OBAMA and his CRIMINAL BANKSTERS –
THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED SO HEAVILY IN BARACK OBAMA, ONE OF
THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY TOOK SO
MUCH DIRTY MONEY FROM BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA. DURING HIS FIRST TWO YEARS
THE BANKS LOOTED MORE PROFITS THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!
“I’m not here to punish banks!”
Barack Obama – Floor of the Senate – STATE of the UNION MESSAGE.
“Gretchen Morgenson, in a New York Times op-ed entitled
“Surprise, Surprise: The Banks Win,” wrote: “If you were hoping that things
might be different in 2013—you know, that bankers would be held responsible for
bad behavior or that the government might actually assist troubled
homeowners—you can forget it.”
“In concluding
the pittance of a settlement, a fraction of the billions taken in by the banks
from the sub-prime mortgage racket, the Obama administration is once again
letting the banks get away with massive crimes that have had devastating social
consequences, while giving them a green light to continue similar practices.”
Another sweetheart bank settlement on mortgage
fraud
By Andre Damon
9 January 2013
9 January 2013
Ten major financial firms agreed on Monday to pay $3.3 billion in
cash to settle allegations of mortgage fraud by the Office of the Comptroller
of the Currency (OCC) in the latest in a string of sweetheart settlements
between the major Wall Street banks and their nominal regulators. As usual,
there were no criminal charges and no bank officials were held accountable.
The settlement, which nominally totals $8.5 billion, includes $3.3
billion in direct payments to borrowers and $5.2 billion in loan modifications
and other forms of “borrower assistance” left largely at the discretion of the
banks.
The settlement with the OCC, a branch of the Treasury Department,
relates to widespread fraud committed by the banks in their rush to foreclose
on as many homes as possible in 2009 and 2010. To expedite the foreclosure
process, the banks had employees or contractors sign off on thousands of
mortgage documents every month, swearing that they had intimate knowledge of
their contents when in reality they had not even read them.
In many cases,
banks illegally imposed fees on targeted homeowners or failed to inform them of
their rights.
In concluding the
pittance of a settlement, a fraction of the billions taken in by the banks from
the sub-prime mortgage racket, the Obama administration is once again letting
the banks get away with massive crimes that have had devastating social
consequences, while giving them a green light to continue similar practices.
In all the
scandals relating to the banks’ criminality in the run-up to and aftermath of
the 2008 financial crisis, the government has deliberately avoided bringing
cases to trial. This is not only to protect the banks’ activities from further
public scrutiny, but also to cover up regulators’ complicity in facilitating
the banks’ illegal activities.
The number of households that will get a share of the $3.3 billion
in payouts, averaging $868 for each of the 3.8 million borrowers whose homes
were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, has not been disclosed. Under previous
guidelines issued by the federal government, homeowners who were put in
foreclosure but were not really in default would theoretically receive $15,000
and a reversal of the foreclosure, or $125,000 if a reversal was not possible.
The actual amounts that are ultimately paid out could be far lower.
The settlement puts to an end the “Independent Foreclosure Review”
imposed as a regulatory action by the OCC on fourteen banks in April 2011.
Under the program, banks paid contractors to examine each claim of improper
foreclosure. The cost to the banks had reached $1.5 billion when the government
agreed to end the investigation.
With the new settlement, the banks themselves are left to
determine where abuses took place, with only a handful of cases to be examined
by regulators.
Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry sought in a press
conference Monday to present the settlement as a means of getting money to
consumers as soon as possible. “When we began the Independent Foreclosure
Review, the OCC pledged to fix what was broken, identify who was harmed, and
compensate them for that injury,” Curry said. “While today’s announcement
represents a significant change in direction,” he continued, “it meets those
original objectives by ensuring that consumers are the ones who will benefit.”
The settlement prompted an outpouring of denunciations from
consumer advocates and even some media commentators. “The regulators have
decided to replace the fox in the henhouse with the wolf,” commented John
Taylor, head of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a community
development nonprofit. “It is just incomprehensible to me that they could not
find a third party that has the wherewithal and independence to fairly
determine what the damage is to homeowners.”
Gretchen
Morgenson, in a New York Times op-ed entitled “Surprise, Surprise: The
Banks Win,” wrote: “If you were hoping that things might be different in
2013—you know, that bankers would be held responsible for bad behavior or that
the government might actually assist troubled homeowners—you can forget it.”
The settlement
includes Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, MetLife Bank,
PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, US Bank and Aurora. Four other banks that were
included in the investigation refused to take part in the settlement.
The settlement by the OCC is of a piece with the agreement
announced last February between 49 state governments and five top Wall Street
banks over similar types of mortgage fraud. In last year’s settlement, the
federal government put pressure on state attorneys general to wind down their
investigation into criminal abuses by the banks, leaving them to pay only $5
billion in payouts and a largely meaningless $17 billion in mortgage
modifications.
Under the de facto protection of the government agencies that
are supposed to police them, the banks are allowed to violate securities and
other laws knowing that they can treat any fines that may eventually be imposed
as part of the cost of doing business.
The same applies to the settlement also announced Monday between
Bank of America and the government-sponsored mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae,
in which the bank will pay $3.55 billion to Fannie and buy back 30,000
low-performing mortgages for $6.75 billion.
The settlement covers allegations that Countrywide Financial,
bought by Bank of America in 2008, knowingly sold Fannie Mae toxic mortgages
that produced billions of dollars of losses. The loans were made between 2000
and 2008 and were originally valued at $1.4 trillion. The collapse of these
assets triggered a $116 billion government bailout of Fannie and helped
precipitate the financial crisis that led to the loss of millions of jobs.
The deal follows a similar 2010 agreement in which Bank of America
repurchased $2.87 billion of bad loans from Fannie’s fellow government-backed
mortgage company, Freddie Mac.
More than four years after the financial crash of September 2008,
not a single top Wall Street executive has been criminally prosecuted.
*
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA! WHILE HIS DOJ IS OUT HARASSING LEGALS ON BEHALF OF
OBAMA’S LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS, THE BANKSTER GO UNPUNISHED!
DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS ALONE, HIS CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS’ PROFITS SOARED GREATER THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!
BANKSTERS’ PROFITS AND CRIMES ARE SOARING… so are
foreclosures!
OBAMA and HIS
CRIMINAL BANKSTERS – THE LOOTING OF A NATION CONTINUES!
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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