Occupy and bank accountability activists have staged a major protest at Bank of America’s shareholder meeting today. This is the latest in a series of shareholder activism events that have gone hand in hand with the rebooting of the Occupy movement this spring. Direct challenges to the nation’s biggest corporations and financial institutions have often [...]

The Sun-Sentinel in Palm Beach, Florida has been running an excellent series on so-called bad-neighbor banks. They detailed over ten thousand bank-owned properties in ten South Florida cities, most of them acquired in foreclosure proceedings, with major property code violations. Their reporting uncovered that 40% of the bank-owned homes in this area had been cited [...]

Still playing catch-up here, so bear with me. But of the many articles on the subject of housing that bubbled up to my attention while I was away – and thanks to all who filled in, particularly Abigail Field, who had some emergency issues during the two weeks and still performed admirably – I wanted [...]

To protect Bank of America from inconvenience, Charlotte, North Carolina has directed its police officers to harass and arrest protesters. Unconstitutionally, in my opinion. Charlotte Sides With Bank of America Over People Charlotte has imposed special rules on a 2 block by 2 block square for 12 hours on Wednesday (May 9) to protect the [...]

Let’s get something straight: we did not have a housing “bubble”, in the usual sense of the word. The mainstream narrative of crazed, greedy, irresponsible homeowner-wannabes driving prices unsustainably high, causing the still ongoing crash is wrong. Yes, we had a housing “bubble” in one sense; prices soared way beyond reality because excess demand fueled irrational [...]

One way to see the double standard at the heart of the foreclosure fraud—one set of laws for the bailed out banks, one for the rest of us—is to focus on the role of notaries public, and then consider that role in light of what our Supreme Court said about notaries in 1984, in a [...]

Steve Randy Waldman had a much remarked-upon piece about how policymakers choose to have recessions and depressions, because they have been captured by an elite rentier class. It becomes much easier to understand the decisions made in government with this perspective. We are in a depression, but not because we don’t know how to remedy [...]

Ed Luce, generally a good columnist, missteps here in this profile of the Ed DeMarco decision on principal reduction. He gets the basics right, that the housing market is a lead weight on the economy that will prevent “escape velocity” and a recovery fast enough to significantly reduce unemployment. He does not get right, or [...]

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, showing no ill effects from a foreclosure fraud settlement that was supposed to penalize them for fraudulent misconduct, both announced robust earnings gains today. Matt Stoller has a good look inside the numbers. But I was intrigued by the fact that both banks attributed stronger mortgage lending numbers for their [...]

Here’s the first real disappointment from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Obama administration’s consumer financial watchdog agency is backing off a plan to limit big upfront fees on credit cards, a move that could hit borrowers with poor credit histories especially hard. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau acknowledged Thursday that its proposal would increase [...]

This is about as outraged I’ve seen a straight news article get about the foreclosure crisis, with particular scorn reserved for Bank of America. Dirma Rodriguez had five minutes to gather her things and vacate the West Adams house she and her severely disabled daughter had lived in for more than 25 years. As a [...]