Tweet
Maybe I’ll keep taking apart the foreclosure fraud settlement Wednesday. For now, a wee bit of rest, as I’m slightly under the weather.
• More takes on the settlement docs from Matt Stoller and Isaac Gradman. And I would be remiss in not congratulating Lynn Szymoniak for getting her whistleblower lawsuit against the leading servicers settled and walking away with $18 million. Nobody deserves it more. You may know Lynn from her appearance on 60 Minutes; she’s basically the one who popularized “Linda Green” and all the faulty assignments. Not sure if Lynn gets to share in the proceeds because of Dodd-Frank’s new law incentivizing whistleblowers, but that does appear to be working.
• Those HUD IG reports detailing servicer conduct can be found here. Thanks for getting these out quickly so we know what’s been released!
• I’ll have more on this tomorrow, but Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen in North Carolina just filed suit against the big banks for documentation errors.
• Ben Bernanke is resisting a subpoena in a civil case against Bank of America. The Fed? Secret? No!
• I heard about some of this but never reported. Now Loren Berlin and Ben Hallman tell the story of Eric Schneiderman’s spat with the Tom Miller faction over what really went down on the foreclosure fraud settlement.
• More homeowners are winning their cases against the banks on foreclosure issues, but according to this article the banks try to keep them under wraps, lest other homeowners get any bright ideas.
• After a brief standoff, Spain agreed to further austerity measures to get its budget in line with Eurozone targets.
• The Administration released its health exchange rules yesterday. It gives even more flexibility to the states. You won’t recognize these exchanges from one state to the next.
• Another arrest for Rebekah Brooks in the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal.
• I thought it was interesting that, in his remarks on the shooting rampage in Afghanistan, President Obama did not let on that this was a lone gunman. He danced around attributing the incident to one person or a roving gang.
• The Goldman Sachs report for 2012 growth has been lowered, particularly because of oil prices. Maybe the assumptions of economic growth through to the election need to be rethought.
• Do you think that the massive run on Treasuries by banks has anything to do with how successful it is to borrow at near zero and lend back to the government at 3%?
• Harry Reid really wants to help out his BFF T.Boone Pickens with a natural gas rider in the transportation bill.
• Don’t know what to make of Rush Limbaugh’s show pulling back national ads for two weeks.
• Diane Ravitch is pretty righteous on Arne Duncan. Just saw the Jon Stewart rerun on Duncan, he wasn’t bad either.
• The middle class really isn’t sharing in economic prosperity.
• Not just oil: commodity speculation has sent the price of food soaring as well.
• If it were up to the public, there wouldn’t be any SuperPACs.
• Speaking of polls, the data on contraception here is a bit funky. But then, that whole poll could be statistical noise, and the question looks poorly framed.
• No surprise here, the AFL-CIO endorsed Barack Obama for President.
• I haven’t followed the MF Global debacle closely, but it’s another case of two-tiered justice, by all accounts.
• Bashar al-Assad suddenly called for May Parliamentary elections in Syria. The Arab League, meanwhile, wants a full investigation into regime crimes.
• We know that this was coming: the loss of the wind production tax credit will mean major closures in that industry.
• Sarah Palin, who no longer has the debate coaches from the 2008 campaign, wants to debate Barack Obama.
• Bob Turner, who surprised in winning Anthony Weiner’s House seat, now plans to lose to Kirsten Gillibrand statewide. He didn’t have a choice, they ripped up his district in redistricting.
• Bravely bold Sir Dick Cheney bravely ran away away from Canada. At least the lives of this crew have been made miserable on international travel. Small solace.
• The contrarian take on this homeless hotspot story is that, “hey, at least the company is finding a use for the homeless and trying to help them!” Not really buying that one.
• Don’t know if you’re filling out NCAA brackets or not, but I figure you could use Nate Silver’s help.
18 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Included in yesterday’s Round-Up Comments was a story about horrible human rights violations in Honduras. Today Rep Jan Schakowsky released this:
94 House Members Send Letter to Clinton to Suspend Security Assistance to Honduras LINK
Gee, wonder who’s been benefitting from the expenditure of this “security assistance” money.
In spite of Napolitano’s and BIden’s efforts to the contrary,
Colombia to decriminalize personal drug use
“The administration of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has been preparing legislation to decriminalize personal drug possession, according to an exclusive El Tiempo report Tuesday.”
LINK.
How to Win Facebook Friends and Influence People
Stratfor CEO: WikiLeaks ‘makes war more likely’
“He went on to warn that corporations and governments are much more powerful than Anonymous and WikiLeaks, meaning “they will win” in the ongoing power struggle simply by changing the rules of the conflict — I.E., changing the Internet itself.
‘“It’s not going to go on anymore because large corporations are getting hacked and it’s costing them large amounts of money, and these guys are powerful enough to make changes,” he warned.
‘“It may be, in the end, that repression is inevitable… I don’t know that Internet 1.0 — and we are still in beta — that this Internet will survive the way it is… [because] every justification for repression is being created by those who claim to oppose it.”
‘“Those who don’t want that to happen have to find a way to secure the Internet, because Joe McCarthy’s ghost is sitting out there waiting,” Friedman concluded.”
LINK.
That’s a Fat one in the picture with that article.
The kind of reporting you have to do, on the criminal filth running our government and economic system, is enough to make anyone feel “under the weather”.
Appears to be 100% natural, too. No additives, no chemicals, no calories.
Your ” . . . the criminal filth running our government and economic system . . . ” segues rather nicely to this:
Rats as good at decision-making as humans: study LINK.
Neoliberal Andrew Cuomo: All Ur DNAz R Belong 2 Us
New York State Set to Add All Convict DNA to Its Database
Feel better soon, David. I’ve been sick to my stomach, too, from digesting the scandalous info you’ve been bringing us. But, I love the messenger. ;-)
Time for a U.S. coup. Does O have the balls?
I hope you feel better soon, David. Maybe it’s nausea from seeing Santorum creep out from “down there” last night. It seems to me the only people who want Romney to get the nomination besides Romney are the MSM. It must drive them crazy to realize this won’t be the exciting two horse they’re trying to flog this as.
On the personal front, sometimes lightning does strike twice. A liberal/progressive blogger who’s been in the trenches for over 7 years needs your help.
It might work with conservatives, but…
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Social-networking-and-politics/Main-findings/Social-networking-sites-and-politics.aspx
Egypt’s lower house votes to oust Israeli ambassador.
For kicks & giggles.
Wonderful!
Picken’s push on nat gas makes sense from a supply and price view, but your link points out it is trumped by other facts:
” Natural Gas Transportation: Converting about 160,000 trucks to natural gas at the proposed $65,000 tax credit or less than ten percent of the nation’s tractor trailors. This would enable roughly 100,000 barrels a day in reduced demand or in the range of $100,000 Federal investment per barrel of reduced daily demand.
Electrification of Rail: Roughly 10% of the total required Federal resources to transition 35,000 of America’s rail (the key rail lines) from diesel to electric while upgrading the lines for (somewhat) faster and more efficient service of both cargo and passenger uses. E.g, in the range of $40,000 of taxpayer investment per barrel of daily reduced demand.
Feedback systems in cars: Fully funding a program to put feedback systems in 100% of America’s (post-1996) light vehicle fleet and could be done in a few years resulting in somewhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000 reduction in daily US oil demand … again, by 2015 or sooner. At that lower figure, occuring years earlier than NGV systems would have such impact, about $10-$20,000 of taxpayer investment per barrel of reduced daily demand.
Electrification of rail has the potential for reducing oil demand by some 2.5 million barrels a day by 2020, some 15 years faster than the 1.23 million barrels a day reduction that a Center for American Progress (CAP) report projects for that converting trucks to natural gas would achieve by 2035. Electrification of rail would, as well, significantly cut actual carbon emissions rather than simply lead to a reduction in carbon intensity per mile driven. It would also improve safety and reduce highway infrastructure costs due to reducing, significantly, the number of truck miles on America’s highways.
Putting feedback systems in America’s car fleet is a program that could be executed in just a few years and could contribute to a reduction in US oil demand by some 1 million barrels per day. ”
Hope you get out from “under the weather” very quickly.
“More homeowners are winning their cases against the banks on foreclosure issues, but according to this article the banks try to keep them under wraps, lest other homeowners get any bright ideas.”
Church groups have attorneys across the US that know the drill to delay a foreclosure – not to stop it – but to delay it
- to the point the Bank may agree to a modification in lieu of more expense.
But the Bank’s expense fear must be larger than the fear of the hedge funds since a foreclosure loss goes directly back of the hedge fund investor while a modification is a grey area after the hedge funds insisted on the securitization documents not naming a person who could agree to a win-win modification – and the hedge funds are playing investor victim in the press (God – now that is irony).