Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification – but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts. [...]
These Bank of America employees offer the first glimpse into how they pulled it off. Employees, many of whom allege they were given no basic training on how to even use HAMP, were instructed to tell borrowers that documents were incomplete or missing when they were not, or that the file was “under review” when it hadn’t been accessed in months. Former loan-level representative Simone Gordon says flat-out in her affidavit that “we were told to lie to customers” about the receipt of documents and trial payments.
See what I mean?
Now about those arrests, prosecutions, and prison sentences…
Read the full affidavits from the active court case here and the rest of David’s post here.
The takers are on the loose, mugging most of the American population and destroying a vital economy and representative democracy in the process. They break the rules, think only of themselves, and take unaccountable advantage of decent people in society. [...]
Who are the takers in our society? The corporations who make record-breaking profits at a time when workers are enduring decreased (adjusted for inflation) pay or losing their jobs – and the too big to fail financial institutions who take advantage of an all but monopoly-hold on our money supply.
The following are just a few examples of the takers in action.
Banks: …These banks aren’t banks: they are financial entities with tentacles that control DC to ensure lack of regulation, which allows them to take and take and take from those of us who actually labor for a living.
Agri-business: First they came and squeezed so many of the small farmers out of business. Now they are taking away our fundamental human right to own and farm the basic grains of life: seeds…. You can’t be more of a taker than one who steals the agrarian seeds of life and forces payment for them throughout the world.
Logo Brand Corporations: …Logo brand corporations take our dollars, increase their record profits, hire exploitative labor sub-contractors in financially desperate nations – and they make relatively minor financial investments in building the domestic US economy.
Predatory Venture Capitalists: Mitt Romney represented the ultimate $250 billion dollar venture capitalist blood sucker on the US workforce and economic structure. All he did was implement strategies to take companies down, sell off their parts and decrease labor costs. [...]
Corporate Intellectual Capital: Who provides the education that allows companies such as Apple, Microsoft, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman to prosper? Do they pay for the education of their workers? Not a chance. The public school system – and public and private colleges – are the fundamental basis of the brain power behind US corporations. [...]
They are the 1% freeloaders, freeloaders on a society that provided everything they needed to become the ultimate gilded grifters.
Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
Virginia Republican Party Treasurer: ‘I’m Not A Big Fan Of Contraception, Frankly’– What a coincidence. I’m not a big fan of the Virginia Republican Party treasurer and “very close friend” of gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli! Here is the entire quote: “I think there are some issues, we’re giving morning-after pills to 12-year-olds, and pretty soon I guess we’ll hand them out to babies, I don’t know.”
Man Who Paid His Mortgage Early Facing Foreclosure– Oh but wait, it gets even worse: Orlando resident Etienne Syldor not only made his payments on time, but even overpaid on them. Pop quiz: Which of these two is too big to jail, Etienne or Wells Fargo? Which of these two is a corporate piece of doody? Right! You get an A+.
Facebook Rejects Breast Cancer Ad For Violating Ban Against ‘Adult Products’– Facebook “has come under criticism for removing images of ‘mastectomies, breastfeeding mothers, and other non-sexualized depictions of women’s bodies’ and labeling them as ‘pornographic,’ while allowing photographs and forums that make light of abusing and raping women.” I can vouch for that. My own Facebook page was temporarily removed for posting this “pornographic” image:
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
‘Thanks W!’: RNC Asks Supporters To Sign Thank You Card For Bush– Reince Priebus is so grateful for GW Bush that he’s circulating a thank you card. Thanks for what? Ignoring a daily brief that reported that an al-Qaeda strike could be “imminent”? Allowing thousands to be killed by terrorists? For getting us into a fraudulent war so that thousands more would die? For sinking our economy? For war crimes such as torturing other human beings? For being an all-around dick?
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
This is must-see TV. Please watch all of it, it’s a segment of “All In with Chris Hayes” from a day or two ago. Here’s the back story, via MSNBC:
What the numbers show are banks foreclosing on military service members who were entitled to relief, and banks foreclosing on homeowners who had been approved for a loan modification. The numbers even show banks foreclosing on homeowners who were not behind in their payments and not in default. [...]
According to the findings posted just Tuesday by a federal bank regulator as part of a settlement agreement with a number of major banks, between 2009 and 2010, foreclosure proceedings that were wrongful or in some way contained bank error commenced against nearly four million homeowners.
About 30% of those homeowners had to battle potentially wrongful efforts to seize their homes, and more than 244,000 eventually lost their homes… But given the scale of the deception and error, the amount of money is, in most instances, cartoonishly small.
The entire segment is astonishing.
Which brings us to this morning at a Senate Banking Committee hearing where Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked regulators why they won’t reveal how often big banks broke the law by illegally foreclosing on homeowners. Surprise! The answer was, they didn’t exactly know pre-settlement and, per Think Progress, “were now unwilling to publicize the error rate.”
Gee, who could have predicted that would happen?
Elizabeth Warren was her usual sharp-as-a-tack, unrelenting, driven self, and the regulators got the brunt of it. Where would we be without her to look out for us?
On Tuesday, regulators released new information suggesting that banks may have made errors in as many as 30 percent of all loans that qualified for a review,” the Huffington Post reported.
Watch Warren rip into the Big Bank Bodyguards, and watch them get all slithery and squirmy and resistant and small:
This is what “competent” looks like, Congress. Pay attention:
WARREN: So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not a decision tell the families who have been illegally foreclosed against?
RICHARD ASHTON (FEDERAL RESERVE): We haven’t made a decision about what information we would provide to individuals. [...]
WARREN: So I just want to make sure I get this straight. Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law, and you’re not going to tell the homeowners, or at least it’s not clear whether or not you’re going to do that?…
I thought this was about transparency… People want to know that their regulators are watching out for the American public, not the banks.
No, as I said, watching out for the American public seems to be falling on Elizabeth Warren’s shoulders. We need 100 more like her.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) charges in a news release issued from his Senate office:
The 10 largest banks in the United States are bigger now than before a taxpayer bailout following the 2008 financial crisis when the Federal Reserve propped up financial institutions with $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans and Congress approved a $700 billion rescue for banks that some considered “too big to fail.” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. now says the Justice Department may not pursue criminal cases against big banks because filing charges could “have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”
“We have a situation now where Wall Street banks are not only too big to fail, they are too big to jail,” Sanders said. “That is unacceptable and that has got to change because America is based on a system of law and justice.”
[...]
As a result of this Obama administration economic injustice and the threat that letting the same rip-off artists who caused the American economy to collapse continue to run even bigger banks and financial entities, Sanders and his staff penned a bill. It’s a short piece of legislation that gets right to the point in Section 3:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, beginning 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall break up entities include on the Too Big To Fail List, so that their failure would no longer cause a catastrophic effect on the United States or global economy without a taxpayer bailout.
[...]
If you want your dose of restoring economic accountability and justice to America, watch the Sanders/Sherman news conference on the law that would break up the too big to fail banks, [in the video above].
Gee, ya think she’s on to something? She also said:
This is wrong — just plain wrong. We are a country that believes in equal justice under the law — not special deals for the big guys. And that’s not all the special deals that the big banks get.
[T]he government cut a deal with the bank’s lawyers to keep it quiet: a “no press release” clause that required the FDIC never to mention the deal “except in response to a specific inquiry.” [...]
Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Times obtained more than 1,600 pages of FDIC settlements, made from 2007 through this year with former bank insiders and others accused of wrongdoing. The agreements constitute a catalog of fraud and negligence: reckless loans to homeowners and builders; falsified documents; inflated appraisals; lender refusals to buy back bad loans.
Defendants benefit by settling because they can avoid admitting guilt and limit the damages they might face in court. The FDIC benefits by collecting money without the hassle and expense of litigation. The no-press-release arrangements help close those deals.
Here’s what Quicken Loans spokeswoman Paula Silver had to say:
“Quicken Loans and the FDIC entered into a ‘confidential’ agreement nearly three and a half years ago which clearly states that no party admits liability nor wrongdoing.”
Former bank examiner Richard Newsom, who specialized in insider-abuse cases for the FDIC in the aftermath of the S&L debacle, said he couldn’t understand the shift, unless the agency doesn’t “want people to know how little they are settling for.”
And coincidentally, as I was writing this up, I spotted this tweet:
Would you like to donate to The Political Carnival monthly? You can on our Support TPC page.
The Political Carnival is a fast paced Progressive political site that combines humor with dead serious, dementia with politics (synonymous?), and sprinkles in idiosyncratic posts with breaking news.
Lt. Col Barry Wingard is the lawyer for Gitmo detainee Fayiz Al-Kandari. For their ongoing story + related topics, please click on the link below: Kuwaiti Citizen Detained at Guantanamo since 2002
You can read the complete story here or on Wikipedia.
Subscribe to The Political Carnival Newsfeed via Wikio
The Political Carnival is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
Photographs on The Political Carnival site (please read):
Photographs from other sources sometimes appear on TPC for humorous or illustrative purposes. As it is not our intention to use these images in any inappropriate manner or to infringe upon any rights held by others, anyone holding legal rights in the use of these images who wishes to have them taken down please contact us immediately requesting such removal, with which we will comply promptly.
TPC RSS Posts Feed
TPC Comments Feed
