Sunday, December 18, 2011

FORECLOSED ON AMERICA - OBAMA & HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS


OBAMAnomics…
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
Obama has done absolutely nothing about FORECLOSED ON AMERICA, after all the crisis was caused by his criminal bankster donors, and they’re hauling in record profits now. Obama has kept his promise of not punishing his banksters. Not even one has gone to jail, or ever will be. Just as Bush 1 made sure his SAVINGS & LOAN donors would escape by the statute of limitations, OBAMA will watch a nation being foreclosed on as he fills his pockets with bankster pillage!

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE MONEY FROM BANKS THAN BARACK OBAMA.


Modification blunders bedevil U.S. housing recovery

By Aruna Viswanatha | Reuters – 2 hrs 40 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shirley Burnell, a community activist from Oakland, California, has been trying to get her subprime loan restructured since 2007.

She never missed a payment, but the adjustable rate mortgage she got in 2004 shot up to a monthly payment she could no longer afford.

First she provided documents without getting any response, then she was denied in April by her servicer, Bank of America, for not providing documents it never actually asked for.

As one part of the bank appealed that decision and approved her for a trial modification, another part denied her again - twice - providing two new reasons in part based on inaccurate calculations, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

When asked about Burnell's case, a bank spokesman said she was unable to qualify under "imminent default provisions," a third reason that Burnell said she had never been given.

At one point, Burnell even received notice the bank would accelerate foreclosure proceedings, despite her perfect payment record and the letter itself saying the bank owed her $281.01.

"They gave you a funky loan in the first place, and now they're refusing to work with people to get it worked out," Burnell said. "It just keeps you upset all the time."

Bank of America is "committed to keeping customers in their homes whenever the homeowner has the financial wherewithal to make reasonable payments and the desire to keep the home," a spokesman for the bank said.

Three years after the foreclosure crisis began, the process to apply for a loan modification remains a bureaucratic nightmare that is complicating the housing recovery and could dull the impact of any Obama administration initiatives in the works.

The administration's biggest foreclosure-prevention effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), targeted to help 3 million to 4 million homeowners, has reached only about a quarter of that since its 2009 inception.

The program pushed mortgage servicers to cut interest, extend terms, or defer parts of a loan in an effort to reduce monthly payments and keep borrowers in their homes.

But servicers have dragged their feet on providing wide-scale modifications. They continue to lose documents, use inaccurate numbers to issue denials, or both approve and deny applications at the same time, according to housing advocates.

"It delays resolution of the problem of defaulting loans and it is adding uncertainty to the market," said Susan Wachter, a housing expert at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Around one in every 12 mortgages in the country is delinquent, and only a fraction of them have received modifications.

"Somehow the borrower is unreachable, or the servicer hasn't found the right way to reach the borrower, but the fact is, we see (modifications) piercing maybe 10 to 25 percent of the potential population," said Diane Westerback, a managing director of global surveillance analytics at Standard & Poor's.

Banks have stepped up efforts to deal with the foreclosure crisis since 2009. Chase, for example, set up 82 centers around the country specifically to deal with struggling homeowners. Wells Fargo hosts one-day fairs for homeowners to bring in all of their paperwork and potentially get approved for a modification on the spot.

Bank of America says it has completed almost 1 million modifications since 2008, and Wells Fargo says it initiated or completed more than two modifications for every one foreclosure of owner-occupied homes in the past two years.

But the majority of homeowners, advocates say, still get stuck in byzantine mazes, with no real enforcement mechanism to pursue under HAMP.

"If you get a minor traffic ticket, you get a right to an impartial hearing, but if you are applying for federal home saving assistance, the bank is judge, jury, and executioner," said Joseph Sant, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services who helps defend homeowners facing foreclosure.

'GOING IN CIRCLES'

It took nearly one year for Hakan Tale to convince his servicer, Chase, that it overvalued his house by more than $100,000 in rejecting a modification.

Once he was able to convince Chase of that mistake, it rejected him again, dropping his monthly income by almost $4,000 and determining he didn't make enough money to qualify, even though his actual income had not changed.

In November, more than two years after Tale first sought a modification, Chase asked him to submit an entirely new application.

"Maybe they don't want me to be an example for other people," said Tale, who lives with his wife and three children in Staten Island, New York. "Any excuse they find, they deny it."

"We have worked with the customer and reviewed his application multiple times, and have been involved in multiple mediation meetings," a Chase spokesman said.

Another Staten Island resident, 77-year-old Hamson McPherson, was first denied a modification two years ago by his servicer, Wells Fargo, after it miscalculated his income.

The bank then served him with a foreclosure summons and complaint, which in New York can lead to court-supervised settlement conference. But it stalled on moving forward for so long that McPherson triggered the proceedings himself in August 2011 to try to negotiate an alternative to foreclosure.

In October, more than two years after he first applied for a modification, the bank told him there was an investor restriction on the loan, which meant it couldn't modify it.

That investor agreement was public, Wells Fargo told him.

But after confronting the bank with that agreement, which did not include any such restriction, the bank told him there was a previously undisclosed secret document that included the restriction.

"It's a nightmare," McPherson said, "when you have these things, you don't get proper sleep at all."

In an ironic twist, the hold music played when he called Wells Fargo once was a song called, "Going in Circles."

"I listened to it for five minutes and then hung up because I was so upset," he said.

A Wells Fargo spokesman said the bank has "worked for some time to find payment assistance within the investor guidelines of the loan."

"We continue to work with him to find alternatives to foreclosure," the spokesman said.

'NOT DOING THEIR JOB'

Even with staff additions -- Chase, for example, added some 10,000 employees to deal with defaults, and Bank of America increased its 5,000 employees to 40,000 -- individual negotiators can still have hundreds, or even thousands of cases open, according to housing advocates.

Employees can be so overwhelmed that applications languish for months. Banks consider financial documents "stale" within two or three months, forcing homeowners to provide updated documents all over again.

While housing counselors have seen some improvements in the past few years, many borrowers are still not even able to email applications in; they have to fax them in, thus creating no real paper trail.

Carlos Cespedes, an advocate with the Neighborhood of Affordable Housing in Boston, said his files include 25 faxes of the same document, provided over and over to a servicer that said it never received it or lost it.

One of his clients traveled to Central America to obtain her deported husband's signature on a document renouncing his interest in the property, but had to send that same document six times to her servicer who kept losing it.

"These are institutions that have taken a huge amount of bailout money. There should be a level of responsibility to communities," said Josh Zinner, an advocate with the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project in New York. "HAMP is far from perfect, but the biggest problem is servicers not doing their job."

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/assault-on-america-by-obama-his.html

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/08/barack-obama-one-of-greatest-tragedies.html

As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

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They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.

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NEW YORK TIMES

June 4, 2011

For the Jobless, Little U.S. Help on Foreclosure


The Obama administration’s main program to keep distressed homeowners from falling into foreclosure has been aimed at those who took out subprime loans or other risky mortgages during the heady days of the housing boom. But these days, the primary cause of foreclosures is unemployment.

As a result, there is a mismatch between the homeowner program’s design and the country’s economic realities — and a new round of finger-pointing about how best to fix it.

The administration’s housing effort does include programs to help unemployed homeowners, but they have been plagued by delays, dubious benefits and abysmal participation. For example, a Treasury Department effort started in early 2010 allows the jobless to postpone mortgage payments for three months, but the average length of unemployment is now nine months. As of March 31, there were only 7,397 participants.

“So far, I think the public record will show that programs to help unemployed homeowners have not been very successful,” said Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, an executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Data released last week suggests that the administration’s task is only growing more difficult as the problems created by unemployment and housing persist. New job growth in May was anemic, and unemployment inched up to 9.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Earlier in the week, a widely watched index found that housing prices had dropped to their lowest level in nearly a decade. And while the rate of homes falling into foreclosure has slowed, the reason is delays in processing foreclosures, not a housing recovery, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures. There were 219,258 foreclosure filings in April, the latest month available.

Critics of the Obama administration’s approach to preventing foreclosures have pressed for two years to get officials to focus more of their attention on unemployed homeowners, with meager results. As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

Morris A. Davis, a former Federal Reserve economist, estimates that as many as a million homeowners slipped into foreclosure because of insufficient help for the unemployed.

“The money was there and they didn’t spend it,” said Mr. Davis, an associate real estate professor at the University of Wisconsin. “I don’t mean to sound outraged, but I am pretty outraged.”

Administration officials said their programs have had a positive impact, albeit not as large as they had hoped. But they say that the problems of unemployment and negative equity on homes are not easily solved. They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.

“We are trying to be careful in designing programs that at the end of the day aren’t just about spending money but getting people back on their feet,” said James Parrott, a senior adviser at the White House’s National Economic Council.

President Obama has been scrambling to curb the number of foreclosures ever since he arrived at the White House.

At the start of 2009, the administration announced its primary foreclosure prevention initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program. It provides incentives to banks to modify mortgages, reducing monthly payments for eligible homeowners.

The administration said the program would help three million to four million homeowners, but so far, only 670,000 homeowners have received permanent modifications. In addition, the program was primarily meant for homeowners with risky mortgages; jobless owners are often ineligible because some payment, albeit reduced, is required.

Administration officials said the program was helping homeowners whose income had been reduced. Sixty-one percent of homeowners who received permanent modifications listed “curtailment of income” as their reason for applying, though it is not known how many of them are unemployed or simply had their hours or pay reduced.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development received $1 billion as part of the financial regulatory reforms that passed last year to help unemployed homeowners. That money will be used to provide government loans to unemployed homeowners for up to 24 months.

Though the program was announced last fall, so far applications are being accepted in only five states; the others are delayed because of “implementation challenges,” a HUD spokeswoman said.

Critics do acknowledge one bright spot — the Hardest Hit Fund, a federal program that will provide $7.6 billion so that some states can administer their own programs for struggling homeowners. Of that, 70 percent will be directed to unemployed homeowners, said Andrea Risotto, a Treasury spokeswoman.

So far, $455 million has been spent. Over the last several years, academics, housing groups and government economists offered proposals to Treasury officials to help the unemployed avoid foreclosure.

One, which Mr. Fuhrer of the Boston Fed helped write, called on the government to provide loans, or grants, to unemployed or underemployed homeowners to make up for the amount of income they lost. The loan would have to be repaid once the homeowner found a new job.

Another proposal, by a non-profit group called the PICO National Network, a coalition of faith-based community organizations, would have allowed unemployed homeowners to postpone much or all of their mortgage payments for a year or more.

But administration officials have balked, arguing that regulators and “other industry stakeholders expressed strong reservations” about allowing unemployed homeowners to extend payments for longer terms, according to a Dec. 23 letter that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner sent to Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who had pressed for measures that would more directly aid the unemployed.

The debate is playing out on the sidelines of partisan Washington politics, since Republican lawmakers have made clear they would like to get rid of anti-foreclosure programs altogether, and would block any new programs. Instead, it is setting homeowner advocates against administration officials over how to spend money already appropriated.

Administration officials maintain that the decision on whether to offer mortgage relief to homeowners ultimately was up to mortgage servicers and investors, not the government, which can provide incentives but not compel action.

“We as an administration have limited levers,” Mr. Parrot said. “We can push them on the margins.”

But Lewis Finfer, a PICO organizer, said he could not understand why the administration had not been more receptive given the extent of unemployment.

“We have a program to deal with this,” he said.

Many unemployed or underemployed homeowners said they would welcome an extended break in mortgage payments.

Mary Ernest, 51, of Blackstone, Mass., lost her job as a school aide and said she had been “reduced to begging, more or less,” to keep her home. Adam Heyman, 41, of Chelsea, Mass., scraped together enough money to pay the mortgage on his condominium for about 18 months. Though he finally got another full-time job, his bank had already foreclosed on his condo.

“If I had a way to slow down the process or stop it for a while, that would have been nice,” Mr. Heyman said, adding, “Now I can certainly afford to pay.”
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OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS DOIN’ GOOD! PROFITS UP! FORECLOSURES UP! BANK NO REGULATION GUARANTEED! BAILOUTS FOR BUYOUTS…. And not a single bankster donor in prison!

WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

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“Obama's rhetoric covered the whole financial industry, but the key changes will affect only a few high-profile players, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., while sparing investment banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”

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Lou Dobbs Tonight

Thursday, July 9, 2009

And Harvard economics professor JEFFREY MIRON will weigh in on the state of the U.S. economy—and why the only plausible argument for bailing out banks crumbles on close examination.

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"There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street."

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August 21, 2010   

 Janet Tavakoli.President, Tavakoli Structured Finance

August 15, 2010  



How to Thwart the Assassins of the American Dream

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Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, paints a grim picture of the State of the Union:

"Every day, Americans, faced with layoffs and tough economic times, are forced to use their credit cards to pay for essentials such as food, housing, and medical care -- the costs of which continue to escalate. But, as their debt rises, they find it harder to keep up with their payments. When they don't, banks, trying to offset losses in other areas, turn around, hike interest rates, and impose all manner of fees and penalties..."

Third World America, (P. 77)



Our mediocre grammar school and high school educational system continues its downward slide. The Great Recession is squeezing school budgets. We are failing our children, our most important resource of all.



In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's infrastructure a near failing D rating:





"Flip on a light switch, and you are tapping into a seriously overtaxed electrical grid. Go to the sink, and your tap water may be coming to you through pipes built during the Civil War. Take a drive, and pass over pothole-filled roads and cross-if-you-dare bridges. The evidence of decay is all around us." (P. 95)



The over-hyped American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 earmarked only $72 billion of the $787 billion appropriation of taxpayer dollars to projects to improve the country's infrastructure.



Meanwhile, multi-national corporations avoid taxes, sheltering $700 billion in foreign earnings to end up with a measly $16 billion (2.3%) tax bill. GM is among those companies, yet it took almost a half billion dollars in bailout loans. Boeing and KBR Halliburton are among the defense contractors that avoid taxes, while enjoying government contracts worth tens of billions.



Banks (not Fannie and Freddie) Crippled the Housing Market



Fannie and Freddie do not make loans. They purchase mortgage loans and earn fees for guaranteeing payments on the loans. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, in 2006, Fannie and Freddie accounted for 33% of total mortgage backed securities issuance. In the first half of 2010, they accounted for around 64% of new issuance. They were forced to pick up the slack and buy more when Wall Street's private label securitization Ponzi scheme blew up.



Fannie and Freddie are Wall Street's dumping ground. They would have had problems on their own, but their problems would not have been close to their current scale, and they did not create the housing bubble.



Congress twisted arms to make Fannie and Freddie buy more than $300 billion of phony "AAA" rated mortgage-backed securities from banks, not counting loans that didn't meet their stated requirements. Today Fannie and Freddie want banks to repurchase tens of billions of these loans, since they fail to meet representations and warranties, and the banks are fighting this obligation.



Top subprime lenders included Wells Fargo; Countrywide, purchased by Bank of America; Washington Mutual, now part of JPMorgan Chase; CitiMortgage, part of Citigroup; First Franklin (now closed), purchased by Merrill Lynch, which was purchased by Bank of America; ChaseHome Finance, JPMorgan Chase; Ownit, partly owned by Merrill Lynch, which was later purchased by Bank of America; and EMC, part of Bear Stearns, which was purchased by JPMorgan Chase. Most of the rest depended on massive loans from Wall Street. Many of these lenders were sued by states for fraud and paid billions in settlements.



According to Inside Mortgage Finance, the top mortgage backed securities underwriters during 2005-2006, only two of the subprime abuse years, included now defunct Lehman Brothers ($106 billion); RBS Greenwich Capital ($99 billion); Countrywide Securities, which is now part of Bank of America ($74 billion); Morgan Stanley ($74 billion);Credit Suisse First Boston ($73 billion); Merrill Lynch ($67 billion); Bear Stearns, which is now part of JPMorgan Chase ($61 billion); and Goldman Sachs ($53 billion).



The above doesn't even include the credit derivatives, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that amplified losses. Yet, Arianna notes how America imploded while bankers soared:



"Someone like [Robert] Rubin is able to wreak destruction, collect an ungodly profit, then go along his merry way, pontificating about how 'markets have an inherent and inevitable tendency -- probably rooted in human nature -- to go to excess, both on the upside and the downside.' This from the man who, as Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, was vociferous in opposing the regulation of derivatives -- a key factor in the current economic crisis -- and who lobbied the Treasury during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron -- a debtor of Citigroup." (P. 150)



Robert Rubin operated an economic wrecking-ball from prestigious positions of influence including former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, director of the National Economic Council, former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, board member and senior "risk wizard" counselor at Citigroup, member of the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations, member of the SEC's Oversight and Financial Services Advisory Committee, unofficial econmic adviser to President Obama, and co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.



Rubin is just one example of the many bankers, who helped destroy the economy while creating a connected financial oligarchy.



Hide Billions of Losses, Take Bailouts, Collect Billions, Skip Jail



Instead of apologizing for screwing up, the banks demanded the Great Bailout. At the start of the meltdown, the IMF and the U.S. administration estimated losses of $2 to $2.5 trillion. Unemployment and the losses are now shockingly worse. What was merely a recession escalated into the Great Recession.



How big are the actual losses? No one knows.



After destroying the value of major banks, culprits used their enormous political influence -- funded with taxpayer dollars -- to get Congress to force the accounting board to change accounting rules (as of April 2009) so banks don't have to recognize losses until they sell the assets.



According to William K. Black, after the much tinier S&L crisis, there were over 1,000 successful felony prosecutions, several thousand successful enforcement actions, and roughly 1,000 successful civil actions.



This time Congress gave us the Great Cover-up. Bank officers dodged jail time and collected billions in bonuses. As one of my South American friends observes, he's witnessed this third-world corruption before, and this time it's in English.



Banks Stall the Recovery and Prolong the Great Recession



Unemployment marched upward, delinquencies soared, and banks stalled foreclosures. The longer banks delay foreclosures and sales, the longer they can avoid acknowledging losses. Phony accounting and zero cost funding from taxpayers created an illusion of recovery.



Stalling helps banks while they pressure Congress to bail out failed mortgages with taxpayer dollars. Instead of working out mortgages with homeowners, they can wait for a government program to buyout or subsidize their failing loans. The markets aren't recovering, because banks own colossal chunks of mystery-meat assets.



It's a black hole of debt. If banks were forced to price these assets at market values and sell them, the market would clear, and the market would make a faster recovery. When Japan did this, it stalled its economy for twenty years, and it still hasn't recovered.



Voters Must Demand the Solution



Voters must demand that Congress uncovers and publicizes facts and prosecutes the financial system's massive multi-year frauds. This will mean thousands of felony prosecutions, enforcement actions, and civil actions.



Congress completely failed in genuine regulation and enforcement. It must start over on financial reform, regulate derivatives, commodities trading, update Glass-Steagall, and more. It will have to break-up the Too Big to Fail financial institutions.



CEOs of our Systemically Dangerous Institutions (SDI's) fail to manage them, because no one is capable of doing it. Like a morbidly obese junk food addict, banks won't even get on a scale. Our banks refuse to properly measure (account for) the problem.



Third World America elegantly summarizes the way forward. Arianna Huffington names the culprits and gives a roadmap for solutions. The rest is up to us. We deserve better than a third world economy divided by ultra-rich on one side and debt-ridden middle class and dirt poor citizens on the other. Citizens must demand a clean-up of corruption and a foundation for healthy growth.



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OBVIOUSLY WE ALL KNOW WHAT OBAMA’S DONE ABOUT FORECLOSURES. AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE WITH THIS CLOWN, HE WENT LIMP ON THE TOPIC! AS SOON AS HE FOUND OUT HIS BANKSTERS WERE MAKING HUGE PROFITS OFF THE VERY FORECLOSURES THEY CAUSED, HE ASSURE THEM THE PILLAGING WOULD ONLY GET BETTER WITH HIM IN THE WHITE HOUSE!

WELLS FARGO, AS NOTED BELOW, HAD THEIR CALIFORNIA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED IN 2003 FOR CORPORATE CORRUPTION AND MALFEASANCE. THE BANK SIMPLY DECLARED ITSELF ABOVE THE LAW AND WENT ON PILLAGING AN ENTIRE NATION WITH THE SAME EXPLOITIVE AND CROOKED DEVICES THAT HAD PROVEN SO PROFITABLE IN THE PAST!

BOTH WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICA ARE MAJOR CAUSES OF FORECLOSURE AND THIS NATION’S ECONOMIC MELTDOWN!



“I’M NOT HERE TO PUNISH BANKS!” BARACK OBAMA IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION IN THE FACES OF A NATION RAPED BY BANKSTERS!



OBAMA WILL RANK AS ONE OF THE MOST LIMP AND CORRUPT PRESIDENTS IN HISTORY!

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Obama administration moves to quash state investigations of Wall Street banks

By Andre Damon and Barry Grey
24 August 2011

The Obama administration has intervened to support a settlement by banks charged with fraudulent practices in the processing of home foreclosures that would prevent state governments, New York in particular, from carrying out their own investigations of major Wall Street firms.

The New York Times reported Monday that Shaun Donovan, the US secretary of housing and urban development, together with high-ranking Justice Department personnel, has been “waging an intensifying campaign” to persuade Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, to drop his opposition to a settlement of the home foreclosure charges.

Under the proposed settlement, major banks including JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America, would pay a combined total of $20 billion, which would supposedly go toward home loan modifications and homeowner counseling. In return, bank executives would be shielded from possible civil suits or criminal prosecutions arising from state probes into their role in fueling the sub-prime mortgage bubble, whose collapse triggered the financial meltdown of September 2008.

Schneiderman’s office has opened several inquiries into banking practices during the mortgage boom of the mid-2000s.

Last year it emerged that banks and mortgage companies forged documents and paid employees with no knowledge of the homes in question to sign legal documents that were then used to process foreclosures.

The amount of the settlement of charges arising from these practices—$20 billion—represents a financial wrist-slap for banks that made multiples of this figure from the creation and sale of securities linked to toxic home loans. These banks have continued to reap huge profits from speculative bets in the midst of a global economic crisis of their own making that has destroyed the jobs and living standards of countless millions in the US and around the world. Nevertheless, the banks have resisted paying even this token sum.

$20 billion will barely make a dent in a foreclosure crisis that has already thrown millions of Americans out of their homes. US homeowners collectively owe the banks $753 billion more than the market value of their homes.

Schneiderman has based his opposition to the deal on provisions barring future litigation against the banks. The Times quoted Danny Kanner, a spokesman for Schneiderman, as saying, “The attorney general remains concerned by any attempt at a global settlement that would shut down ongoing investigations of wrongdoing related to the mortgage crisis.”

Schneiderman is only the most prominent of several state attorneys general, including Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Beau Biden of Delaware, who have refused to support the proposed settlement.

In pressuring Schneiderman to drop his opposition to the deal, the Obama administration claims to be motivated by a desire for a quick resolution that would funnel $20 billion in aid to hard-pressed homeowners. “Our view is we have the immediate opportunity to help a huge number of borrowers to stay in their homes, to help their neighborhoods and the housing market,” Donovan told the Times.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department echoed this line, telling the newspaper, “The Justice Department, along with our federal agency partners and state attorneys general, are committed to... bring relief swiftly because homeowners continue to suffer more each day that these issues are not resolved.”

This pretense of humanitarian concern for the plight of distressed homeowners is utterly cynical and dishonest. Since the mortgage crisis began more than four years ago, the government, first under Bush and then under Obama, has done virtually nothing to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Under Obama, the major cause of mortgage delinquencies and defaults has shifted from predatory loan practices to the impact of prolonged unemployment. But the administration has refused to take any serious steps to halt foreclosures in deference to the banks, which fiercely oppose any measures that would negatively impact their balance sheets or profits.

The White House would have the public believe it a mere coincidence that its newfound urgency in regard to the foreclosure crisis coincides with a campaign by the banks to block legal action against them.

Executives of the major banks are meeting with law enforcement officials Thursday, the Financial Times reported, to continue negotiations over the settlement, which the newspaper said remains several weeks from completion. Representatives of Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America have remained in “frequent dialog” with state attorneys general and prosecutors, the newspaper said.

The Times article noted that Schneiderman has also come under criticism from the Obama administration for suing to block a separate deal reached earlier this year that would settle civil actions filed by 22 institutional investors against Bank of America. Investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the giant asset managing firm BlackRock, and Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, sued Bank of American over 530 mortgage-backed securities which the claimants say were sold on the basis of false information.

The deal, brokered by Bank of New York Mellon, would require Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion to the investors holding these securities. Schneiderman intervened to block the settlement on the grounds that the $8.5 billion represents a mere fraction of investors’ losses and that the deal was worked out behind the backs of many holders of the securities.

The Times article reports a recent public altercation between Schneiderman and Kathryn S. Wylde, the chief executive of the Partnership for New York City and a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which supports the settlement. Speaking to the newspaper about her argument with the attorney general, Wylde gives voice to the attitude of subservience to Wall Street that characterizes the Obama administration and the political establishment as a whole.

“Wall Street is our Main Street—love ‘em or hate ‘em,” she tells the Times. “They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”

Evidently, the threshold in official circles for what is “indefensible” is infinitely high when it comes to Wall Street. Under Obama, the federal government has failed to file a single criminal charge against a high-level banker or even bring a civil case to trial in connection with the fraud and lawlessness that pervaded the dealings of the banks during the sub-prime mortgage boom and its catastrophic aftermath.

This is not for lack of evidence. Last April, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 650-page report on the financial crisis that provided a detailed factual account of banking fraud as well as the collusion of federal regulatory agencies and the credit rating firms. The report concluded with a list of federal securities statutes that it suggested had been violated by major Wall Street firms.

The Obama administration has ignored this report as part of its efforts to shield the financial elite from being held to account for its actions.

Now, having blocked any federal prosecution of senior bank officials, the administration is intervening to quash investigations at the state level. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate its role as a tool of the US financial oligarchy.

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OBAMA DEMANDS HIS BANKSTER DONORS BE ABOVE LAW




An initial term sheet outlining a possible settlement emerged in March, with institutions including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo being asked to pay about $20 billion that would go toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners.

In exchange, the attorneys general participating in the deal would have agreed to sign broad releases preventing them from bringing further litigation on matters relating to the improper bank practices.

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OBAMA AND HIS WALL ST CABINET

OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!



Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).




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Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies




Posted on February 24, 2011 by Ben Johnson

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