Disgusting.

Aside from the cluelessness of the HUD Secretary, the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder as late as LAST NIGHT was offering the following:
Attorney General Defnds Financial Crime Record

“We’ve found that much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was unethical and irresponsible,” Holder said in prepared remarks.

“But we also have discovered that some of this behavior – while morally reprehensible – may not necessarily have been criminal.”

I’m sorry, but that sorry excuse left the station a long time ago. We know better. This is starting to smell very much like a cover-up. Mr. Holder then went on to brag about indicting 2,100 people for mortgage fraud. In other words, he’s all over the little fish of no consequence while he allows the sharks to swim freely.

Because the Attorney General is not impartial and has a personal connection to these perps in that he and his co-hort Breuer were associated with the law firm that represented MERS, he needs to step aside and turn over investigations and prosecutions to people who are not compromised and who understand that YES CRIMINAL ACTS WERE COMMITTED and continue to be committed and who are wiling to investigate and prosecute.

History will be very very very unkind to this administration. It’s starting to make the Harding Administration look like a paragon of civic virtue

I share your pain, Jane

revolting

I am beginning to wonder if we can get one of the GOP candidates who is not doing too well at the moment, (Newt or Ron Paul), to pick up this issue to hammer Obama with? It is not as though they need to woo the banksters for money, as it does not look as though they are giving it to them.

If they would like to label Obamaco as ass wipes for the 1%,so much the better.

Have another:
American Banker Shows DOJ Sat On a Bank-Kickback Scandal

“Jeff Horwitz has a big scoop in today’s paper, reporting on a HUD investigation that says banks forced mortgage insurers to pay them $6 billion in kickbacks over ten years. HUD’s inspector general tied a bow on the case and presented it to Obama’s Department of Justice, which has sat on it for two years now.

It’s just the latest example of the Obama administration not going after the banks.

Here’s the gist: Most homebuyers don’t put 20 percent down and banks require them to buy mortgage insurance from third parties to cover their risk. In the 1990s, banks started requiring insurers to pay them to reinsure the loans. Reinsurance is basically insurance for insurance companies, and if a deal isn’t crooked, the reinsurer will be compensated based on the risk it takes.

But there was a major market flaw here (and an antitrust issue, if you think about it) – Banks control who gets to insure mortgages – and they took full advantage of it, naturally. If a PMI company resisted paying kickbacks-or didn’t want to pay a higher level of bribe-the bank would take its mortgages to someone who would. HUD’s IG says they gouged the PMI companies and consumers:

Documents from the investigation show that the inspector general’s staff concluded that banks and insurance companies had created elaborate financial structures that had the appearance of reinsurance but failed to transfer significant amounts of risk to their bank underwriters.

Some of the deals were designed to return a 400% profit on a bank’s investment during good years and remain profitable even in the event of a real estate collapse.

Making matters worse, banks allegedly forced unknowing consumers to buy more insurance than they needed and failed to properly disclose the reinsurance agreements, another RESPA violation.

This is how Wells Fargo shot back:

Wells Fargo said in a written statement to American Banker that risk was split equitably under its contracts with mortgage insurers. …

“It is simply not true that Wells Fargo has ever been the subject of a HUD investigation involving either our captive reinsurance programs or our relationships with any private mortgage insurance company,” the statement says.

Well then.

This needs to be front paged. Quick.

I am curious David. You and others have done great coverage of this sham, but it seems to me the administration does not give a fig. They will and intend to push through this sham, and carry on. Unless we start to se heads roll , I think we can all agree they have gotten away with it.

While history may not be kind to them, if you are dead do you really care about what is said.

We live in a sham State. State of sham? State of shame?

The banks really are digging their fraud hole deeper aren’t they? What does that do to the statute of limitations?

Time to ditch the civil litigation and go straight to CRIMINAL.

This whistleblower is showing more criminal activity and Donovan is implicated as well. There is nothing about this settlement that is going to change anything other than giving the banks more money and time to cover up corners they cut to begin with.

Off topic but extremely important: The flu this year is some really nasty and dangerous shit! If you find yourself coming down with it, don’t try to work through it, don’t try to tough your way past. Get a good expectorant and some citrus, take off work and just be a vegetable for a few days. Having had many forms of the flu and pneumonia at least twice, I’m here to tell you that the congestion is so bad this year that I was ready to check myself into a hospital because I could not get a breath! The expectorant I went out and bought a couple of hours ago seems to be doing the trick and I think I’ll even be able to sleep in a bit. I don’t smoke, have asthma or suffer from common allergies so not being able to draw a breath scared the crap out of me! This isn’t “normal” flu.

Peggy! So sorry to hear you’re sick. How long have you felt ill? You were so on fire yesterday, I bet you hadn’t come down with it.

If you need anything, you still have my numbers?

(I’m still coughing a little, but not flu). Yeah, not being able to get a breath is one of the scariest symptoms, isn’t it? Glad to hear it’s better (that is what you’re saying, right? You’re a little better?)

Now, follow your own advice, close down the computer, and go back to bed (said in a gentle, kindly voice). Feel better soon.

Sorry to hear about what you are experiencing, Margaret.

Stellar advice!

Hope that you may feel better VERY soon.

Not being able to breathe is true torture and very frightening.

Take care of yourself, do what you must.

Thanks for commenting today, liked your comment, last thread, about nuclear “reality” very much, BTW, but don’t overdo it.

DW

I don’t know why you people are whining about the mortgage settlement and the mortgage review process. We have been told by someone, I forget who, that these bankers are savvy businessmen who have done some things that may be immoral, but not illegal, and besides, someone else said (it’s so hard to keep it straight) that the bankers are doing God’s work. Now, with those assurances, why don’t you just quietly fold your tents and let the business leaders do their work. While we are quietly observing the good things being done by business, congress can repeal all of the regulations concerning the iron-hand control of business.

Once again: Cue the drum-roll, please ,,,,

Pulitzer for David Dayen.

The Rule of Law for EVERYONE …

DW

Now for my on-topic comment – first, love your title/headline David. OCC – well, you’ve said it well.

I have felt for awhile that not enough attention is paid to how hiring temporary employees to handle special “reviews” and projects of all kinds, in all kinds of industries, and setting up projects to be done by telephone on the call-center service model is responsible for a lot of major problems in business (and outside business.)
It’s a model that has taken over in a big way in the last couple decades, and having gained some personal experience as both a regular employee and a temp hired for projects, I think it’s the source of many many problems.
It’s my observation that one reason customer service is so bad is that the people hired to provide such “service” by phone are only trained up to a point. They can’t do anything they’re not trained on, so if a customer’s problem lies outside what they’ve been taught, they are simply helpless.
Second, of course, a major corporate goal of customer service is to avoid giving the customer what the customer really wants.
These things apply in a project like this, especially as getting bodies on the phone or in the cube is the biggest task.
Add to that fact that the temp agencies employed to do the hiring for such projects have no expertise in the field, so they can only hire by the specifics given to them, and you’re asking for people “who don’t know the difference between a note and a truth-in-lending statement.”
Let’s throw in, a personal note, that a year or so ago I too, needing work, applied for some kind of job requiring experience in the mortgage industry. I have a law degree and worked in a mortgage bank during the S&l crisis, trying to find and fix documentation projects then.
I did not get hired. I didn’t meet the requirements! But here they are with people who think a til statement and a promissory note are the same thing.

It’s insane, and as a side point, I think it’s part of why so many perfectly competent people are unemployed; the staffing people have no idea what is really needed, so anyone who doesn’t match the checklist isn’t hired. That’s as insane on a broader scale as using the template for something like this.

(((Margaret))) Feel better soon. ;-)

So sorry you are ill. Please take care of yourself. Did you have a flu shot? I’m asking because I had one and hope it protects me from the creeping crud but the “flu” seems to change every year.

On the brighter side, thanks to whatever gods there may be for the internet so we may all have this intelligence. Dunno if there is anything more important to life than keeping it free (or making it free, depending on your perspective or situation)

Although I’m sure telling everyone that the Pope is Catholic will be slightly less surprising…

Listed in the upper right corner of the Promontory Financial Services website is a list of their affiliated companies, including Promontory Compliance Solutions. So PCS is an affiliate of PFS.

Who is affiliated with PFS? Take a guess which agency provided us with this quote:

Prior to serving as Commissioner, Ms. Raskin was Managing Director at the Promontory Financial Group. She also served as the Banking Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Not only is she a card-carrying MOTU, she only got that far by carrying water for them for years… how else does one properly describe all-things-Senate-Banking-Committee-related?

And of course, Obama nominated her.

And especially for you DDay… from the same Fedpage:

Under her leadership, the Commissioner’s Office played an early and multi-faceted role in the state’s response to the financial crisis, including reforming through legislation, regulation, examination and supervision, the foreclosure process, combating foreclosure rescue and loan modification scams and elevating licensing, lending, and servicing standards.

Just thinking this through now… is the Fed actually admitting that she controlled the creation and implementation of the stuff you’ve exposed?

And presumably Obama promoted her, in part, because of what you’ve exposed.

Anyone happen to know if there’s a “laugh and cry” emoticon?

Rimshot! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShTJ90fC34

This would be getting funny by now.

Except it’s not.

Book Salon up with Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin hosted by Rick Perlstein

Send a copy of this to your state AG’s office as well as your public regulatory commissioners Ask them no, demand from them full fraud prosecution and NO excuses. Otherwise vote them out of office and put up your own Occupy candidates. Its time. Ya Basta! Indigne!

These are absolutely a sham. Read the ads recruiting these dummies for the job. They are seeking high-school graduates. The cover-up continues. And you can thank HOLDER and your state AG’s for allowing this. Excuse me, I’m going to go vomit now. Hat’s off to David Dayen! And Andleman. Patriots to be sure!

Absolutely right. This year for the first time in probably 10, everyone in the family managed to get flu shots. So we had a way watered down version of the flu but the congestion was still terrible. And the cough and follow up congestion lasted a full month. We were all coughing so badly for weeks that we would wake ourselves up during the night.

It is a bad one this year and people with respiratory problems need to be very careful.

Yes, that was yet another in a continuing series… I made fun of it here in case you’re interested: http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2011/09/6-billion-in-reinsurance-kickbacks-to-the-banks-un-reported-un-acted-upon-un-believable/