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 [...]

I’m seeing way too many stories about this boomlet of investors buying up foreclosed properties to resell as rental units that don’t challenge the basic assumptions. They take a detached view of a phenomenon once limited to local investors that has now branched out into hedge funds and capital management firms. And they’re not questioning [...]

Thankfully, most people got the RealtyTrac data on foreclosures in the first quarter of 2012, which showed the lowest amount of filings since the beginning of the recession, mostly right. We had a settlement on foreclosure fraud that just got approved by a federal judge last Friday, after the end of the first quarter. So [...]

The LA Times had the goods on the Treasury Department’s Hardest Hit Fund a month ago, showing that in California, the fund only paid out 2% of its allotment in the first 16 months. But that was about one state’s implementation of the program. Maybe other states did better. Well, the answer is no. An [...]

It’s a quiet story that most progressive groups operating out of Washington, DC don’t want to talk about: they can’t attract votes anymore. In two recent primary races, in Illinois and Maryland, the more liberal candidate was overwhelmed by the establishment, despite widespread support from labor and online progressive groups. Since a high-water mark in [...]

I really highly recommend Paul Kiel’s new ebook “The Great American Foreclosure Story,” which focuses on the foreclosure crisis and the cascade of abuse piled on troubled borrowers by servicers. It looks at one foreclosure in particular, but uses it to stand in for the larger crisis in a really great way. One theme of [...]

Ilyse Hogue takes a look at the missing task force on securitization abuses, which has done almost nothing since coming into being and announcing a few subpoenas a couple months ago. According to the liberal group CREDO, investigators for the task force have not yet been deployed. CREDO’s petition asking President Obama to staff up [...]

I’ve noted before that one of the reasons we don’t get good housing policy in this country, to the detriment of the larger economy, is that the media by and large doesn’t understand it. When Ed Henry shows that he doesn’t know how home loans work, it means more than just a commentary about the [...]

I wish I could take you into the holiday weekend with a feel-good story, but instead, have a feel-bad one. We’re learning that the foreclosure fraud settlement is leading to a jump in foreclosures, as the banks feel less constrained by their document problems, secure in the knowledge that they can just buy their way [...]

A federal judge in DC swiftly approved the foreclosure fraud settlement yesterday. Actually four of the consent orders with the five largest mortgage servicers were approved Wednesday, but we only learned publicly of the approval of all five settlements yesterday. Some investor groups had talked about challenging the terms of the settlement, but this approval [...]

Kaid Benfield from the Natural Resources Defense Council takes a look on the bright side in regards to the foreclosure crisis, postulating that it will sound the death knell for exurban communities and sprawl: The subject of the Great Recession came up, and I volunteered that I thought the persistent economic slump had hurt both [...]