2010, but that's partially attributable to a decline in the number of new loans, the LexisNexis report says. Reports of suspected fraud increased nearly 5 percent during that period. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/09/2011 - BofA Tests Program Asking For Approval Of Overdrafts Via Text - Under the new pilot program, Bank of America says customers would be fully aware that approving an overdraft would result in a $35 fee. To start, customers will have to sign up for the program. If they then try to make a purchase that's declined at the register, they would immediately get a text from Bank of America asking if they want the purchase to go through. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/010/2011 - Goldman Sachs Says Regulators Might Bring Fraud Charges - The charges involve money belonging to customers of another financial firm that was a Goldman client. Goldman says in a filing with regulators that the charges would be based on allegations that it knew or should have known that the money belonged to customers of that firm rather than to the firm itself. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

05/09/2011 - In Fine Print, Banks Require Struggling Homeowners To Waive Rights - A few months ago, Bank of America offered Sergio Cortez of Staten Island, N.Y., the help he desperately needed to stay in his home: a break on his mortgage. Like millions of others, he was facing foreclosure. But there was a catch buried in the fine print. Cortez had to waive any possibility of ever suing the bank for anything relating to the loan. - http://www.propublica.com

05/05/2011 - Banks Illegally Foreclosed On Dozens Of Military Borrowers, Federal Investigators Say - Two of the nation's largest mortgage firms illegally foreclosed on the homes of "almost 50" active-duty military service members, according to a Thursday report by the Government Accountability Office. The report does not identify the two mortgage companies. GAO investigators attributed the finding to federal bank regulators, who recently completed a three-month probe into allegations of improper foreclosures carried out by the nation's 14 largest home loan servicers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/03/2011 - Treasury Blocks Regulation Of Market That Sparked $5.4 Trillion Fed Bailout - The Treasury Department plans to exempt foreign exchange derivatives from new Wall Street reform regulations, a Treasury official said Friday, dismissing concerns that the market prompted $5.4 trillion of emergency support from the Federal Reserve in late 2008. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/03/2011 - Anatomy of a $500,000 credit card fraud - Even after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, banks are still doling out credit cards to any borrowers who look good on paper -- even when that's the only place they exist. And the Hovhannisyan brothers are proof positive that most banks are still very susceptible to fraud. "They got greedy," he said. "They were smart, but not smart enough -- if they used modest credit lines and were more geographically sensitive, they could have kept it going." - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/01/2011 - The Destruction of Economic Facts - Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn't just about finance-it was about a staggering lack of knowledge. Governments have allowed shadow markets to develop and reach a size beyond comprehension. Mortgages have been granted and recorded with such inattention that homeowners and banks often don't know and can't prove who owns their homes. In a few short decades the West undercut 150 years of legal reforms that made the global economy possible. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/01/2011 - AIG Says It Was Victim Of Wall Street's Worst Behaviors In New Lawsuit - In a new lawsuit, AIG is seeking to recoup "potentially billions of dollars" from Wall Street giants, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, according to The New York Times. As part of that larger effort, AIG is first seeking $350 million from ICP Asset Management and some of the accompanying profits from Moore Capital. - www.huffingtonpost.com

05/01/2011 - To keep homes, some South Floridians signed over deeds - and lost their properties anyway - Home Rescue Foundation's founder says disgruntled clients have only themselves, poor real estate market to blame. From March 2008 through September of last year, the Cooper City-based foundation was the subject of 10 consumer complaints filed with the state. Three lawsuits also have been filed, claiming Home Rescue misrepresented its services. - www.sun-sentinel.com

04/29/2011 - Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two - In "Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two" actors playing the economists rap about the current economic policy touching on bailouts, employment, government spending and more. - www.youtube.com
Additional EconoStories Links:
econstories.tv | John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek against each other, both in a Supreme Court style debate and in boxing ring.

04/29/2011 - EU CDS Probe Targets 16 Large Banks Over Alleged Collusion - BRUSSELS -- The EU's competition watchdog is investigating the practices of some the world's biggest banks, as well as a market data firm and a clearing house, in the market for credit default swaps. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/28/2011 - Swiped: Banks, Merchants And Why Washington Doesn't Work For You - If customers flash an American Express card to buy a banana, Chung waves them off: "Just take the banana. Don't give me the card." Fees are annoying, Chung says, but not debilitating. "They're just like a phone company," he says. "Delivery surcharge. Paper charge. Equipment charge." There's an additional fee for using cards from banks outside his contract, but Chung says he has no way of knowing until he's gotten his bill how much of that pricier plastic has been swiped. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/27/2011 - Locks changed on disputed home in Milwaukee - Keon Williams' home was foreclosed on after the collapse of Central States Mortgage left him holding two mortgages. "They invaded my privacy - they broke into my house," Williams said. "You can't just walk into somebody's house and change the locks - I'm just shocked." Harris' lawyer apologized for the snafu and agreed to cover the cost for Williams to have a new lock installed. The bank will also pay Williams' attorney fees and any other costs incurred because of the mistake, according to Gnadt and court records. - www.jsonline.com
Additional Related Read:
Mortgage Nightmare | Milwaukee homeowner paying on time, yet facing eviction

04/25/2011 - JPMorgan Settles Military Mortgage Suits for $56 Million - JPMorgan will pay $27 million in cash to about 6,000 active-duty military personnel who were overcharged on their mortgages, cut interest rates on soldiers' home loans and return homes that were wrongfully foreclosed upon, according to settlement terms filed in federal court in Beaufort, South Carolina. - http://www.businessweek.org

04/25/2011 - Lee Farkas Convicted In $3 Billion Mortgage Fraud Case - Prosecutors said Lee Farkas led a fraud scheme of staggering proportions as chairman of Florida-based Taylor Bean & Whitaker. The fraud not only caused the company's 2009 collapse and the loss of jobs for its 2,000 workers, but also contributed to the collapse of Alabama-based Colonial Bank, the sixth-largest bank failure in U.S. history. - www.huffingtonpost.org

04/25/2011 - Largest Banks Likely Profited By Borrowing From Federal Reserve, Lending To Federal Government - A newly-released study from the Congressional Research Service bolsters claims that the nation's largest banks profited off the Federal Reserve's financial crisis-era programs by borrowing cash for next to nothing, then lending it back to the federal government at substantially higher rates. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/25/2011 - We're In The Middle Of A Terrible Blubble! - A Blubble? Yes, a Blubble. Because there is a lot of whining going on. No, the biggest problem was that no one had any idea how to value these companies. It was clear by the late 90s that this Internet thing had legs. And everyone wanted to be at the party. People flocked to Silicon Valley to take jobs like "Business Development Manager." Anyone can be a biz dev executive because it's not a real job. It's kind of like sales but you usually don't have any kind of quota. You just work on "deals." - www.techcrunch.com

04/25/2011 - Accused Mortgage Scammer Loses His Wacky Website After Court Order - Accused mortgage-modification fraudster Howard Shmuckler has lost the website he used to call his accusers "the real scammers." Even though Shmuckler had been indicted and repeatedly sued for charging homeowners for modifications he never delivered, he maintained his website until a court order went against him earlier this month. - www.cnn.com

04/19/2011 - Executive Pay Skyrockets 23 Percent In 2010, Top 299 CEOs Get $3.4 Billion - CEOs at 299 U.S. companies earned a staggering $3.4 billion combined in executive compensation in 2010, a new study by the nation's largest labor union found. Nearly 190 of those chief executives got a pay raise compared to their 2009 levels, the AFL-CIO noted in a report presented to reporters on Tuesday. The total amount of compensation represented a 23 percent increase from the prior year. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/19/2011 - INFLATION EXPLAINED | Did You Hear About The Inflation'? - The video, by Omid Malekan, depicts inflation as beneficial to the wealthy, whose stocks rise during inflationary periods, at the expense of lower-class Americans, who own fewer stocks and are more immediately affected by rising commodity costs that take up a larger percentage of their income. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org
Hilarious Video Trashes Economists' Measures

04/17/2011 - REVOLVING DOOR: BofA Hires Former Top SEC Official Gary Lynch, Former SEC Official, Heads To Bank Of America - Bank of America said it has hired Gary Lynch, a former director of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to head its legal, compliance, and regulatory relations efforts. Lynch was previously chief legal officer at Morgan Stanley. Like many big banks, Bank of America is dealing with multiple legal and regulatory issues now, including challenges to its procedures for foreclosing on homes and new rules that affect everything from debit cards to retail brokerage. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/16/2011 - Foreclosure auctions: Bogus-price issue appears to be limited to sales in Orange - The Orlando Sentinel reported the inaccurate sales records on Friday, finding 16 recently purchased properties with different sale prices listed with two different government bodies. It's not clear whether the price increases were deliberate or how many similar cases there may be. Orange County saw nearly 18,000 foreclosures last year alone. - http://www.orlandosentinel.org

04/15/2011 - IRS paid $513 million to unqualified homebuyers - Most of the money - about $326 million - went to more than 47,000 taxpayers who didn't qualify as first-time homebuyers because there was evidence they had already owned homes, said the report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. Other credits went to prison inmates, taxpayers who bought homes before the credit was enacted and people who did not actually buy homes. - http://www.heraldtribune.org

04/15/2011 - Goldman Sachs Values Assets Low, Sells High To Customers As Senate Panel Alleges Double Dealing - As the subprime crisis was emerging on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs sold a client a slice of a complex security at a price nearly 50 percent higher than what the firm valued at for itself, according to a new Senate report on the origins of the financial crisis. Last week, another bank settled a similar case with securities regulators who accused it of "violating basic investor protection rules." - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/15/2011 - Goldman Sachs Chief Blankfein Could Face Criminal Prosecution For Role In Financial Crisis - Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will recommend that Goldman executives who testified before his panel, including chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, be referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the Michigan Democrat announced Wednesday. Members of the subcommittee will now deliberate Levin's proposal. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/14/2011 - PEDDLING JUNK WaMu Boosted Bad Loans Despite Knowledge Of Bubble, Report Finds - Well Aware Of Bubble, WaMu Boosted Bad Loans, Report Finds. The voluminous, 639-page report on the financial crisis from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations singles out Washington Mutual for its decision to champion its subprime lending business, even as executives privately acknowledged that a housing bubble was about to burst. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/14/2011 - Iowa Couple Owns Home After One Payment Due to Foreclosure Glitch - It all started when Matt Danielson and his broker, Jason Larson, arranged an impromptu meeting at a mall food court to sign the CitiMortgage financing documents for their new construction 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath home that they had been negotiating for a while. Matt dialed his wife's cell phone, but didn't reach her; so in a rushed session he signed the papers without her, finalizing a $320,000 mortgage for 100 percent of the sale price, which included an additional $50,000 to finish the basement. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/14/2011 - Regulators Investigate Whether Banks Formed Cartel To Manipulate Interest Rates - In March, Reuters reported that regulators are probing whether a handful of major banks manipulated the global benchmark interest rate -- known as Libor -- to tart up their credit quality, citing a person familiar with the matter. U.S. regulators are focusing on Bank of America, Citigroup and UBS, among others, and have sent subpoenas to those banks, the WSJ report said. The three banks declined to comment to the Journal. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/13/2011 - Matt Taibbi - The Real Housewives of Wall Street - Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs? The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called "giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all." If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like. - http://www.rollingstone.org
Additional Related Material:
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy
Wall Street's Big Win. Finance reform won't stop the high-risk gambling

04/13/2011 - PMorgan's First Quarter Profit Rises 67 Percent - But the news was not all positive for the second-largest U.S. bank. It said it was still suffering from high mortgage losses. The bank's book of consumer loans shrank by 10 percent in the quarter, and loans to companies did not rise enough to offset that. - http://www.huffingtonpost.org

04/11/2011 - Car dealers adopt outlawed mortgage tactics, new consumer agency powerless against them - Congress kept most auto loans - the second largest source of debt for Americans - out of the reach of the fledgling U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And now many of the same tactics that led to the mortgage meltdown - like fudging facts on the loan application or charging consumers hidden fees - continue to plague auto loans, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found. - http://www.iwatchnews.org

04/11/2011 - JPMorgan Accused Of Profiting From Souring Sigma Investment, While Clients Lost Millions - In newly unsealed court document JPMorgan, the nation's second largest bank by assets, is accused of profiting from a troubled investment vehicle, while keeping client money in the same failing group of securities. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

04/10/2011 - The 12 Worst And Most Common Tax Scams: IRS - In a post entitled "Don't Fall Prey to the 2011 Dirty Dozen Tax Scams," the Internal Revenue Service lists the worst and most common tax scams by American taxpayers. And while some include hiding the origin of an entire corporation, others can be as small as misplacing a decimal point. Here is the list of the IRS's "Dirty Dozen" tax scams: - http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Scams: IRS :
Don't Fall Prey to the 2011 Dirty Dozen Tax Scams,

04/10/2011 - Jamie Dimon's silly housing subsidy - JPMorgan forked over $421,458 last year to compensate Dimon for moving costs incurred as he moved his family from Chicago to New York. Yes, moving is hell, but you don't know the half of it. This is the second time in three years that the bank picked up a six-figure sum for Dimon's relocation - which ended up taking five costly years from end to end. The bank has kicked in $617,734 since 2008 to cover the move. - http://www.fortune.com
Jamie Dimon's Chicago Home (PICS):
25 East Banks Street, Chicago IL 60610

04/10/2011 - U.S. Banks Relying On Fees And Rainy Day Funds, Not Loans To Turn Profits - Banks have been generating most of their profits in recent quarters from dipping into money they previously set aside to cover bad loans. Those reserve reductions make sense if credit losses are stabilizing, which seems to be the case. But banks cannot reduce their loan loss reserves forever and at this point profit growth must come from making more money from loans and generating more fees, analysts said. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

04/08/2011 - Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chief, Gets A $19 Million Raise - Dimon's total compensation jumped nearly 1,500 percent to $20.8 million in 2010 from $1.3 million a year earlier, based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's compensation formula, a regulatory filing showed. Dimon did even better in terms of the value of money and shares actually received: his salary, bonus and stock and options from grants made largely in previous years that were actually exercised in 2010 were worth around $42 million. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

04/07/2011 - Big Banks Have a Powerful New Opponent (2 VIDEOS) - by an alliance of retailers, big and small, on whose behalf a variety of ads are now running, including on television (such as this one, by Americans for Job Security), the Web (such as this, by American Family Voices) and a powerful radio spot directly attacking the too-big-to-fail banks. - http://www.nytimes.com

04/04/2011 - 'CUTTING CORNERS' WATCH: 60 Minutes Investigates Forged Foreclosure Docs - Florida Judges Slam Lawyers For 'Fraud Upon The Court' The mortgage crisis is far from over. 60 Minutes takes a new look at the state of the foreclosure crisis, interviewing homeowners, a regulator and so-called robo-signers, who approved thousands of foreclosure documents daily without reading them. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com
60 Minutes Overtime:
Mortgage mess: Who really owns your mortgage?

04/03/2011 - Big Banks Want Bigger Piece Of $2.9 Trillion 401(k) Business - JPMorgan Chase, BofA, and Wells Fargo are gearing up to compete with Fidelity and Vanguard to administer retirement plans. Banks are searching for new ways to make money as losses on mortgages and increased regulation of fees have curbed their revenue sources, says Terry Moore, managing director of the North America banking practice for consulting firm Accenture. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

04/01/2011 - AIG 'Highly Disappointed' It Can't Repurchase All Toxic Assets - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has turned down an offer by American International Group to repurchase dodgy mortgage bonds that the Fed had taken off the insurance company's hands during the financial crisis. AIG had offered $15.7 billion for the bonds. The Fed thinks it can do better by having companies competitively bid on the mortgage bonds over time. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

04/01/2011 - What Is Spencer Bachus's Game? - "in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks." With regard to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), this apparently now implies that Mr. Bachus will use any means possible to change the topic away from substance - how banks treat their customers - to imagined procedural issues. Specifically, Mr. Bachus is wrongly accusing Elizabeth Warren of misleading Congress - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

03/17/2011 - Ex-WaMu Execs Sued By FDIC For Gross Negligence Over Bank's Collapse - READ The Lawsuit - The three "gambled billions of dollars of WaMu's money," the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said in its lawsuit, accusing the trio of getting rich while betting the savings and loan's future on high-risk home loans. U.S. banking regulators have authorized lawsuits against 158 bank officials so far as they seek to recover at least $3.6 billion in losses from bank failures related to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com
READ the lawsuit:
Ex-WaMu Execs Sued By FDIC

03/15/2011 - Senators Back Delaying Crackdown On Fees That Yield Billions For Banks - On Tuesday, a group of nine senators led by Montana Democrat Jon Tester put their names behind legislation to delay the Federal Reserve's upcoming crackdown on the "swipe fees" that banks charge merchants for processing debit card transactions -- a huge moneymaker for the banking industry whose continuation is at the top of the industry's lobbying wishlist. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

03/15/2011 - Debit card fee battle heats up - With $16 billion in fees at stake, banks and retailers are spending millions to sway minds in Washington -- not to mention Montana, a state whose lawmaker is expected to enter into the debit-card-fee debate as early as Tuesday. The debate is over the Federal Reserve's proposed 12-cent cap on so-called "interchange fees," which are the fees retailers pay to cover the cost of processing debit cards. Currently, those fees average 44 cents. - http://www.cnn.com

03/10/2011 - ARE YOU KIDDING? Fed Report Finds No Wrongful Foreclosures By Banks, Consumer Advocates Slam Methodology - The Fed's findings seem to support claims from the banking industry, which has admitted to sloppy practices but has maintained that the homeowners whose homes have been repossessed were substantially behind on their payments. The Fed's report has not been released to the public. All 50 state attorneys general joined together last fall to probe banks' foreclosure practices after several companies halted home repossessions when improper paperwork practices -- like the so-called "robo-signing" scandal -- came to light. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2011 - Debit cards: $50 spending limit coming? - If a cap like this does make its way into accounts across the board, consumers would be forced to write checks, withdraw cash from ATMs, or put their spending on credit cards. Many consumers with bad credit aren't able to qualify for credit cards -- and when they do, it's often with hefty rates and fees. Additionally, ATMs typically only dole out a limited amount of money at a time and checking accounts are being loaded with fees. - http://www.cnn.com

03/06/2011 - Pines homeowner protesting bank foreclosure. Luznar plans to erect signs on front lawn to protest bank's action - Ginger Luznar is taking her foreclosure fight from the courts to the front lawn of her Pembroke Pines home this weekend. "I'm fighting back", said the 46-year-old mother of two. 'It's a fraudulent foreclosure and it's downright criminal." While the Broward County Property Appraiser's website Friday indicated that Luznar's Pembroke Pines home is owned Deutsche Bank, her attorney said that the title had been transferred back to Luznar. "There is no methodology to the way the banks proceed with foreclosures," McCarthy said. "The process still confuses me." - http://www.sun-sentinel.com

03/02/2011 - The Proposed Foreclosure Fraud Bank Settlement, Part 1: Journalistic Failures By Richard (RJ) Eskow - There's been a lot of confusion over the last few days about a possible deal with US banks to settle a fifty-state lawsuit over widespread and massive foreclosure fraud. Attorneys general from all the states have been working together, and the latest word is that the Obama Administration has proposed its own framework for a agreement. - http://www.ourfuture.com

03/02/2011 - The Proposed Foreclosure Fraud Bank Settlement, Part 2: A Leadership Vacuum By Richard (RJ) Eskow - It looks like we're observing a serious vacuum in leadership during a time of crisis. This vacuum, together with the confusion that's been created in the press as everybody pushed their own agenda, has left the public becalmed in fog-shrouded waters somewhere between Conflicting Viewpoints, Absolute Bewilderment, and WTF. - http://www.ourfuture.com
Additional Related Links:
Will banksters get away with it?

03/02/2011 - Does That Proposed Foreclosure Deal Help Main Street or Wall Street? A 5-Point Test (updated): Journalistic Failures By Richard (RJ) Eskow - Bankers began whining as soon as word of a proposed mortgage fraud settlement fraud case hit the street, even though it was a pretty sweet deal for them. From the Wall Street Journal: "Banks Bristle at Mortgage-Loan Plan." - http://www.ourfuture.com

03/01/2011 - Pictures of MERS, Part 1: Corporate Documents Illustrate the Mortgage Shell Game By Richard (RJ) Eskow - As the following images show, MERS is a nebulous, database-driven entity created by the mortgage industry . It's designed to let lenders swap mortgages electronically without being slowed down by inconvenient courtroom rules. MERS is "Digital Life" for mortgages, an electronic shell game that makes it hard to track the real party behind a loan. - http://www.ourfuture.com

02/20/2011 - How A Countrywide Executive Took On The Company - How a Whistle-Blower Conquered Countrywide - "It is the littlest of Davids beating the biggest of Goliaths and taking two of them on at once," Mr. Winston said. "This is the story of somebody who tried to set a company right. But it was frightening to them for me to shine the light from the inside out." - http://www.nytimes.com

02/16/2011 - Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars. - Financial crooks brought down the world's economy - Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom - an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities - has ever been convicted. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/16/2011 - Facing Foreclosure Without Missing A Payment: One Couple's Housing Nightmare - Last year, court documents exposed potentially massive breakdowns of the mortgage industry. Inundated with thousands of foreclosures, mortgage servicers, some hired by banks, allegedly signed hundreds of foreclosure documents without examining them. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/16/2011 - Lawyers make millions off Madoff mess - "The only winners in the Madoff scandal are the lawyers," said Ronald Colombo, associate law professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. "But that's the nature of the beast." The Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC), an industry-sponsored organization that provides financial protection to investors, has paid more than $290 million to law firms and consultants since Madoff's scheme fell apart in 2008. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/15/2011 - Regulator Defends Millions In Fannie, Freddie Legal Fees - The federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stood by his approval of millions of taxpayer dollars for legal fees defending the housing giants and their executives after accounting scandals, telling angry House committee members on Tuesday that his agency was obligated to do so. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/15/2011 - Derivatives Industry Report Collapses - The industry is making completely baseless claims -- and must resort to this kind of hollow chicanery. This report is revealed as nothing other than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and to fool people on Capitol Hill. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/11/2011 - CPAC Chief Is Partner In Law Firm Defending Foreclosure Mill, Served On Board Of Fannie Mae - New ACU leader Al Cardenas is a partner in the law firm of Tew Cardenas LLP, which is currently defending "foreclosure king" David Stern, whose own law office is at the center of a major Florida investigation into foreclosure fraud. Mortgage companies hire the Law Offices of David J. Stern, frequently referred to as a "foreclosure mill," to handle their foreclosure paperwork for them. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/07/2011 - My credit card had 79.9% APR - My credit card had a 79.9% APR - "I about had a heart attack when I got a disclosure notice saying that my starting rate of 29.9% was going up to 79.9%," said Riss. "It was ludicrous. Talk about a highway robbery." And yes, that rate is completely legal. The Card Act, which was passed in late 2009 to protect consumers from predatory lenders, only prevents issuers from raising rates retroactively. Credit card issuers are free to charge whatever rate they want at the front end. - http://www.cnn.com

02/05/2011 - Bank Of America Agrees To Huge Settlement $410 Million In Overdraft Case - Customers pay overdraft fees when they spend more money than remains in their accounts. The fees can reach $35 apiece. Before federal law changed this summer, banks frequently charged overdraft fees on numerous transactions in a single day. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/04/2011 - Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chief, Wants Some R-E-S-P-E-C-T: - At last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive once again lambasted the media and politicians for portraying all bankers as greedy evil-doers. That's because they are! - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2011 - Fed Officially Abandons Plan To Gut Predatory Lending Rule - The Fed is officially backing down from its proposal to eliminate rescission, a critical component of consumer-protection law that strips banks of the right to make money on illegal loans. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2011 - Michigan Family Says Obama Foreclosure-Prevention Program Cost Them Their Home - After nine months of dutifully making lowered mortgage payments under the Obama administration's foreclosure-prevention program, Bea and Terry Garwood of Pinckney, Mich., are all set to move out. Despite the promise of relief, they are losing to foreclosure the two-story house that has been their family home since 1994. They say the administration's initiative has effectively pushed them out the door. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2011 - Florida Bar says foreclosure lawyers must report fraud to court - The direction was published in an article in Monday's The Florida Bar News as part of an outline in a new free online foreclosure class offered by The Bar. The class is in response to problems that led several major lenders to temporarily freeze foreclosures last fall. - http://www.miamiherald.com

02/01/2011 - Loan modifications burn many homeowners - Lenders cancel trials; borrowers surprised - Lenders routinely approved short-term "trial" loan modifications that reduced payments for desperate borrowers under the umbrella of the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program. But lenders continued to count the mortgages as delinquent or in default. Now instead of granting permanent modifications, lenders often are reinstating the original loan terms and demanding big back payments - http://www.news-press.com

02/01/2011 - Mortgage fix program 'a failure' - In Washington, groundswell begins for its demise - A mortgage modification program designed to save homeowners from foreclosure has failed because regulators are "afraid to rein in or impose penalties on the mortgage servicers" whose record "has been nothing short of abysmal," the program's watchdog told Congress on Wednesday. - http://www.news-press.com

02/01/2011 - Lawyers' Carelessness Was Key to the Mortgage Mess - The Ibanez decision in Massachusetts exposed the fact that the standard securitization deal violated a century of Massachusetts real estate law, and recently filed lawsuits against JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Bank of America (BAC) hint at how far astray the big law firms went. And not just one firm -- the scale of the problems alleged in those cases suggest the problem was systemic. - http://www.dailyfinance.com

01/31/2011 - DYLAN RATIGAN: FORECLOSURE FRAUD & $45 TRILLION DOLLARS - this is also dissrupting innocent people's lives. not to mention violating? their constitutional right for home ownership! - http://www.youtube.com

01/31/2011 - Fraudulent practices in bank foreclosures exposed - Banks admit shortcuts in the foreclosure process. This proves their malicious intent to defraud investors and the American people. It also proves how lawmakers on both side of the isle have soldout to Big Banks. - http://www.youtube.com

01/31/2011 - Dylan Ratigan Show On Foreclosure - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC Show On Foreclosure Distributed by Tubemogul. - http://www.youtube.com

01/31/2011 - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC exposes Federal Reserve Con - Part 1 - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC Show On Foreclosure Distributed by Tubemogul. - http://www.youtube.com

01/31/2011 - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC exposes Federal Reserve Con - Part 2 - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC Show On Foreclosure Distributed by Tubemogul. - http://www.youtube.com

01/28/2011 - Loan Modification Scam: - Graphic Interpretation - Accountability Office - Graphic Interpretation - US Gov. Accountability Office - http://www.trashoutpro.com

01/28/2011 - Furry Creatures Explain Bank Bailouts: 'The Screwing Of The American People' (VIDEO) - In the new video, from Omid Malekan, one character asks why the banks were bailed out, and the other responds "Because they said the banks were too big to fail, and if they failed, there would be too many foreclosures, and no new mortgages." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/28/2011 - Credit card rates at record highs near 15% - Low-income taxpayers frequently use tax-preparation services like Jackson Hewitt or H&R Block to help them file their taxes. On top of fees for that service, such companies frequently sell them loans known as Refund Anticipation Loans or set up Refund Anticipation Checks -- temporary bank accounts that allow taxpayers who do not have bank accounts to receive their tax refunds. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/27/2011 - Credit card rates at record highs near 15% - Interest rates are now hovering near record highs, at an average rate of 14.72%. And if your credit is bad enough, you could even end up with a rate as high as 59.9% APR. "Rates are going up because card issuers know that once you get a card they can't raise the rates, so they're raising rates on the front end to ensure they get the revenue from that interest," - http://www.cnn.com

01/27/2011 - New Report Reveals Goldman Sachs Netted Billions Through Taxpayer Rescue - The details underscore the degree to which Goldman--the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history--benefited directly from the massive emergency bailout of the nation's financial system, a deal crafted on the watch of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had previously headed the bank. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/25/2011 - Bear Stearns Reportedly Emails Suggest Bank Sold Clients 'Sack Of Sh--': Report - According to the Atlantic, after selling the toxic mortgage securities, Bear Stearns traders would "then sell back the bad loans with early payment defaults to the banks that originated them at a discount. The traders would pocket the refund, and would not pass it on to the mortgage trust, which was where it should have gone to be distributed to the investors who owned the bonds." Thus, allowing the traders to get paid twice on the deal. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/25/2011 - BofA's Countrywide Accused of `Massive' Mortgage Fraud by TIAA, N.Y. Life - The investors claim they bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Countrywide mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007 because they wanted conservative, low-risk investments. They said they relied on term sheets, prospectuses and other materials provided by the firm that were recklessly or knowingly false. - http://www.bloomberg.com

01/21/2011 - The Latest Foreclosure Scandal: Default Notices - New Point of Foreclosure Contention: Default Notice. At issue is the notice of default, the first letter that a mortgage lender or servicer sends to a homeowner who has fallen behind on payments. The notice typically starts the formal foreclosure process in nonjudicial states such as California, Arizona and Nevada. - http://www.americanbanker.com

01/20/2011 - New Proof Wall Street Knew Its Mortgage Securities Were Subpar: Clayton Execs Testify - The firm flagged those loans for potential issues, Wall Street banks ignored its recommendation nearly half the time and likely purchased those loans anyway -- selling them to unwitting investors who were never told that the biggest home loan due diligence firm in the country had found potential defects in these mortgages. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/19/2011 - Obama Consumer Agency May Not Be Able To Oversee Payday Lenders, Mortgage Firms - If the White House can't get a nominee through the Senate by July, the bureau will lack the authority to supervise nonbank lenders, according to a Jan. 10 report by the inspectors general of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/19/2011 - Most Scammed States In America (PHOTOS) - The Federal Trade Commission has released its annual report of state fraud and identity theft (PDF) in the U.S., identifying the most scammed states in America, according to Newsweek. The most recent report looks at data from 2009, and identifies the frequency of instances of these crimes per 100,000 population. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/15/2011 - As Banks Raise Fees, You Have Options - Just kidding, you do not have any options - "We don't want to raise fees on our customers," a company spokesman said. "But unfortunately, regulation is forcing us to do it. And as a result, some customers may end up unbanked." What companies don't want to do is raise fees so much that they attract the attention of regulators or people who do what I do for a living. Yet this is exactly what the banks have done in the last decade. - http://www.nytimes.com

01/12/2011 - Under Fire, Goldman Sachs Reveals New Information On Lucrative Trading Activities - In 2010, Goldman's trading activity was particularly lucrative: Through September, investments on its own behalf were responsible for nearly 30 percent of its earnings, according to the SEC filing. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/11/2011 - New 'Stress Tests' For Wall Street To Be Kept Secret - Wall Street's largest firms will undergo scrutiny by the Federal Reserve in the coming months, as they submit to a new round of "stress tests," designed to gauge their financial health, the Financial Times reports. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/11/2011 - Bob Diamond, Barclays CEO: Time For Banks To Apologize Is Over - The time for apologies from banks is over, the chief executive of Barclays said Tuesday as he defended the large bonuses earned by some in the industry. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

01/05/2011 - The Top 10 Scams, Schemes And Rip-Offs Of 2010 - BBB's Top 10 Scams, Schemes and Rip-Offs of 2010 - http://www.walletpop.com

01/04/2011 - Fed Moves To Gut Predatory Lending Regulation - The Federal Reserve is pushing a new mortgage regulation that would effectively eliminate the most powerful federal remedy for predatory lending. The regulation would severely limit a practice called "rescission," used to strike down demonstrably-illegal or fraudulent loan contracts and void a bank's ill-gotten gains from such predatory lending practices. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/30/2010 - Bank Of America's Christmas present: Foreclose Even Though Not A Payment Missed - The largest bank in the United States earlier this month notified Shock Baitch and his wife Lisa (Friedman) Baitch that foreclosure action will start today - Christmas eve - unless the couple agrees to put their home up for a forced sale. As of Thursday night Bank Of America has not backed down from its foreclosure threat. - http://www.ctwatchdog.com

12/28/2010 - Allstate Sues Bank of America, Mozilo Over Countrywide Losses - Allstate, the largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, alleged it suffered "significant losses" after Countrywide misled it into believing the securities were safe, and the quality of home loans backing them was high. The lawsuit also names several former Countrywide officials as defendants, including longtime Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo. Countrywide was the largest U.S. mortgage lender before Bank of America bought it in July 2008. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/28/2010 - 2011 Will Bring More De facto Decriminalization of Elite Financial Fraud - While over 1000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan (S&L) debacle, there are no convictions of controlling officers of the large nonprime lenders. The only indictment of controlling officers of a far smaller nonprime lender arose not from an investigation of the nonprime loans but rather from the lender's alleged efforts to defraud the federal government's TARP bailout program. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/22/2010 - BofA Accused Of Breaking Into Woman's Home, Taking Husband's Ashes - Bank of America has seen easier days. The bank been reportedly identified as a target by WikiLeaks -- it reportedly maintains a war room to defend against the leak -- it's the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit, one of many high profile lawsuits involving its foreclosure practices. Now, the bank has been accused of breaking into a woman's home and taking her possessions, including her late husband's ashes. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/10/2010 - 14 years after condo sale, retiree gets foreclosure notice - Bolinger, who now lives in a retirement community in Port St. Lucie, said in 1996 she deeded the home at 639 W. Oakland Park Blvd. to a man who had been renting it from her. Eventually, he took out his own mortgage, paid her off and she forgot about it. - http://www.sun-sentinel.com

12/10/2010 - More Stern fallout: Homes sell for as little as $200 - Scores of Palm Beach County homes were sold to investors at foreclosure auction this month for as little as $200 following the collapse of the David J. Stern law firm and the ensuing confusion while thousands of its cases are reassigned. - http://www.sun-sentinel.com

12/09/2010 - Failed Bank Graveyard. - Bank failures 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - The FDIC has taken over many banks since the start of 2008, including the largest ever failed bank in history. Here's the list so far. - http://www.cnn.com

12/09/2010 - Bank fee Whac-a-Mole: New charges hit accounts - In August, the Card Act banned a variety of fees -- including certain overdraft and excessive late charges. But one month later, banks are increasing existing fees and finding creative new ways to charge customers more for credit cards, so-called "free" checking accounts and banking services. - http://www.cnn.com

12/08/2010 - Foreclosure Mistakes Haunt Homeowners - By now, you may have heard the stories of bank robo-signers powering through hundreds of foreclosure affidavits a day without verifying a single fact. But most of those involved homeowners who had stopped paying their mortgage. They were genuine defaulters. Now a new species of homeowner is getting pushed into foreclosure hell. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/02/2010 - Wall Street Banks In Talks To Settle SEC Lawsuit Over CDOs - As the government hunts for conflicts of interest at Wall Street banks that peddled investments which contributed to the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, those banks are reportedly near settlement. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

12/02/2010 - The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going - In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble, which had propelled a historic growth in home prices, seemed poised to deflate. And if it had, the great financial crisis of 2008, which produced the Great Recession of 2008-09, might have come sooner and been less severe. - http://www.propublica.com
Read More: Magnetar Responds to Our April Story-And Our Response

12/02/2010 - BofA Drags Balance Sheet Confidence Backward: Jonathan Weil - New Questions About Bank Accounting Practices - Here's the latest: Thanks to a Nov. 16 court ruling in Camden, New Jersey, we now know that a Bank of America Corp. employee, Linda DeMartini, testified last year that the lender routinely retained possession of mortgage promissory notes and related documents, even after loans were packaged into bonds that were sold to investors. - http://www.yahoo.com

11/19/2010 - How "mortgage assistance relief" companies prey on homeowners facing foreclosure. - You're behind on your mortgage payments and the bank is threatening to foreclose. Then one day a letter appears in your mailbox from something called the Residential Relief Foundation. The envelope has a picture of the Great Seal of the United States, - http://www.slate.com

11/16/2010 - Why Banks Are Escaping Big Foreclosure Class Action Lawsuits - In defending one Indiana class action, Bank of America has echoed the conclusion reached by some plaintiff lawyers in arguing that the borrower cannot show harm because they would have lost their home anyway. Some plaintiff lawyers who have devoted resources to the issue haven't walked away yet. Bruce Simon, with Pearson, Simon, Warshaw & Penny, said this week that his firm still intends to file a national class action. - http://www.youtube.com

11/12/2010 - WATCH: The Funniest Take On The Federal Reserve You'll Ever See - malekanoms - Quantitative Easing Explained. - "But if the Ben Bernank wants to buy the treasury bonds using the American people's money, he does not buy them from the treasury, he buys them from the GoldMAN SACHS?!?" -- my favorite line. It's a game and we all lose unless we are part of The Goldman Sachs or the Benbernake - http://www.youtube.com

11/12/2010 - Quantitative Easing Explained 2: The Bernank Motivation - "But if the Ben Bernank wants to buy the treasury bonds using the American people's money, he does not buy them from the treasury, he buys them from the GoldMAN SACHS?!?" -- my favorite line. It's a game and we all lose unless we are part of The Goldman Sachs or the Benbernake - http://www.youtube.com

11/12/2010 - Quantitative Easing Explained 3: Jim O'Neill of the Goldman Sachs expects QE3. - It was weird at first but for some reason I grew fond of? it.? Excellent use of the definite? article "the". It reminds me? of ESL courses... - http://www.youtube.com

11/06/2010 - New Ways Bankers Are Spying on You - With lenders still skittish about making new loans, credit bureaus and others are hawking services that help banks probe deeply into your financial closet. The new offerings include ways to look at your rent and utility payments, figure out your income, gauge your home's value and even rate your banking habits based on details like whether your direct deposits have stopped. - http://www.wsj.com

10/29/2010 - Woman FIRED From Temp Job For Having Poor Credit - Four weeks after starting a temporary accounting position at Seattle Bank, Kristin Meaux, 36, says she received a call from the human resources director informing her that the bank had mistakenly forgotten to run a credit check on her before allowing her to work there. When the results of the credit report came in several days later, Meaux says she was promptly fired and escorted off the premises. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

10/22/2010 - Economist Joseph Stiglitz: Put Corporate Criminals in Jail - An institutionalized system of skewed incentives allowed Wall Street bankers and other corporate executives to gamble with America's wealth and then get away largely scot-free after the house of cards came tumbling down, plunging the U.S. into the worst economic crisis in decades and destroying trillions of dollars of wealth worldwide. - http://www.dailyfinance.com

10/20/2010 - Foreclosure rap: Angry mom makes anthem for a broke nation - The lip-syncing is a bit off. The beat is simple. The graphics are old-school. The message is very much of today. " 'Oh no,' said the bank. 'We need nothing at all.' I thought to myself, 'Well, how could that be?' I didn't know about the paper feeding frenzy. Like so many Americans now living in shame, I was unaware of the securitization game." - http://www.washingtonpost.com

10/17/2010 - VIDEO - Banks Shared Clients' Profits, But Not Losses During Meltdown - Pension Funds Wound Up Owning JPMorgan More Than $500 MILLION To Cover Bank's Bad Bets - The strategy is called securities lending, a practice that is thriving even though some investments linked to it were virtually wiped out during the financial panic of 2008. These trades were supposed to be safe enough to make a little extra money at little risk. - http://www.nytimes.com

10/15/2010 - THE NEW TAX MAN: The Big Business Wall Street Won't Discuss - Nearly a dozen major banks and hedge funds, anticipating quick profits from homeowners who fall behind on property taxes, are quietly plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into businesses that collect the debts, tack on escalating fees and threaten to foreclose on the homes of those who fail to pay. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

10/14/2010 - Lee County Florida foreclosures continues by JP Morgan - JP Morgan spokesman Tom Kelly said Tuesday he didn't know the bank's attorneys were continuing to get judgments allowing them to go forward with auctions. Twelve judgments have been issued in Lee for JPMorgan since Oct. 2, the latest on Tuesday, according to court records. - http://www.news-press.com

10/14/2010 - Is This Foreclosure Supervillain David J. Stern's Yacht Misunderstood? - But even before that deposition, Mother Jones did a piece about Mr. Stern that described sexual harassment charges, a class-action racketeering case, and his 16,000-square-foot mansion, plus a neighbor's place he bought last year for $8 million, for tennis court space. "When people say, 'Oh my God, the economy is bad,' I'm like, 'Oh my God, it's great,'" he is said to have told a crowd at a conference this year, where the band Social Distortion played a private show. - http://www.observer.com

10/13/2010 - Eight Head-Shaking Horror Stories From the Foreclosure Crisis - The foreclosure crisis has created a jumble of horrific scenarios, from bank-hired "contractors" who break into people's houses before foreclosure proceedings have begun to vast swathes of land that have been slated for development and subsequently abandoned. - http://www.observer.com

10/13/2010 - Felix Salmon: Banks Had 'Incentive To Buy Loans They Knew Were Bad'... GMAC Launches Audit - The enormous mortgage-bond scandal - Update: KidDynamite asks a good question in the comments: were the bond investors able to do their own due diligence on the loan pool? The answer is no, they weren't - the prospectus did not include the kind of loan-level information which would enable them to do that. - http://www.reuters.com

10/13/2010 - Every State To Participate In Massive Investigation Into Possibly 'Deceptive' Foreclosure Practices - Regulators from all 50 states are launching a coordinated investigation into possibly "deceptive" and "unfair" foreclosure practices that may have illegally evicted families from their homes. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

10/12/2010 - The face of faulty foreclosure - Replique D'Amelio is fighting foreclosure because CitiMortgage, the entity trying to foreclose on the home, doesn't actually own it. - http://www.cnn.com

-ornament -postcard -postcards -14k -print -wall -solar -painting -charm -book -grande -vario -case -coin - stitch -plate -capsules -adhesive -picture -quarter -quarters -birdhouse -photo 10/09/2010 - Ex-employee says foreclosure firm forged signatures - the Florida Attorney General's Office says - A former paralegal for Florida foreclosure giant David J. Stern describes an office where signatures on notarized documents were regularly forged, legal papers were prepared en masse in Guam and the Philippines, and closed-door screaming matches erupted when files weren't moved fast enough. - http://www.sun-sentinel.com

10/09/2010 - Wells Fargo Pays $24 Million To End Investigation Over Dubious Mortgages - The states said loans known as option adjustable-rate loans, or pick-a-payment mortgages, were deceptive. Those loans allowed borrowers to defer some interest payments and add them to the principal balance. Borrowers could make payments so low that loan debt each month. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

10/04/2010 - Corporate Profits 'Near-Historic' In Second Quarter, Thanks To Cost-Cutting - Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2010 - THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT IS POWERLESS TO STOP RAMPANT FRAUD IN FLORIDA COURTS - The highest court in the State of Florida is powerless to do anything at all about the rampant fraud that burns through the courtrooms of this state. No guidance. No direction. No sanctions. The Supreme Court apparently won't even do anything about it or look anymore into. In one of the greatest legal "punts" of all times, the Supreme Court directs a ranking member of Congress to just call the Florida Bar. WOW, talk about an insult. - http://www.mattweidnerlaw.com

09/29/2010 - An Anarchist's Strategy To Dismiss Every Foreclosure In Florida - Across the country, circuit court judges and their staff are becoming overwhelmed and frustrated by the total avalanche of foreclosure cases that have been dumped in their courtrooms. In Pinellas County, Circuit Court judges who used to handle like 400 foreclosure cases are now handling something like 3,000. - http://www.mattweidnerlaw.com

09/29/2010 - Except for Pinellas, few courts reporting problem foreclosure documents - The Pinellas court found 227 cases with dodgy documentation. Eleven circuits reported none, and the next highest number was 12, according to data provided to the state courts administrator. - http://www.tbo.com

09/28/2010 - The Supreme Court's Response to Foreclosure Fraud- The Most Terrifying Indicator of The Real Trouble We're In - This is in response to your September 20 letter to Chief Justice Canady, stating concern about reports of predatory practices by certain law firms in Florida and the possible use of fraudulent and forged documents in foreclosure cases by these law firms. You have requested the Chief Justice to abate all foreclosure cases involving these firms until Attorney General Bill McCollum completes his investigation into these reported practices. - http://www.tbo.com

02/07/2010 - An Anarchist's Strategy To Dismiss Every Foreclosure In Florida - First, when the foreclosing Plaintiff is not the original lender, there must be a formal Assignment of Mortgage executed which says, "The Original Lender Assigns This Mortgage to the Plaintiff in This Case." - http://www.mattweidnerlaw.com

02/06/2010 - MERS' Role in Massive Foreclosure Fraud Nationwide- A Peek Behind Their Shady Curtain - MERS- The Shifty, Shady, Smoky Backroom Dealer of Mortgages. Cutting right to the chase this "innovative process" means the mortgage and banking industry found a nifty way to sell, trade, steal, manipulate and mismanage the mortgages held on virtually every homeowner's home in America. - http://www.mattweidnerlaw.com

09/17/2010 - Consumer bureau: More disclosure, fewer hidden fees - What can consumers ultimately expect? More disclosures and fewer hidden fees. "The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over," Warren said on the White House Website. - http://www.cnn.com

09/17/2010 - Warren: 'Tricks and traps' are over - "The new law creates a chance to put a tough cop on the beat and provide real accountability and oversight of the consumer credit market," she wrote on the Website. "The time for hiding tricks and traps in the fine print is over." - http://www.cnn.com

08/31/2010 - Wall Street May Pay Bonuses Early To Dodge Possible Repeal Of Bush Tax Cuts - Banks are considering paying annual bonuses early this year to lessen the impact of the increased tax rates expected in January, when bonuses are traditionally paid out, reports the Wall Street Journal. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com

08/28/2010 - Banks' Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis - Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand. - http://www.propublica.com

08/29/2010 - How Wall Street Rolled Obama - Obama's Old Deal - The biggest firms knew that much of what their powerful lobbyists had failed to block or water down in the bill could be taken care of later on. They'd still be able to influence the vast set of rules on capital, leverage, and other financial issues that would be written by regulators. And after a two-year fight over financial reform, one other question still lingers: has Wall Street come out the big winner yet again? - www.wsj.com

08/28/2010 - Beware That New Credit-Card Offer - Amid all the junk mail pouring into your house in recent months, you might have noticed a solicitation or two for a "professional card," otherwise known as a small-business or corporate credit card. - www.wsj.com

08/26/2010 - How Wall Street Made The Mortgage Crisis Worse - Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history. Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: - www.npr.com
Read More: ptopublica.org

08/25/2010 - Analyst: Citigroup Is Cooking the Books - An all-out war has broken out between Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned. - www.foxbusiness.com

08/24/2010 - National Review: HAMP's Not-So-Shocking Results - U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has garnered public attention in the past year for taking a stand against insufficient settlements between government prosecutors and Wall Street. It all started with a case against Bank of America for misleading shareholders about the 2008 purchase of Merrill Lynch. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/24/2010 - Bank Settlements: Judges Take A Stand, Shift Focus To Individual Responsibility - U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has garnered public attention in the past year for taking a stand against insufficient settlements between government prosecutors and Wall Street. It all started with a case against Bank of America for misleading shareholders about the 2008 purchase of Merrill Lynch. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Homeowner fights foreclosure in lawsuit claiming documents are fraudulent - After months of wrangling with CitiMortgage, Dennis and Joyce Brown got fed up and hired an attorney to fight CitiMortgage's foreclosure on their Lauderdale Lakes home. The Browns claim they are victims of fabricated documents used to foreclose after CitiMortgage failed to credit them for mortgage payments. - www.sun-sentinel.com

08/14/2010 - Hernando County Sheriff's deputies install GPS on appliances in foreclosed, vacant homes - That's the message from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office as it launches a program that installs GPS devices on appliances and air conditioning units at vacant and foreclosed homes. - www.wtsp.com

08/14/2010 - Bank Mortgage Fraud HOW THEY DO IT...ERICA JOHNSON-SECK THANKS! MERS part 1 of 5 - This is why many foreclosed homes may have a CLOUD in tittle and risks for the homeowners who acquire them. - www.youtube.com
(Related) View More:
Bank Mortgage Fraud pt 2 of 5 ASSIGNMENT TRANSFER FRAUD...ANY CONFLICTS?? - Part 2,
Bank Mortgage Fraud Pt. 3 of 5 They hide behind Pretender Lenders,
Bank Foreclosure Fraud pt 4 Of 5 ..."WHO OWNS THESE NOTES" DISCLOSED! DISCOVERY! ,
Bank Foreclosure FRAUD pt.5 of 5 Save the Best For Last...CONCEALMENT...CONSPIRACY...WIRE FRAUD!! ,
Non-doc loans #1.mp4 from www.foreclosuredestroyer.com ,

08/14/2010 - Wall Street Bonuses Expected To Rise AGAIN - The report comes just weeks after U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg scolded 17 financial firms for making "ill-advised" payments to executives in the last couple of years, stoking public anger that flared when taxpayer funds were used to rescue the financial sector in 2008.. - www.abcnews.com

08/13/2010 - Failings of the foreclosure process laid bare - A document that would give the lender's lawyer the green light to take the home was supposedly signed on Dec. 5, 2007, but the date on the notary seal meant the document could not have been created until May of 2008 - five months later. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/05/2010 - Bank Makes "Mistake" Trashes Out Soldiers Family's Home, Brakes Down Doors, Changes Locks, Removes Belongings - A Tuscola County family thought they had worked out everything with their lender through a program that helps military families facing foreclosure. The family still has the home, or what's left of it. Benjamin Kotzian's wife and kids spent a few months with him in Texas before he was deployed to Afghanistan in June. - www.abclocal.gov

07/29/2010 - New Rule Cracks Down On Debt Settlement Industry - Companies that promise to reduce or eliminate credit card balances and other debt for customers will no longer be allowed to charge an upfront fee. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/26/2010 - Citigroup Will Pay SEC $75 Million To Settle Subprime Charges - Banking titan Citigroup Inc. is paying $75 million to settle civil charges that it misled investors about its potential losses from subprime mortgages as the housing bust hit in 2007. -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/26/2010 - Free credit report sites warned they may be violating new law AGAIN - The law requires all sites or advertisements for such reports to disclose that a federally-mandated free credit report is available through one official site: AnnualCreditReport.com, which also can be reached by calling 877-322-8228, 9 companies were not displaying the disclosure. -
www.orlandosentinel.com

07/25/2010 - Scammers target homeowners with tainted drywall Sickened by defective product, now vulnerable - Among the people profiting in Florida amid confusion and mounting tensions are convicted scammers, thieves and uncertified workers who illegally posed as licensed contractors, according to a Palm Beach Post review of county, state and federal records. -
www.sun-sentinel.com

07/24/2010 - With Banking Reform, Question Everything - Some cards are encouraging customers to charge more by offering enhanced rewards, allowing the issuer to capture "swipe fees" paid by merchants. And one issuer even allegedly threatened to reject consumers with high credit scores because they didn't boost the bottom line. -
www.washingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Big Banks Punish You For Having GOOD Credit - As credit card holders play it safe, issuers increase non-penalty service fees - The most cherished notion of Alan Greenspan was probably that the private financial sector will figure things out and should be left alone as much as possible. It is hard to find anyone today who takes this view seriously. The issue now is to find legitimate and effective means of Congressional oversight, pushing regulators hard to do the right thing: question everything. -
www.nytimes.com

07/16/2010 - Some Parents Are Now Stealing Their Children's Credit (VIDEO) - "Parents are privy to children's information," Linda Foley of the Identity Theft Resource Center told GMA. "And if they're desperate enough, or if they're that type of person, they seem to have no reluctance using their children's social security number." -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Goldman Sachs Settles With SEC Over Mortgage Fraud Claims -- And Stock SOARS - Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Goldman, Sachs & Co. will pay $550 million and reform its business practices to settle SEC charges that Goldman misled investors in a subprime mortgage product just as the U.S. housing market was starting to collapse. -
www.huffingtonpost.com

07/16/2010 - Banks Already Gearing Up To Profit Off Of New Rules Seek to Keep Profits as New Oversight Rules Loom - Faced with new limits on fees associated with debit cards, for instance, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others are imposing fees on checking accounts. -
www.nytimes.com

07/14/2010 - A Roosevelt Moment for America's Megabanks? - Just over a hundred years ago, the United States led the world in terms of rethinking how big business worked - and when the power of such firms should be constrained. In retrospect, the breakthrough legislation - not just for the US, but also internationally - was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. -
www.project-syndicate.com

07/11/2010 - Bank of America Says $10.7 Billion of Trades Wrongly Classified - Bank of America said the inaccuracies aren't material and "don't stem from any intentional misstatement of the Corporation's financial statements and was not related to any fraud or deliberate error," according to a May 13 letter released yesterday from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. - www.bloomberg.com

07/01/2010 - Plantation police, FBI agent indicted in mortgage fraud case - According to the indictment, the defendants submitted false and fraudulent documents to mortgage lenders in order to obtain the loans, and the title attorneys falsely represented to the mortgage lenders the source of the deposits or down payments needed to close the transactions. There were $16.5 million in loans secured in the scheme, according to the indictment. - www.sun-sentinel.com

06/30/2010 - Countrywide Lawsuit: Racial Discrimination In Subprime Loans Alleged By Illinois Attorney General - The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, claimed the Bank of America Corp., subsidiary steered minority borrowers into risky subprime mortgages more often than white borrowers, even when blacks and Latinos qualified for other types of loans. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/23/2010 - Prisoners cashed in on homebuyer tax credit - More than 1,200 prison inmates, including 241 serving life sentences, defrauded the government of $9.1 million in tax credits reserved for first-time homebuyers, according to a Treasury Department report released Wednesday. - www.cnn.com

06/20/2010 - Gretchen Morgenson: Inflated Appraisals Are Key Evidence In Lawsuits Against Banks - Recent filings by two Federal Home Loan Banks - in San Francisco and Seattle - offer an intriguing way to clear this high hurdle. Lawyers representing the banks, which bought mortgage securities, combed through the loan pools looking for discrepancies between actual loan characteristics and how they were pitched to investors. - www.nytimes.com

06/16/2010 - Big Banks Spend Millions On 'Information War' To Stop Swipe Fee Reform - "It's been an information war, and the big banks and credit card companies have unlimited resources to push their distortions about what the amendment will do," said Taylor West, a spokesperson for the Merchant Payments Coalition. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/16/2010 - After Foreclosure, It Gets Worse - Lenders Now Going After Borrowers To Recoup Money Lost In Short Sales - Over the past year, lenders have become much more aggressive in trying to recoup money lost in foreclosures and other distressed sales, creating more grief for people who thought their real estate headaches were far behind. In many localities -- including Virginia, Maryland and the District -- lenders have the right to pursue. - www.washingtonpost.com

05/20/2010 - Another Monthly Drop In Lending By Biggest Bailed-Out Banks - The nation's biggest banks that still owe taxpayers for the extraordinary support they were given in 2008 cut lending by about $9 billion from February to March, or one percent, according to a new report by the Treasury Department. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/28/2010 - Despite Reform Efforts, 'Big Banks Have Enough Lobbying Power To Continue Taking Big Risks' (VIDEO) - When asked whether banks will begin to be regulated more like utilities, Salmon suggested that, even with the financial reform poised to move through the Senate, the industry will have enough lobbying firepower to retain its core profit sectors. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/27/2010 - Top 10 mortgage fraud states - Incidents of mortgage fraud perpetrated by industry professionals increased 7% in 2009, after jumping 26% the year before, said the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), a division of LexisNexis. The worst-hit states include Florida, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. - www.cnn.com

04/14/2010 - Top 10 mortgage fraud states - Incidents of mortgage fraud perpetrated by industry professionals increased 7% in 2009, after jumping 26% the year before, said the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI), a division of LexisNexis. The worst-hit states include Florida, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. - www.cnn.com

04/14/2010 - JPMorgan Executive Mobbed By Borrowers After Inviting Them To Bring Him Their Complaints So, Lowman, fled right the hell out of there! - David Lowman, chief executive for JPMorgan Chase's home mortgage division, may have gotten a little ahead of himself at yesterday's House Financial Services hearing yesterday. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/09/2010 - Florida GOP Leaders Put $1.3 Million In Lavish Spending On Junior Staffer's Amex - She was a 25-year-old junior staffer when the Florida Republican Party gave her an American Express card. Over the next 2.5 years, nearly $1.3 million in charges wound up on Melanie Phister's AmEx - $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, his wife and kids, for starters. Statements show thousands spent on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a month-long stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel, but which the party says was a forfeited deposit. - www.tampabay.com

04/07/2010 - Chase Sued: Allegedly Told Homeowner To Stop Payments, Then Foreclosed - JPMorgan Chase told a California couple to quit making mortgage payments in order to qualify for a loan modification but then foreclosed on their Sacramento home, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/07/2010 - Regions Financial: Bailed-Out Bank's Unit Slapped By SEC For Subprime Fraud - The SEC announced this morning administrative proceedings against Memphis, Tenn.-based firms Morgan Keegan & Company and Morgan Asset Management "and two employees accused of fraudulently overstating the value of securities backed by subprime mortgages." - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/05/2009 - Looting Main Street - How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece - www.rollingstone.com

banks are looting main street

04/05/2009 - Watchdog Group: Stop Big Banks From Offering High-Interest Payday Loans - Once confined to the shady storefronts of payday loan shops, advertisements for short-term loans with triple-digit interest rates have made their way onto the websites of banks like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank. Wells Fargo's Direct Deposit Advance Services give customers advances on their paychecks, typically for a fee of $10 per $100 borrowed or an annual percentage rate of 120 percent or higher. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/02/2009 - JPMorgan Chase To Squeeze Credit Further In Response To New Consumer Protections - In his annual letter to shareholders released late Wednesday, CEO Jamie Dimon said the New York-based bank expects a $500 million to $750 million hit from the credit card reforms that took effect Feb. 22 prohibiting what he referred to as "certain practices that were not considered consumer-friendly." - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2009 - WATCH: Sen. Kaufman On Lehman Brothers Accounting: 'If It Isn't Fraud, It Should Be' - It's a veritable crime sweep. Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) confidently tells Aaron Task of Tech Ticker that "the FBI agents and the prosecutors are going after these guys" -- that is, the possible fraud behind Lehman Brothers "Repo 105" accounting. "There cannot be two laws in the land, especially in an area that cost the American people so incredibly much, by having almost another Great Depression. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/27/2009 - Washington Mutual WaMu Files For Chapter 11 - Washington Mutual Inc. filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, two weeks after resolving a $4 billion dispute with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/26/2009 - At Least 12 Big Banks Involved In HUGE Bid-Rigging Conspiracy, According To New Suit - JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case. - www.bloomberg.com

03/18/2009 - Wachovia To Settle Money Laundering Case For $160 Million - The probe, which began in 2005 when a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics dog in Florida detected cocaine traces in an airplane, ultimately uncovered at least $110 million in drug profits laundered from Mexico through Wachovia. The total settlement includes forfeiture in that amount plus a $50 million fine. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/18/2009 - Indiana Homeowner Kicked Out Of HAMP For Early Payment Wins Reprieve - Stuart had extra cause for concern because she'd been told that she had been kicked out of HAMP. That seems to have happened because she set her automatic payments too early -- instead of on the first day of the month, Stuart set her bank account to make the payment automatically on the 25th of the previous month. She was concerned that GMAC wouldn't accept the money on Jan. 1, New Year's Day. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/18/2009 - Required form criticized by banks as impeding new mortgages - Designed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help borrowers better understand the terms of their loans, the new three-page form has been a required part of the mortgage application process since Jan. 1. In some ways, the form is doing its job, experts say - and in other ways it's adding confusion to a process that already besieges buyers with a mind-boggling array of details. - www.miamiherald.com

03/15/2009 - Big Bailout Banks Slashed New Lending In January - Treasury's monthly survey of bank lending shows overall new loan origination dropped 35 percent from December's level. Treasury says the drop "may be partially explained by large increases" in late 2009. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/12/2009 - Lehman Bankrutpcy: 'Repo 105,' Firm's 'Accounting Gimmick,' Was Like 'A Drug,' Emails Show - As news organizations pore through the 2,200 pages of documents released by Anton Valukas, the examiner in charge of sifting through the most expensive bankruptcy in history, new details have surfaced about possible criminal actions by Lehman executives. - www.huffpostfund.com

03/10/2009 - Foreclosure Schemes And Mortgage Misfortune -- Readers Share Their Tales - We're in the midst of reporting out some of the most promising leads generated by our tipsters, but in the meantime, we've published several stories to our interactive map tracking "Signs of Deception." Among the themes that emerged: - www.huffpostfund.com

03/10/2009 - Way Too Big To Save - Listening to US officials, talking to legal experts, and waiting for an intense Senate debate on financial reform to begin, you can easily form the impression that "too big to fail" adequately describes our most serious future systemic banking problems. It does not. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Consumer Protection Agency Opponents Take Fight To Google AdWords (PHOTO) - As you'll see by the below screen shot, contextual ads for the term "CFPA" have already been snatched up by consumer agency opponents. The agency, first proposed by Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the bailout, would protect consumers against deceptive credit card deals and misleading mortgage agreements while also acting as a bulwark against some of the more exotic financial products. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Chase Refunds $6,200 To Complaining Customer - "They kindly informed me that I would not get my money back because, according to their algorithms, I fit the profile of a credit card cheat," Nitzberg wrote. "Mind you, I am, once again, a 78-year-old retired New York City public school teacher with no criminal record; but according to Chase, I was the most likely suspect." - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/10/2009 - Bank of America scrapping some overdraft fees - With the bank's new policy, BofA debit card purchases that would push checking account balances into the red will be declined for new customers beginning in June, and for existing customers starting in early August. - www.cnn.com

03/05/2009 - Banks Vow To Boost Small Business Lending -- But Aren't Revealing Key Details - Forget searching for "small business loans" on the banks' Web sites to get specifics on the progress of these new programs. Same goes for digging into the banks' finances, because you aren't going to find this segment broken out in one spot. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/04/2009 - NYT: Derivatives Market Is STILL Unreformed, A.I.G., Greece, - Which Crisis Will Be Next? - European leaders have called for an inquiry into the Greek crisis. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, has told Congress that the Fed is "looking into" Wall Street's deals with Greece, and the Justice Department is investigating the euro bets. That is better than turning a blind eye, but it is not nearly enough. - www.nytimes.com

02/26/2009 - Bank Of America Sued For Unwanted Credit Monitoring Service - A California man is suing Bank of America over monthly charges for a credit monitoring service he says he never wanted, didn't sign up for, and couldn't get rid of even after complaining to the bank. Now, in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court, he wants his money back. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/22/2009 - Banks Launch Aggressive Campaigns To Keep Overdraft Charges Flowing In - As the government cracks down on the way banks charge fees for overspending on debit cards, the industry is mounting an aggressive campaign aimed at keeping billions of dollars in penalty income flowing into its coffers. - www.nytimes.com

02/22/2009 - An abrupt eviction, narrowly averted - That declaration allowed Wells Fargo Bank to take possession of Berta's home in December without him ever knowing that a foreclosure case had been filed, and he had no chance to raise a defense. "They didn't want to find me," Berta said. "They tried to use their knowledge of the law to steal my house." - www.heraldtribune.com

02/19/2009 - Goldman Sachs Execs Quickly Sold Off Shares During The Crisis - And Made A Killing - Aamong the big sellers in March 2008 was E. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman managing director and former head of the New York Fed, who sold 15,000 shares of Goldman for $2.6 million; Jon Winkelried, Goldman’s co-president at the time, who sold 20,000 shares for nearly $3.5 million (he quit the firm a year later after asking it to buy an additional $19.7 million of his illiquid investments); and Masanori Mochida, the head of Goldman in Japan, who sold 100,000 shares for $17.6 million. - www.opinionator.com

02/10/2009 - Guess Who's In Charge Of Modifying Mortgages? Subprime Lenders! - At least 21 of the top 25 recipients in the Home Affordable Modification Program were major subprime lenders, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Meanwhile, not even 1 in 5 homeowners eligible for the program has gotten help. - www.motherjones.com

02/10/2009 - Small Business Owners Press For Strong CFPA To Defend Them From Wall Street - When asked to speak for themselves, they say a strong CFPA is the only thing that can protect them from the predatory practices of the corporate titans represented by the Chamber. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/04/2009 - Remorseful Citigroup Banker John S. Reed Parts With Former Colleagues, Calls For Fundamental Financial Reform - The remorseful former banker who made Citigroup what it is today came to Capitol Hill on Thursday and systematically debunked the arguments that his former colleagues use to defend the practices that nearly crashed the financial system. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/04/2009 - Chase Denied Loan Mods for Now Forbidden Reason-Homeowners in Limbo - We at ProPublica reported last month that mortgage servicers are often not following the Treasury Department's rules for the program [2] and provided three examples. One involved another homeowner who, like Herron, had been denied a modification because his hardship was not "permanent." - www.propublica.com

02/04/2009 - NY Attorney General Files CIVIL CHARGES Against BofA - According to the lawsuit, former CEO Ken Lewis and former CFO Joe Price hid more than $16 billion worth of losses at Merrill from shareholders in order to ensure their approval of the merger - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/03/2009 - Victim of a Real Estate Scheme? Huffington Post Investigative Fund Wants Your Stories - It's a no-brainer: As people lose their jobs and struggle to pay the mortgage, they are increasingly vulnerable to those looking to make a quick profit off their troubles. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/02/2009 - Rising FHA default rate foreshadows a crush of foreclosures - About 9.1 percent of FHA borrowers had missed at least three payments as of December, up from 6.5 percent a year ago, the agency's figures show. - www.washingtonpost.com

02/02/2009 - Wells Fargo Bows To Facebook Pressure, Waives Haiti Donation Fees - Acting to contain viral anger on a Facebook page called "Wachovia=Fail," a spokesman for Wells Fargo, Wachovia's parent company, announced today -- in a Facebook post -- that the bank is waiving and refunding all transaction fees related to donations for Haiti. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/01/2009 - Bankers Spent Big Bucks On Scott Brown Campaign - In a six-day span just before the US Senate election, Republican Scott Brown collected nearly $450,000 from donors who work at financial companies, a sign the industry is prepared to spend heavily in the upcoming midterm elections to beat back new controls and taxes President Obama wants to impose. - www.boston.com

01/29/2009 - Transaction Fee On Haiti Donation Leads College Student To Create Anti-Wachovia Facebook Page - Several days after 21-year-old Heather Lynn used her Wachovia debit card to donate $10 to Yele Haiti's earthquake fund, she noticed on her online billing statement that the bank had deducted a 3% "international service fee" from the donated amount. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/29/2009 - Man Infuriated By Overdraft Fee Jailed After Threatening To Rob Bank - Francis Coleman, an unemployed machinist from Bethlehem, called his local TV station Wednesday night and told them he wanted a camera crew to film him robbing the bank. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/27/2009 - bing.com - How To Get Overdraft Fees Refunded - Many videos related to bank overdraft fees and how to get them back. - www.bing.com

01/22/2009 - Goldman Sachs Had Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, Police Barricades At Its Headquarters Before Earnings Announcement - As Goldman Sachs prepared to announce its fourth quarter earnings and employee compensation levels yesterday, the bank had bomb-sniffing dogs and police barricades on hand at its New York City headquarters, - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/18/2009 - Anti-Trust Action Coming Against Banks? - Fortunately, there is an alternative - one laid out neatly by Krishna Guha of the Financial Times on Tuesday. Instead of pursuing the issue of those "too big to fail" financial institutions exclusively through legislation, the administration could launch instead one or more serious antitrust investigations into the behavior of our biggest banks. - www.baselinescenario.com

01/18/2009 - Financial Times Blasts Lack Of Competition In Banking - How the big banks rigged the market - In the description of Whitehall insiders, Goldman executives reacted with anger and aggression. The threat was that the bank would scale back its business in London. For a moment it seemed Gordon Brown's administration might wobble. In the event, Goldman's lobbying failed to persuade it to soften the impact of the tax. - www.ft.com

01/14/2009 - Big Banks Repeatedly Bending Loan Modification Rules - Housing advocates say they frequently see homeowners rejected or kept in a trial modification for questionable reasons. "There's a real resistance on the servicers' part to making permanent modifications," said Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center. - www.propublica.org

01/13/2009 - Goldman CEO Compares Crisis To An Act Of God - The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission held its first hearing in Washington today; with another session scheduled for tomorrow. (Watch the hearing live here.) - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/13/2009 - Fed Shuts Down Credit Card Practices Congress Forgot To Ban - While the new law will forbid arbitrary interest rate hikes on existing balances and over-limit fee traps, some worried the industry would simply pioneer more obscure tactics to soak consumers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/10/2009 - BofA Mistakenly Seized Doctor's Home, Left 75 Pounds Of Fish To Rot, Says New Lawsuit - A West End property owner is suing Bank of America Corp., asserting its agents mistakenly seized a vacation house he owns free and clear, then changed the locks and shut the power off, resulting in the smelly spoiling of about 75 pounds of salmon and halibut from an Alaska fishing trip and other damages. - www.galvnews.com

01/08/2009 - American Banker: Huffington Post Campaign Resonated for a Reason - The real impact of the movement is in the education it provides people about their banking options - something that may not move them to close accounts, but could stick with them next time they need bankservices. unions. - www.americanbanker.com

01/08/2009 - SAYING 'ENOUGH!' WATCH: ABC News Profiles Move Your Money Campaign - On Friday, ABC's World News Tonight reported on Move Your Money. Describing the project as a grassroots movement with growing momentum, the report explained how Move Your Money aims to change the practices of America's too-big-to-fail banks by encouraging account holders at those banks to withdraw their money and deposit it into smaller community banks or credit unions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/08/2009 - 'Move Your Money' Movement Surges In Social Media - Press coverage hardly captures the whole movement, however. Across social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, a surge of grassroots organizing is showing how Americans are making the Move Your Money initiative their own. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/08/2009 - Christian Science Monitor: Mad About The Bailouts? Move Your Money - Take your money out. That's right. Take your checking and savings account out of that big money-center financial institution and move it to a community bank or credit union. - www.csmonitor.com

01/07/2009 - Geithner's New York Fed Pushed AIG To Keep Sweetheart Deals Secret - An arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Arianna And Rob Johnson Explain How Moving Your Money Can Change The System (VIDEO) - The initiative encourages account holders to withdraw their money from big, mismanaged banks and move the funds to smaller, better-managed community banks--institutions that are still lending. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Consumers Are Moving Their Money to Credit Unions, Rising Membership Shows - In fact, consumers are already voting with their wallets in favor of credit unions. The data collected by my organization, - ( the Credit Union National Association -- the industry's trade group ) shows that credit unions are on pace to post 2% membership growth in 2009. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Rabbi Shmuley Boteach - Mortgage Ignominy at JP Morgan Chase - But when it comes to screwing the American tax payer out of funds designed to alleviate his mortgage burden, JP Morgan Chase emerges as the great celestial black hole, sucking in every last particle of cash before it devours your very home into eternal foreclosure darkness. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/06/2009 - Bailed Out Banks Spend Millions Sponsoring College Football - But sponsoring college bowl games isn't typical advertising. It's another example of finance companies worming their way into the lucrative college market, associating their names with institutions of higher learning. - www.chron.co.uk

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Over 340,000 Searches For Community Banks In First Week - People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis.
Fueled by the personal initiatives of thousands, it’s a grassroots effort that has the potential to shift power in the financial system away from Wall Street and to Main Street.
Check out the video, - read up on what inspired the idea, connect with others through - Facebook and - Twitter and then use the - tools and links provided to find a community bank or credit union in your area.

01/06/2009 - Time.com: '3 Cheers For Move Your Money' - I know the Independent Community Bankers of America also have a community bank locater on their site too - www.icba.org If you insert the zip code 10024, I found 20 community banks within a 5 miles. I found a number of small banks around my zip code too. - www.curiouscapitalist.com

01/06/2009 - Move Your Money: Over 340,000 Searches For Community Banks In First Week - My name is Dennis Santiago. I am the CEO of Institutional Risk Analytics, a company that most of the world had never heard of until December 29, 2009. That's the day the country became aware of a tool we donated to help the - MoveYourMoney.info campaign. The response to this tool has been inspiring. The large outpouring of a nation expressing itself remains one of the wondrous things about being an American. - www.huffingtonpost.com

01/05/2010 - Felix Salmon Explains Benefits Of Move Your Money Campaign. Is the Huffington bank boycott a good idea? - Banks make their money in a lot of ways, such as by collecting fees. For instance, banks are projected to collect $38.5 billion in overdraft fees this year, some 90 percent of which is paid by only 10 percent of the customer base. - www.reuters.com

01/04/2009 - Goldman Sachs May Leave London To Escape New Taxes And Regulations - Goldman is one of the most profitable financial institutions in the world. Despite the downturn, it has had a bumper financial year and in the first three quarters of last year alone it set aside £ 10.5bn to cover pay and bonuses. - www.telegraph.co.uk

01/04/2009 - Too Big To Fire? 92% Of Managers At Top Bailout Recipients Are Still In Same Jobs - The Obama administration's approach seems to be: the people who got us into this crisis are the ones best equipped to get us out of it. The numbers behind the sheer lack of management change on Wall Street are nonetheless shocking. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/29/2009 - Risky Lenders Did More Aggressive Lobbying: IMF Report - Excessive risk, in other words, is correlated with campaign cash and lobbying money. Banks and corporations which committed millions to lobbying, the report rather timidly suggests, may have received "preferential treatment" and influenced policy decisions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

12/21/2009 (PART 1) - At Top Subprime Mortgage Lender, Policies Were An Invitation To Fraud - First of two articles about the roots of the subprime lending bubble. An inside look at Long Beach Mortgage - many of whose lending practices were common among subprime loan companies - adds another dark chapter to the evolving narrative of the financial crisis. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: GO TO PART 2,

12/22/2009 (PART 2) How A Subprime Loan Goes Bad. The Fate Of A Subprime Loan: Can This Man Hold On To His Mortgage? (VIDEO) - (Second of two articles about the - roots of the subprime lending bubble.) a web forum where users share employment-related information, released the results of its survey of the best and worst companies to work for. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: GO TO PART 1

12/14/2009 - Obama to banks: 'Rebuild our economy' - President tells Wall Street execs gathered at the White House that he expects 'an extraordinary commitment' to aid the nation. But one banker calls the conversation 'uneventful.' - www.cnn.org
Read More: financial legislation to reshape

11/30/2009 - The Next Credit Crisis Will Involve Private Equity, Says Author Josh Kosman - The next credit crisis may be caused by private equity companies, which bought over 3,000 companies this decade by forcing them to take on enormous amounts of debt, argues financial reporter Josh Kosman, the author of - "The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis." - www.huffingtonpost.com

11/24/2009 - 5 reasons banks don't get it (and a few banks that do) - Tired of being taken for granted by the people who hold your dough? Here's what a bank you could love might look like -- plus a few that are starting to get the right idea. - www.cnn.org
Read More: MINT.COM

11/18/2009 - Feds Launch Anti-Fraud Crackdown - Updating a seven-year-old, post-Enron task force first formed under former President George W. Bush, this new effort will go after financial crimes relating to the current crisis and recovery efforts. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/17/2009 - Small biz loans: $10 billion vanishes - Reports to the Treasury confirm what small business owners have known all year: Banks are cutting back on Main Street lending. - www.cnn.org

11/04/2009 - Bloomberg: Wall Street Demands Bonuses, Or Else. Wall Street Cries 'Feed Me' or World Will End: Susan Antilla - A year after the world's banking system almost collapsed, you might think financial bosses would be agonizing over how they would be depicted in history books, and anyone with a job would be offering to stick around and clean up the mess for a pittance. - www.bloomberg.org

11/04/2009 - John Varley Defends Bonuses: Profits Are "Not Satanic" Barclays CEO Tells London Church Crowd - According to Bloomberg, Barclays CEO John Varley spoke at London's Anglican St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church Tuesday night and defended profits and compensation to employees at financial firms. Varley went on to assert that Christianity is compatible with banking and bonuses. In October, Brian Griffiths, an International advicer to Goldman Sachs told a panel at St. Paul's Cathedral in London that inequality helps us all, saying, "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all." Griffiths also used religion to justify his stance, saying, - "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest." - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Goldman Sachs's Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All

11/04/2009 - Mortgage Bankers Post Huge Profits... Again - average profit of nearly $1,400 on each loan originated during the second quarter, a figure that at least one housing expert expects to significantly decline in the coming months. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/04/2009 - JPMorgan Settlement: Bank To Pay SEC Over $700M Over Charges Of Illegal Payments - agreed to pay $75 million in fines and forfeit $647 million in fees to settle federal regulators' charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala. - www.huffingtonpost.org

11/03/2009 - States Are Pondering Fraud Suits Against Banks - Frustrated by the banks' inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications. - www.nytimes.org

11/01/2009 - Wall Street's New Halloween Trick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.org

11/01/2009 - Mystery: Why did Goldman stop scrutinizing loans it bought? - The lenders, he said, "just wanted somebody, anybody to sign a note" so they could sell it to Wall Street, where ratings agencies that were paid hefty fees by the investment banks bestowed triple-A grades or their equivalent on most subprime bonds.
www.mcclatchydc.com - VIDEO -

11/01/2009 - How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash - In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
www.mcclatchydc.com - VIDEO -

10/30/2009 - Wall Street's New Halloween Trick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.org

10/30/2009 - Too Big To Fail, Too Small To Survive: Small Bank Failures Mount, While Big Banks' Profits Soar - The top 10 bailed-out banks -- Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, U.S. Bancorp, SunTrust and Capital One - have reported combined profits this year of $13.5 billion in the first quarter, $16.8 billion in the second quarter and $11 billion in the third quarter after a massive $18 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2008. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/30/2009 - Bankers Expect Rising Bonus Pay To Break Records - In the financial world, most executives expect their bonuses to match or exceed last year�s, with 1 in 10 predicting their best-ever payout. - www.bloomberg.org

10/27/2009 - U.S. schools homeowners to spot loan rescue scams - launched on Monday by government agencies, local leaders and housing advocates to stop scammers preying on desperate borrowers nationwide. - www.reuters.org

10/27/2009 - Robert Reich: Breaking Up The Big Banks, And Why Congress Won't Do It - The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/27/2009 - Ed Yingling: Banking Industry's Top Defender Got It Wrong Over and Over Again - At the height of the housing bubble in 2005, Yingling penned an op-ed for American Banker, titled "Regulators Shouldn't Make Boards Micromanage," in which he argued that "asking boards of directors to analyze specific loan activity... runs counter to good governance." - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/26/2009 - Subprime and the Banks: Guilty as Charged - "There has not been a case made that there is an enforcement problem with banks," Edward Yingling, the head of the American Bankers Association, said last week. "There is a problem with enforcement on nonbanks." - www.executivesuite.org

10/26/2009 - Wall Street and Their Seductive Loan Promotions Tricked Many on Main Street - Too many companies like JP Morgan Chase rushed into this sub-prime mortgage spotlight of praise and profit to the demand of the investors, but now after being invited to take their rightful places on the stage of reality and responsibility, nobody's walking. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/26/2009 - 6 loans in 6 years: How one woman lost her home - She was forced to sell after six Washington Mutual mortgage loans in six years stripped much of the equity from her nearly million-dollar home. She got them all from the same loan officer at WaMu's home-loan center at Northgate, loans that were far too complex for a stroke survivor to understand. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Part one | Reckless strategies doomed WaMu - WaMu's riskiest loans raked in money from high fees, but because the bank skimped on making sure borrowers could repay them, they eventually failed at disastrously high rates. As loans went bad, they sucked massive amounts of cash that WaMu needed to stay in business. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Part two | WaMu: Hometown bank turned predatory - In particular, the bank promoted as its "signature loan" a complex product known as the option ARM. This adjustable-rate mortgage, much like a credit card, gave borrowers the choice of making low minimum payments. But that option didn't cover the interest and only dug them deeper into debt. - www.seattletimes.org

10/26/2009 - Showdown In Chicago: Sheila Bair Speaks To Protesters, Backs Consumer Protection Agency (VIDEO) - Before she appeared at the American Bankers Association annual convention today, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation head Sheila Bair addressed protesters at the conference. - www.huffingtonpost.org

10/25/2009 - PORTAL - Debtor's Hell - This Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation into the world of consumer debt in the United States found a system where debt collectors have a lopsided advantage, debtors are often treated shabbily by collectors and the courts, and consumers can quickly find themselves in a life-upending financial crisis. - www.boston.org

10/25/2009 - Oprah.com - Foreclosure and Consumer Difficulties - Foreclosure Crisis, Lender Deceptions, Biased Courtrooms, Consumer Responsibility and Disadvantages. - www.oprah.org

10/25/2009 - Has A MERShole Opened Up? - If state law requires an unbroken chain of recorded assignments in order to document ownership of a mortgage and thus standing to foreclose, MERS cannot override this state law by fiat. - www.market-ticker.org

10/25/2009 - The Mers Fifty Million Mortgage Meltdown - PART I. The Promissory Note Evidence Ownership of Debt and Standing to Bring Suit. - www.loanworkout.org

10/25/2009 - Judges Scrutinizing Lenders' Methods In Foreclosure Fights - Homeowner's $460,000 Debt Canceled - The reason that notes have gone missing is the huge mass of mortgage securitizations that occurred during the housing boom. Securitizations allowed for large pools of bank loans to be bundled and sold to legions of investors, but some of the nuts and bolts of the mortgage game - notes, for example - were never adequately tracked or recorded during the boom. In some cases, that means nobody truly knows who owns what. - www.nytimes.com

10/20/2009 - Bob Herbert: Why "Too Big To Fail" Is A Bailout For The Rich. Safety Nets for the Rich - We've spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government - while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they've wanted. - www.nytimes.com

10/20/2009 - JPMorgan, Citi Sued for Student Loan Scheme - According to the suit, JPMorgan and Citi alledgely "ratified and/or authorized the wrongful acts of Nelnet and have benefitted from such conduct. - www.businessinsider.com

10/20/2009 - Big banks take your money and run - The titans that survived last year's tumult have gathered deposits by the bushel. But they have shown less of a knack for lending it out. - www.cnn.com

10/20/2009 - How Uncle Sam is killing your savings - Ultralow rates are hurting the nation's prudent savers as they bear the brunt of Wall Street. - www.cnn.com

10/20/2009 - Perks And Benefits Go Up At Rescued Financial Firms - Bosses benefit after bailout Fringe compensation rose 4 percent last year - www.washingtonpost.com

10/16/2009 - Dylan Ratigan, Michael Moore Slam Wall St. Over Bonuses - They burned down our economy. They completely crashed it. And now they're getting rewarded for it... It's absolutely insane that we allow this to happen. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/14/2009 - JPMorgan Earnings: Bank Posts $3.6 Billion Profit, Despite Big Loan Losses - However, traditional residential mortgages and home equity loans as well as credit cards continue to default at a rapid pace and that has eaten into JPMorgan's profits. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/13/2009 - Walking Away From Your Mortgage: Why It's Not Unethical - foreclosure numbers are again - at record highs. As the foreclosures rise, so too does the criticism of "walkaways" who hand the keys to their drastically devalued houses back to the bank. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: MORAL STANDARDS, , OTHER REPORTS, , DEFAULT ACCUSATIONS,

10/13/2009 - Citigroup Fined $600k For Investments That Helped Customers Dodge Taxes - The development comes as governments around the world crack down on tax evasion as they look to close widening budget gaps fueled by economic weakness. - www.cnbc.com

10/13/2009 - Analysts Predict $23 BILLION Bonus Pool At Goldman Sachs - "Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger," Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of - Goldman Sachs, said last month. "And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate." - www.nytimes.com

10/12/2009 - NYT: Citigroup Hires Former S&L Crisis Lobbyist - The New York Times takes a look at Citigroup's hiring of Richard F. Hohlt -- a former lobbyist with a controversial past who - will now advise the volatile bank on policy issues.www.nytimes.com

10/12/2009 - Home rescue was a scam, jury says - Gideon Rechnitz and business associate Thomas Cook pretended to help in 2006, but actually had Costa sign over the deed to Rechnitz while leaving her personally responsible for the mortgage and all the maintenance and taxes on the home. - www.heraldtribune.com

10/10/2009 - States Should Be Allowed To Protect Consumers From Big Banks - With the major banks immune from state laws, the measures are largely worthless. Some states have abandoned efforts to provide consumers with added protection from predatory lenders; others have scaled back existing rules after being pressured by federal agencies. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/09/2009 - Banks Hoarding Cash, Not Lending - A new report shows that, in the year since TARP's creation, commercial bank credit has fallen in just about every category. Full-Year TARP Results: Banks Hoard More Cash, Make Fewer Loans - www.foxbusiness.com

10/09/2009 - Predatory-lending lawsuits on the rise - Homeowners and government officials are taking mortgage lenders to court for unfair lending. While many of these suits are still winding their way through the legal system, some banks have already settled for millions of dollars. practices. - www.cnn.com

10/09/2009 - In Housing Report, Civil Rights Commission Decides NOT To Investigate Civil Rights Violations - But instead, the Republican commissioners explicitly sought to investigate whether "federal efforts to increase homeownership among minority and low-income individuals may have unintentionally weakened underwriting standards and lending policies." - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/02/2009 - Michael Moore And Sean Hannity Face Off: Did Hannity Fib About Going To Church? (VIDEO) - Moore hammered Hannity for arguing that the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting financial meltdown can be almost entirely blamed on low-income borrowers who took out mortgages they couldn't afford. - www.huffingtonpost.com

Michael Moore, Sean Hannity Talk Mortgage Crisis

 

Michael Moore Confronted By Hannity About "Capitalism"

 

Sean Hannity and Michael Moore Debate Previous Administrations' Roles in

 

Hannity & Michael Moore : The Great Debate.

10/02/2009 - Hightower: Wall Street's Latest Ghoulish Gimmick - It's a scheme based on the mundane (but huge) life insurance market. Wall Street intends to tap into the $26 trillion-worth of life insurance policies that Americans hold, using a financial mechanism called "life settlements." - www.truthout.com

10/01/2009 - Lawsuit: Wells Fargo Pockets The Difference When Customers Make ATM Errors - Wells Fargo customer Brandi McLay says that when she and other customers have made ATM deposits and mistakenly entered a dollar amount lower than the amount of the cash or checks on the keypad, the bank "pockets the difference," as first reported by Courthouse News Service. - www.huffingtonpost.com

10/01/2009 - Newsweek: Credit Rating Agencies Should Go The Way Of Enron - when it comes to bad decision making, these seven folks arguably deserve the bulk of the blame. - www.newsweek.com

09/30/2009 - THE UNACCOUNTABLE ANALYSTS - No Credit Rating Agency Employees Covering AIG Or Lehman Have Been Fired... Lawmaker Proposes Making Agencies Collectively Liable For Inaccuracies. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/30/2009 - Vanity Fair Details Secret Meetings Between Government And Goldman Sachs - Sorkin's reports go further than any other published accounts in establishing a link between the government's actions during the financial crisis and the benefits Goldman Sachs received during the bailout. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - Wall Street Bonuses Set to Increase - With the financial sector recovering, banks face a conundrum. Big bonuses could spark a backlash, but small bonuses could cause top talent to flee. - www.cnn.com

09/29/2009 - Credit Cards: Federal Reserve Closer To New Limits - The public, industry and other interested parties will have an opportunity to weigh in on the Fed's proposal. The provisions are slated to take effect on Feb. 22, 2010. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - Shahien Nasiripour The Wall Street Technique That Led To Billions In Bad Loans - How Securitization Encouraged Bad Loans. the bundling and packaging of loans, which are then sliced into securities for sale to investors -- grew tenfold from 2000 to 2005, reaching a peak of over $1.5 trillion in 2006, the report notes. - www.huffingtonpost.com

09/29/2009 - AIG's Joseph Cassano In Westport, CT: BACK On U.S. Soil - The former AIG exec dubbed "The Man Who Crashed The World" by Vanity Fair is back in the U.S. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Financial Crisis Financiers, The Man Who Crashed the World, Feds eye AIG exec Cassano, Joseph Cassano, AIG Execs Could Face Grand Jury In Brooklyn

09/29/2009 - Foreclosure blight: The cleanup crawls along - The Neighborhood Stabilization Program, passed by Congress last year, gives states and localities money to acquire and rehabilitate abandoned properties. The big problem: officials are having trouble getting their hands on those houses, which are being scooped up instead by private investors and homebuyers at rock-bottom prices. - www.businessweek.com

09/28/2009 - U.K. Gets It Right: Annual Bank Bonuses To Be Banned - annual bonuses for bank executives will be outlawed in an attempt to curb excessive risk-taking in the country's huge financial sector. - www.businessweek.com

09/28/2009 - Banks Still Trading In Risky Derivatives - Bailed-Out Banks Still Making Billions Off Risky Bets - U.S. commercial banks earned $5.2 billion trading derivatives in the second quarter of 2009, a 225 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the Treasury Department.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/27/2009 - Fed Held Back As Evidence Mounted On Subprime Loan Abuses - As Subprime Lending Crisis Unfolded, Watchdog Fed Didn't Bother Barking - The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses.www.washingtonpost.com

09/25/2009 - Citigroup's New Plan: Fewer Locations, Most Lending Limited To The Wealthy - Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in TARP funds -- in addition to billions in government asset guarantees -- has come up with a brash tax-payer funded restructuring plan: cut U.S. locations and limit most lending to only the wealthy.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/24/2009 - Why Authorities Haven't Been Able To Stop The Growth Of "Foreclosure Rescue" Scams - "Foreclosure rescue" companies promising -- in exchange for a large up-front fee -- to persuade lenders to modify desperate homeowners' mortgages. And authorities are again finding themselves ill-equipped to deal with the deluge.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/23/2009 - Matt Taibbi: "Mortgage Market Was A Giant Criminal Enterprise" - This is a potentially gigantic story. It seems that a court has ruled that about half of the mortgage market has been run as a criminal enterprise for years, which would invalidate any potential forelosure proceedings for about, oh, 60 million mortgages.www.trueslant.com

09/22/2009 - Bank Of America Trial With SEC Coming - a judge threw out the bank's $33 million settlement and rebuked the agency for not pursuing charges against executives.www.huffingtonpost.com

09/21/2009 - WHERE ARE THE CULPRITS? - More than a year into the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression, millions of Americans have seen their home values and retirement savings plunge and their jobs evaporate. www.mcclatchydc.com

09/16/2009 - Cuomo Subpoenas Bank Of America Board Members - board members are expected to be questioned about what they knew regarding the mounting losses and bonus payments at Merrill ahead of the deal's completion. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Andrew Cuomo, Bank Of America Board, BofA, BofA Board, Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch Bonuses, New York Attorney General, NY Ag,

09/16/2009 - Break up the big banks - Citigroup, Bank Of America, JPMorgan And Wells Fargo Control 39 Percent Of All Deposits. - www.reuters.com
Read More: Bank Of America, Banking Monopoly, Banking Reform, Banks, Big Four Banks, Citigroup, Fdic, Financial Crisis, JPMorgan Chase, Too Big Too Fail, Wells Fargo, Business News

09/15/2009 - Where are the subprime perp walks? - Three years after the housing bubble popped, prosecutors have yet to bring a major case tied to the subprime fiasco. What gives?www.cnn.com

09/15/2009 - The Foreclosed Malibu Beach House An Ex-Wells Fargo Exec Partied In - Check out the PHOTOS, which are courtesy of Irene Dazzan-Palmer Of Coldwell banker (www.IreneDazzan-Palmer.com)
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/15/2009 - Wells Fargo fires banker for 'misconduct' for parties in bank-owned home see 9/11 below - On Monday, Wells Fargo & Co. said it terminated an employee for misconduct at a bank-owned property in one of California's most well known celebrity enclaves.
www.cnn.com

09/12/2009 - WALL STREET SIZZLES AS REFORM FIZZLES - "Not A Lot Has Changed In That Culture"...Obama's Proposals "Weak And Watered Down". A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.
www.nytimes.com

09/12/2009 - The $33 million bonus saga. The Merrill Lynch bonus saga drags on - Bank of America and the SEC exchange jabs, but ask federal judge once again to sign off on $33 million settlement over bonuses paid to Merrill execs.
www.cnn.com

09/11/2009 - Exec. In Charge Of Foreclosures Moved Into Bank-Owned Malibu Beach House, Neighbors Say - spent long summer weekends in a $12 million Malibu beach house, moving into the home just after it had been surrendered to Wells Fargo to satisfy debts.
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/10/2009 - Prepared Statement of The Federal Trade Commission - Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs "How the FTC Works to Halt Fraudulent Schemes Exploiting the Economic Downturn and the Stimulus Package" Washington, D.C. September 10, 2009
www.trashoutpro.com

09/10/2009 - Con Men Exploit Stimulus Program To Scam Thousands Of Americans, Say Government Auditors - So far, 270,000 Americans have been affected by stimulus-related scam, according to Federal Trade Commission.
www.huffingtonpost.com

09/09/2009 - Banks To Make $27 Billion On Overdraft Fees - Banks and credit unions have long pitched debit cards as a convenient and prudent way to buy. But a growing number are now allowing consumers to exceed their balances - for a price.
www.nytimes.com

09/09/2009 - Biggest banks stepping in to payday arena - A few of the nation's largest banks -- including Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco, and Fifth Third Bancorp of Cincinnati -- are now marketing payday loan-type products, with triple-digit interest rates, to their checking account customers.
www.startribune.com

09/09/2009 - "Rescission": Health Insurance Companies' Latest Tactic To Withdraw Coverage - Blue Cross claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire "preexisting conditions" Marrari said she did not know she had.
www.washingtonpost.com

09/09/2009 - Mortgage surplus money: $18 million waiting for homeowners to claim - "I have $18 million in mortgage surplus money that is sitting there waiting" to be claimed, Brown said during a news conference Monday at Chicago's Englewood District police station.
www.chicagotribune.com

09/09/2009 - Mortgage Surplus Search - If your home was foreclosed upon, and the sales or auction price exceeded the amount you owed on the mortgage, then the Clerk's Office may be holding your surplus or equity money, to which you are entitled. Use the search form below to find out if the Clerk's Office is holding money for you.
www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org

09/07/2009 - Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance - The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash - $400,000 for a $1 million policy - www.nytimes.com

09/04/2009 - CFTC Accuses Dutch Firm Of Manipulating Oil Prices - Inquiry Stokes Unease Over Trading Firms That Shape Markets. - www.nytimes.com

09/04/2009 - Where Are The Handcuffs Now? Thousands Of Bankers Went To Jail During S&L Crisis - In the cutthroat world of high-frequency trading, success is a function of speed, secrecy and often a bit of intrigue. Few have been more adroit at these arts than Optiver. - www.ft.com

09/03/2009 - FACTBOX-Bailed-out banks paid execs handsomely in 2008 - Following are the 20 financial services firms that borrowed the most from taxpayers, and how much they paid their top executives in 2008, according to the report. - www.reuters.com

09/03/2009 - Top Execs At Bailed-Out Banks Stand To Make Millions In Stock Options - The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million - www.reuters.com

09/03/2009 - Pearlstein: Wall Street Hustlers Who Squandered Billions Are Back At It - So You Just Squandered Billions . . . Take Another Whack at It - www.washingtonpost.com

09/02/2009 - Housing flipper facing charges - One of the Sarasota area's most successful property flippers is accused of gutting a home that he could no longer afford. - www.heraldtribune.com

09/01/2009 - Bankruptcy Judges, Justice Dept. Rip Mortgage Companies - Many homeowners in bankruptcy have legal representation and must settle claims with servicers. As a result, the process has revealed and documented a slew of servicer problems. - www.propublica.org

09/01/2009 - Is Angelo Mozilo a villain or just vilified? - Looking Back At Countrywide's Founder, The "Typhoid Mary" Of The Housing Bust. - www.latimes.com

09/01/2009 - Taibbi: Why The Recent TARP Profit Reports Are Just Propaganda - Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation's biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again. - www.trueslant.com

09/01/2009 - Ex-Countrywide Execs' Firm Modifies Bad Loans for Taxpayer Cash - PennyMac, a firm founded by the former president and chief operating officer of Countrywide, buys distressed home loans on the cheap with the goal of modifying them and later selling them for a profit. - www.propublica.org

08/28/2009 - Living in Bed-Stuy - Buying and Selling in Bedbug City - Complaints about bedbugs have risen sharply over the last few years in New York, according to city officials, and no neighborhood in the city has been spared. - www.nytimes.com

08/28/2009 - Ban on robocalls takes effect on Tuesday September 1, 2009 - Businesses that try to push products on consumers with automated and unsolicited calls will face fines of up to $16,000 per call, according to the Federal Trade Commission. - www.cnn.com

08/28/2009 - FTC drops the banhammer on prerecorded "robocalls" - Still, the list of exceptions mean that the calls will go on, because charities, politicians, banks, and telcos can continue their prerecorded pitches. - www.arstechnica.com

08/27/2009 - Barbarians back at bank gates - As failing banks pressure the FDIC's deposit insurance fund, regulators reach out to private equity investors for help. - www.cnn.com

08/24/2009 - Sergey Aleynikov: "Goldman Spy" Arrest Offers Glimpse Inside $8B Market - Investment banks have been repackaging old mortgage securities and offering to sell them as new products, a plan that's nearly identical to the complicated investment packages at the heart of the market's collapse.
www.youtube.com - VIDEO -

08/24/2009 - Remember me? Wall Street repackages debt for sale - Investment banks have been repackaging old mortgage securities and offering to sell them as new products, a plan that's nearly identical to the complicated investment packages at the heart of the market's collapse. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/22/2009 - Foreclosure data comes up short on Dade website - Because the sale was a foreclosure, and the Property Appraiser's Office isn't recognizing foreclosure sales, the new sales price wasn't listed and the old, previous price and date remained -- with the new buyer attached to it. - www.miamiherald.com

08/22/2009 - Real Estate Scams. Mortgage Fraud Update with Rachel Dollar - Mortgage Fraud Blog is the premier website for news and information on mortgage fraud and real estate fraud - www.fraudproblem.com

08/22/2009 - Real Estate Scams - The wide range of Real Estate and Loan Fraud scams is almost hard to imagine. Click on a name to view the details of the Scam - www.fraudproblem.com

08/22/2009 - Mortgage Fraud News: July 2009 - Fannie Mae has become aware of a new variant of property flipping involving preforeclosure (short) sales. - www.trashoutpro.com

08/21/2009 - In Appraisal Shift, Lenders Gain Power and Critics - Brokers, real estate agents and banks asked appraisers to do a lot of pretending during the housing boom, pumping up values while ignoring defects. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/15/2009 - Homeowner Left Hanging After Mortgage Lender Is Shuttered - A New Hampshire cancer survivor who nearly lost his home four months ago due to "immoral" practices of his mortgage company now claims he's left "in the dark" after the same company was shuttering by federal agencies due to possible fraud. - www.foxnews.com

08/15/2009 - Rich Americans Scrambling Over Tax Dodge Crackdown - A deal with Switzerland settling U.S. demands for the names of suspected tax dodgers from a Swiss bank has a lot of wealthy Americans with offshore accounts nervously running to their tax advisers -- and the Internal Revenue Service. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/14/2009 - Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: - surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/14/2009 - Loophole in government program to buy toxic securities could cost taxpayers - Without safeguards, traders in the $40-billion program could use inside information to profit -- and any losses would be largely borne by taxpayers. - www.latimes.com

08/13/2009 - NAR economist: Lawrence Yun, Home prices and sales surge - Prices might be stabilizing but Mr. Yun has always been an idiot. Look at his record he has been predicting better prices since 2005. It's no wonder people get confused with these nonsensical press releases by the NAR and the continuous media pump. Quarter to quarter comparisons are useless, you need to look at year over year......good grief. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/13/2009 - Banks Shun Federal Small Business Loan Program Over Lack Of "Incentives" - There's not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years. - www.nytimes.com

08/12/2009 - Debt consolidators purchased tickets with client's credit cards - Employees of Ticket Mania then sold tickets at a discount to other customers. Economic Crimes Detective Kenneth Wright said customers lost about $13,000 in fraudulent charges posted on their credit cards. - www.orlandosentinel.com

08/11/2009 - 7-cent mistake costs a lot more; late payers now losing their home - "The bank seems more interested in having another empty house in Michigan than working with the family," - www.miamiherald.com

08/09/2009 - Wall Street Revives The Guaranteed Bonus, No Matter How Employee Performs - The resurrection of the guaranteed bonus is sure to become a hot-button issue for the Obama administration's pay czar, - www.nytimes.com

08/09/2009 - Banks Make $38 Billion From Overdraft Fees - with the bulk of the revenue coming from the most financially stretched consumers amid the deepest recession since the 1930s. Fees Are Nearly Double Those In 2000 - www.ft.com

08/09/2009 - Delinquent owner driving a new car - Last month one of the owners being foreclosed upon moved back into the unit. He now is driving a new car and has a new large screen TV and cable connected. What is the problem and how can we force payment of our delinquent fees? - www.miamiherald.com

08/09/2009 - No local agencies sought federal aid to fight flip fraud - Earlier this year, the federal government set aside tens of millions of dollars to help local law enforcement agencies fight mortgage fraud. But none of that grant money will make its way to the Sarasota area. No one applied. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/09/2009 - We got $4 gasoline and he gets a $100 million bonus? - Andrew J. Hall is an oil trader who lives and works in Connecticut, though he also owns a 150-room castle in Germany. He runs a company called Phibro, which is owned by Citigroup, which at last count was into U.S. taxpayers for $45 billion in bailout money. - www.stltoday.com

08/08/2009 - Flipping real estate in Florida - Cumulative look of property flipping in Florida since 2000.
www.heraldtribune.com - VIDEO -

08/08/2009 - Suspicious flipping in Southwest Florida - Taking a look at four large pre-platted neighborhoods.
www.heraldtribune.com - VIDEO -

08/07/2009 - Drywall was just the start - Sarasota-Manatee area allegedly has one of its first cases of Chinese drywall-connected burglaries. - www.heraldtribune.com

08/07/2009 - Wife Of Monkee Micky Dolenz Arrested For Defrauding Affordable Housing Program - Investigators say Quinter failed to disclose that she was sharing the apartment with a friend who paid rent. The home also wasn't her only residence. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2009 - Buffett's Betrayal - A good chunk of his fortune is dependent on taxpayer largess. Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company's stock holdings would have been wiped out. - www.reuters.com

08/06/2009 - "Morning Meeting" Panel Uses Masterpiece Theater To Explain Credit Rating Agencies Corruption - A key actor in causing the financial crisis were the credit rating agencies.
www.huffingtonpost.com - VIDEO -

08/05/2009 - Mortgage Servicers Accused Of Harassing Borrowers, Illegal Fees - The AP found that at least 30 servicers have been accused in lawsuits of harassing borrowers, imposing illegal fees and charging for unnecessary insurance policies. More recently, the companies also have been criticized for not helping homeowners quickly enough - delays that lead to more fees for homeowners and profits for servicers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2009 - Regulators Inquire About Goldman Sachs' Bonuses And Derivatives Trading - Compensation, especially bonuses, and credit derivatives have been among the most hot-button topics in the financial services industry since the credit crisis peaked last fall. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/04/2009 - Goldman Employees Told To Avoid High-Profile Purchases - Blankfein has Goldman in particular, should be toned down in light of the billions in bailout money that banks, including Goldman, have gotten from Uncle Sam. - www.nypost.com

08/01/2009 - $100 Million Payday Poses Problem for Pay Czar - If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will. - www.nytimes.com

08/01/2009 - $100 Million Payday Poses Problem for Pay Czar - If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will. - www.nytimes.com

07/31/2009 - Borrowers in foreclosure hit with dubious fees - questionable practices among lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some legal specialists to contend that companies instigating foreclosures may be taking advantage of imperiled borrowers. - www.deseretnews.com

07/30/2009 - Recession Sparks Rise In Health, Tenant/Landlord Complaints - growth in home foreclosure "rescue" scams and complaints about debt collectors, according to a consumer survey released Thursday. - www.mcclatchydc.com

07/30/2009 - Ft. Meyers, Florida Condo Tower Has 1 Tenant, 32 Stories - Vangelakos, 45, his wife Cathy and their three children are the only residents in the 32-story Oasis I condo on the east edge of downtown Fort Myers. - www.news-press.com

07/29/2009 - Former Countrywide Execs Want To Profit From The Housing Bust - Countrywide Alumni Seek Profits From Housing Collapse (Update1) - www.bloomberg.com

07/28/2009 - Loan Modification Warnings - some customers say they're not getting their money's worth after putting down big money up front. - www.myfoxla.com

07/28/2009 - Bank Account Scams - Consumer advocates: Situation out of control. - www.myfoxla.com

07/28/2009 - VIPs Weren't Kept in the Dark - Influential officials who received discounted Countrywide Financial mortgages knew of their preferential treatment, a new report alleges - www.foxbusiness.com

07/28/2009 - Chris Dodd, Kent Conrad deny knowing about VIP deals - Congressional ethics rules bar lawmakers from getting special deals or benefits not available to the general public. - www.politico.com

07/25/2009 - Do Payday Loan Borrowers Have Any Idea What They're Getting Into? - 400 Percent APR-Is That Good? - Do people take out payday loans because they're desperate-or because they don't understand the terms? - www.slate.com

07/21/2009 - White House: TARP Money Might Not Be Traceable - The money that has been loaned to the banks, he argued, was not "followable" because of its "fungibility" on the books of the major financial institutions. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/21/2009 - House Dems To Geithner: Stop Backroom Deals With Wall Street - Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) would require the Treasury to sell warrants in a public auction and do so in a transparent way. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/21/2009 - In Spain, An Outbreak Of Bank Robberies During Recession - Bank executives argue that there is no link between the falling economy and the rise in bank robberies, many Spaniards say they think the trends are more than coincidental. - www.nytimes.com

07/21/2009 - Goldman Sachs Exec Named To Key State Dept. Position - Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of investment bank Goldman Sachs, has been tapped for a key U.S. State Department post, White House officials say. - www.upi.com

07/20/2009 - Subprime Lenders Modify Home Loans For Government - For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront, they promised to negotiate with lenders to lower payments - www.ritholtz.com

07/20/2009 - They're Baaack! Subprime Brokers Resurface As Dubious Loan Fixers - Despite making promises of relief to homeowners desperate to keep their homes, Federal Loan Modification Law Center (FedMod) and other profit making loan modification firms often fail to deliver - www.nytimes.com

07/13/2009 - Homeless stand in for lobbyists on Capitol Hill - Squatting next to a white wall outside a Senate hearing room recently with a cell phone glued to his ear, Gomes is being paid to hold a place in line for a lobbyist. - www.cnn.com

07/12/2009 - The Bailout Swindle, Act II - Numerous are the ways the government's multi-trillion-dollar bailout has scammed taxpayers. - www.motherjones.com

07/12/2009 - The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold - How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System. - www.motherjones.com

07/09/2009 - Mini-Madoffs: The New Breed Of Downmarket Ponzi Schemers (SLIDESHOW, VOTE) - Bernie certainly wasn't alone. As BusinessWeek recently pointed out, there's currently a "bull market for investment scams".
www.huffingtonpost.com - SLIDESHOW - VOTE -

07/09/2009 - Too Big To Jail? Prosecutors Pass On Major Wall Street Executives - Why prosecutors won't hit Wall Street hard in the subprime scandal. The subprime-mortgage-backed securities scam-perpetuated by Wall Street. - www.newsweek.com

07/09/2009 - Study: Most Payday Borrowers Take On More Loans In A Hurry - Eighty percent of people who take out a payday loan take out more than one per year, according to the study, and nearly nine out of ten of those repeat borrowers take out their next loan before their next payday. - www.huffingtonpostews.com

07/08/2009 - 'BANKSLAUGHTER': Should Execs Be Held Liable For Killing Banks? - Should U.S. Criminal Law Include A 'Bankslaughter' Provison For Financial Execs? - www.foxnews.com

07/08/2009 - 'BANKSLAUGHTER': Should Execs Be Held Liable For Killing Banks? - Should U.S. Criminal Law Include A 'Bankslaughter' Provison For Financial Execs? - www.foxnews.com

07/02/2009 - The Great American Bubble Machine - the Wall Street Bubble Mafia - Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi On "How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression"
www.rollingstone.com             VIDEO 1     VIDEO 2     VIDEO 3     VIDEO 4     VIDEO 5

07/01/2009 - Government Cracking Down On Get-Rich-Quick Scams - The economic downturn appears to be bringing out the worst in some people. - www.rollingstone.com

06/24/2009 - Nine Nasty Online Scams You Need to Be Aware Of - Internet scams have been around for years, but the Federal Trade Commission's recent crackdown on robocallers pushing car warrantees has put a spotlight on the thousands of tactics used by scammers to bilk Americans out of millions. - www.foxnews.com

06/23/2009 - The Fraud Squad: How Miami Police Led The Fight Against Mortgage Crooks - This part of Florida has seen more than its share of real-estate bubbles over the years and been home to countless schemes, scams, and cons. There's a reason some call it "Fort Frauderdale. - www.huffingtonpost.com

06/04/2009 - Debt Collector Harassment: Coming To A Library Near You - A debt collector had been giving the library's address to people from whom it was aggressively trying to recover debt. Banks sell these accounts to these bottom feeders.


www.youtube.com - 3 VIDEOS -

05/01/2009 - Safeguard Properties Inc. Complaint - Foreclosure Scam!! Stealing personal property.... - Property Preservation/Inspection - complaint.tv

04/29/2009 - Shmuckler Group: Another Mortgage Rescue Firm Accused Of Scam - In early April the government announced a crackdown on companies running mortgage modification scams. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/28/2009 - How Mortgage Modification Scammers Dupe Desperate Homeowners - Mortgage Vultures Dupe Cash-Strapped Homeowners - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/21/2009 - Wall Street Raided 401(k) Plans - managers became flush with cash from hidden fees.

04/21/2009 - HuffPost Readers Share Credit Card Laments; Banks Blame Economy For Rate Hikes

04/21/2009 - Credit Card Companies Gouge HuffPosters

04/20/2009 - Menendez To Geithner: Stop Bailed-Out Banks From Hiking Credit Card Rates On Consumers

04/11/2009 - Cleaning Foreclosures - Scams to Be Aware Of

04/08/2009 - Subprime Swindlers Reconnect to Homeowners in Scams (Update1)

04/08/2009 - Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan sues two mortgage-rescue firms

04/08/2009 - Heartbreak: Firm Offering People "Second Chance" Mortgage Help Accused Of Fraud

04/06/2009 - Foreclosure prevention: Don't get scammed

04/06/2009 - Crackdown on housing scams

04/03/09 - Freddie Mac - Avoiding Mortgage Fraud - Recognize and understand the signs of mortgage fraud.

03/18/09- Mortgage scams are widespread - Tulsa World

02/18/09 - Mortgage Fraud Resource Center

02/18/09 - Mortgage scams still out there

02/18/09 - Don't hand your house to a thief.Mortgage scams are like Baskin-Robbins offerings - they come in 31 flavors. Here are three top choices of con artists and how to avoid them.

02/18/09 - Don't get caught in a tax scam. Swindlers send out fraudulent e-mails claiming to be from the IRS.

02/16/09 - Mortgage fraud reports up 26 percent

03/10/09 - Credit Cards Are the Next Credit Crunch

02/27/09 - Foreclosure Scams Up as 'Piranhas' Circle

02/10/09 - Creative Consumer: Avoid Telephone Bill Scams

07/14/2008 - Debtors' Prison: Escape Collectors' Calls

/02/2008 - Buyer Beware: Top 15 Scams, Annoyances The Government Details All the Ways American Companies Abuse You

10/20/2008 - 'For Profit' Credit Repair: Don't Fall for It

03/05/2008 - Free Credit Report: How The Ads Soak Consumers

Truth against the frauds that have been perpetrated on
Americans facing the loss of everything they ever had,

Loan Modification Scam (Graphics): - Graphic Interpretation - Accountability Office

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part I: - MERS's Smoking Gun - L. Randall Wray

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part II: - The Mother of All Frauds - L. Randall Wray

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part III: - MERS'S Role in Facilitating the Mother of All Frauds - L. Randall Wray

Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: - Put Bank of America in Receivership - William K. Black and L. Randall Wray

Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 2: - Spurious Arguments Against Holding the Fraudsters Accountable - William K. Black and L. Randall Wray

"Robo-Signers" Foreclosure Scams - played a major role in illegal Foreclosures. - www.trashoutpro.com

The Law Offices of Carol C. Asbury - Foreclosure Fraud, Fraud on the Court. - www.4closurefraud.org

Foreclosure Hamlet - Supporting, Informing & Connecting People in Foreclosure - www.foreclosurehamlet.org

How To Stop Foreclosure - Loan Modifications Forget It - Fight Foreclosure - www.how2fightforeclosure.com