I mentioned in passing yesterday this federal civil lawsuit against Wells Fargo for its conduct on some FHA loans. “Mentioned in passing” is all that the suit deserved, but I see that the PR shop at DoJ tried to turn this into a big deal, with the media playing along. So maybe I should put [...]

Following up on this earlier item about the Justice Department’s impotence in prosecuting financial fraud, take a look at what they’ve been reduced to promoting (h/t Marcy): Attorney General Eric Holder, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, FBI Associate Deputy Director Kevin L. Perkins and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Jon Leibowitz today [...]

Ken Lovett passes on some gossip about a quickened pace of departures in Eric Schneiderman’s AG shop: The latest set to leave is press officer Michelle Duffy, who is going to work for Cuomo. She follows press shop alumni Danny Kanner and Dani Lever, who both left to join the Obama campaign, Jennifer Givner, who [...]

The financial fraud task force can file civil suits for the next 10 years, and they still won’t understand how this will not satisfy homeowners who had everything they’ve ever worked for taken away from them, and who see no complementary losses on the side of those who caused this tragedy in their lives. This is about a month old, but it was updated last week, and the scarred lives of foreclosure fraud victims resonates regardless of date.

Much thanks to FT Alphaville for highlighting my story about Eric Schneiderman’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over Bear Stearns’ dodgy mortgage-backed securities deals. I wrestled in that other piece about whether there was a legitimate conflict of interest argument with Sanchez. Could JPMorgan Chase try to invalidate the lawsuit by saying that Sanchez’ involvement represented [...]

I can actually agree with a lot in Alison Frankel’s assessment of the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over mortgage backed securities deficiencies. She’s right to express all the ways in which this is a cynical case, building on years-old legal work from bond insurers and investors. But she follows with this: [...]

The British Bankers’ Association, the group that currently sets the Libor, the benchmark interest rate that was manipulated over a long period by bank traders, could lose their control over the rate-setting as early as Friday, according to anonymous sources. The move is likely to be announced on Friday, when Martin Wheatley, managing director of [...]

This is my This is my favorite scientific study of the year so far, even if it falls under the category of “scientific studies we didn’t need.” It turns out that the myth of high-stress positions of power is unfounded. Our lords of industry, our masters of the universe get along just fine. And if [...]

Several weeks back, Standard Chartered Bank, caught engaging in multiple acts of money laundering, settled with the New York Department of Financial Services for $340 million. At the time I wrote that if the Treasury Department and the other federal regulators cannot get as much from Standard Chartered as the DFS, “it will be completely [...]

I don’t need a source to tell me that there will be no criminal charges arising from the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities working group, the task force set up to “hold accountable” those financial institutions who crashed the economy through misdeeds in the securitization process. Take only this piece of evidence: all of the subpoenas [...]

Libor has sort of faded into the background as an issue because of the salience of the political campaign, but investors burned by the rate-rigging scandal still see it as a fertile opportunity to collect. That’s probably the extent of the damage that the banks will feel for rigging the benchmark interest rate, but some [...]