This feelings aren't limited to subversive types, the poor or the uneducated. They are widespread. For example, "They’ve never missed a mortgage payment—Brian and Ilsa are the kind upright, not to say uptight 60-ish white semi-upper-middle-class couple who follow every rule, fill out every form, comply with every norm. In short, they are the backbone of America....
“We follow the rules, and look where that’s gotten us?” she says, furious and depressed. Nowhere. They run us around, like lab rats in a cage. This HAMP business was supposed to help us. I bet the bank went along with the program for three months, so that they could tell the government that they had complied—and when the government got off their backs, they turned around and raised the mortgage back up again!”
“And charged us a penalty,” Brian chimes in. The non-payment penalty was only $84—but it might as well been $84 million, for all the outrage they feel. “A penalty for non-payment!”
This is just one of the hundred's of thousand's of stories that exist on this topic. A book could be written on this topic alone and probably will. But until a book is written, here's a few more anecdotes.
You're a lender that has lost the documents needed to foreclose on someones home? No problem, LPS can help! They have handled over half the foreclosures in the entire US. For a fee, LPS will locate and assemble the documents needed for a lender to foreclose. With reports of shoddy and possibly fraudulent paperwork surfacing, LPS and other mortgage servicers are coming under increased scrutiny. Read more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505731.html
and here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/10/4closurefraud-posts-docx-mortgage-document-fabrication-price-sheet.html
This alleged fraudulent behavior has caught the attention of at least one State Attorney General. Richard Cordray, Ohio's Attorney General, has the audacity to make statements such as this: "It is not acceptable for a party who believes they submitted false court documents to merely replace those documents. Wells Fargo and any other banks are not simply allowed a 'do-over,'" he wrote in the letter to Wells. The other letter was sent to Ohio judges, who were asked to notify Mr. Cordray when banks file substitute affidavits." This statement from Mr. Cordray was in response to banks and loan services companies attempting to paper over their previous submissions of fraudulent documents. Mr. Cordray continues "The banks are committing fraud on the court, essentially perjury, and then saying 'Whoops! You caught me! Here's some different evidence and use that instead,' " Mr. Cordray said in an interview Friday. "I know a lot of judges are not going to take kindly to that." Imagine me or you being accused of submitting false documents to the court, being caught by the court and we respond with "oops, here's the real ones". We're smart enough, not arrogant enough to know better. The biggest US banks aren't.
The story finishes with a sworn deposition from a Wells Fargo employee that signed 300 to 500 foreclosure documents a day without reviewing the documents for accuracy. That breaks down to between 40 and 60 foreclosure documents signings a hour. When asked further on this issue, the Wells Fargo employee responds "Asked if she verified the appropriate information, she said, "That's not part of my job description."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304879604575582743893387762.html
Damon Silvers, member of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel sees the resolution of the US foreclosure crisis as a simple choice. "We are faced with a choice here.We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both."
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/we-can-either-have-rational-resolution.html
Well regarded risk analyst Chris Whalen sees it pretty much the same way as Mr. Silvers: "..the fraud and obfuscation now underway in Washington to protect the TBTF banks and GSEs totals into the trillions of dollars and rises to the level of treason. And the sad part is that all of the temporizing and excuses by the Fed and the White House will be for naught. The zombie banks and GSEs alike will muddle along until the operational cost of servicing bad loans engulfs them. Then they will be bailed out -- again -- or restructured."
http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAMain.asp
Whalen adds: "The U.S. banking industry entering a new period of crisis where operating costs are rising dramatically due to foreclosures and loan repurchase expenses. We are less than ¼ of the way through foreclosures. The issue is recognizing existing losses ‐‐not if a loss occurred.
Failure by the Bush/Obama to restructure the largest banks during 2008‐2009 period only means that this process is going to occur over next three to five years – whether we like it or not. Lower growth, employment are the cost of this lack of courage and vision.The largest U.S. banks remain insolvent and must continue to shrink until they are either restructured or the subsidies flowing from the Fed, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac cover hidden losses. The latter course condemns Americans to years of economic malaise and further job losses.
You're a lender that has lost the documents needed to foreclose on someones home? No problem, LPS can help! They have handled over half the foreclosures in the entire US. For a fee, LPS will locate and assemble the documents needed for a lender to foreclose. With reports of shoddy and possibly fraudulent paperwork surfacing, LPS and other mortgage servicers are coming under increased scrutiny. Read more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505731.html
and here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/10/4closurefraud-posts-docx-mortgage-document-fabrication-price-sheet.html
This alleged fraudulent behavior has caught the attention of at least one State Attorney General. Richard Cordray, Ohio's Attorney General, has the audacity to make statements such as this: "It is not acceptable for a party who believes they submitted false court documents to merely replace those documents. Wells Fargo and any other banks are not simply allowed a 'do-over,'" he wrote in the letter to Wells. The other letter was sent to Ohio judges, who were asked to notify Mr. Cordray when banks file substitute affidavits." This statement from Mr. Cordray was in response to banks and loan services companies attempting to paper over their previous submissions of fraudulent documents. Mr. Cordray continues "The banks are committing fraud on the court, essentially perjury, and then saying 'Whoops! You caught me! Here's some different evidence and use that instead,' " Mr. Cordray said in an interview Friday. "I know a lot of judges are not going to take kindly to that." Imagine me or you being accused of submitting false documents to the court, being caught by the court and we respond with "oops, here's the real ones". We're smart enough, not arrogant enough to know better. The biggest US banks aren't.
The story finishes with a sworn deposition from a Wells Fargo employee that signed 300 to 500 foreclosure documents a day without reviewing the documents for accuracy. That breaks down to between 40 and 60 foreclosure documents signings a hour. When asked further on this issue, the Wells Fargo employee responds "Asked if she verified the appropriate information, she said, "That's not part of my job description."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304879604575582743893387762.html
Damon Silvers, member of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel sees the resolution of the US foreclosure crisis as a simple choice. "We are faced with a choice here.We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both."
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/we-can-either-have-rational-resolution.html
Well regarded risk analyst Chris Whalen sees it pretty much the same way as Mr. Silvers: "..the fraud and obfuscation now underway in Washington to protect the TBTF banks and GSEs totals into the trillions of dollars and rises to the level of treason. And the sad part is that all of the temporizing and excuses by the Fed and the White House will be for naught. The zombie banks and GSEs alike will muddle along until the operational cost of servicing bad loans engulfs them. Then they will be bailed out -- again -- or restructured."
http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAMain.asp
Whalen adds: "The U.S. banking industry entering a new period of crisis where operating costs are rising dramatically due to foreclosures and loan repurchase expenses. We are less than ¼ of the way through foreclosures. The issue is recognizing existing losses ‐‐not if a loss occurred.
Failure by the Bush/Obama to restructure the largest banks during 2008‐2009 period only means that this process is going to occur over next three to five years – whether we like it or not. Lower growth, employment are the cost of this lack of courage and vision.The largest U.S. banks remain insolvent and must continue to shrink until they are either restructured or the subsidies flowing from the Fed, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac cover hidden losses. The latter course condemns Americans to years of economic malaise and further job losses.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2236715
Professor William Black, former deputy director of the FSLIC, whose actions directly led to over 1,000 convictions in the Savings and Loan scandal in the 1980's claims the US housing bubble was based mainly on fraud: "There was fraud at every step in the home finance food chain: the appraisers were paid to overvalue real estate; mortgage brokers were paid to induce borrowers to accept loan terms they could not possibly afford; loan applications overstated the borrowers' incomes; speculators lied when they claimed that six different homes were their principal dwelling; mortgage securitizers made false reps and warranties about the quality of the packaged loans; credit ratings agencies were overpaid to overrate the securities sold on to investors; and investment banks stuffed collateralized debt obligations with toxic securities that were handpicked by hedge fund managers to ensure they would self destruct." and: "These frauds came from the banks, and they propagated through the system through a series of echo epidemics...This fraud spread through the system and that's why we have a crisis in foreclosures. This stems from the underlying fraud by the lenders in mortgage loans to the tune of well over a million cases a year by 2005."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/post_1115_b_772820.html
Robert Shiller, Professor of economics at Yale University compares the current US mortgage fraud crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930's: "Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate -- the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled home ownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt -- is a replay of the 1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly."
He's not alone. Lynn Turner a former chief accountant at the SEC adds: "The amount of gimmickry and outright fraud dwarfs any period since the early 1970's, when major accounting scams like Equity Funding surfaced, and the 1920's, when rampant fraud helped cause the crash of 1929 and led to the creation of the S.E.C."
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/fraud-caused-great-depression-and-this.html
On a related subject, SIGTARP Barofsky says he has over 130 active criminal investigations involving TARP funds. Video: http://worlduntaintednews.com/archives/1307
Yesterday I linked the latest quarterly report from SIGTARP Barofsky. In his report, Barofsky accused Treasury of changing their accounting practices to show the taxpayer loses from AIG will be substantially less. In a bizarre response, Treasury answers with: "... SIGTARP instead sought to generate a false controversy over AIG to try and grab a few, cheap headlines."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/27/facts-aig
Stating that SIGTARP is trying to grab a "few, cheap headlines" makes Treasury look defensive.
More on TARP's accounting practices: "The Obama Administration is also engaging in phony accounting on its expected TARP losses, the latest sleight of hand being magically reducing its expected losses from AIG by $40 billion through a reclassification process. But the biggest source of his false accounting is extend and pretend. The biggest banks are carrying second/junior mortgage portfolios at huge premiums to their real values, which is close to zero. Merely marking the seconds down to something a tad more realistic would easily create $150 billion of losses to Citigroup, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells, in a worst case scenario, much more"
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/10/obama-no-longer-bothering-to-lie-credibly-claims-financial-crisis-cost-less-than-sl-crisis.html
More claims of blatant fraud and manipulation in the US financial markets are leveled by Bart Chilton, the head of the CFTC. Mr. Chilton speaks to the manipulations of the silver markets that several have spoken about for years. Of course, those that spoke out were called "tin foil hatters", sore losers, etc. Mr. Chilton's comments: "the public deserves some answers to their concerns that silver markets are being, and have been, manipulated.” I believe there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets. There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price.” Full text of Chilton's comments here: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/10/full-text-of-cftc-commissioner-bart.html
Back in July, 2009, Goldman Sachs accused an employee of stealing software that could be used to manipulate the equity markets. Of course, one has to wonder what GS was doing with software that could be used to manipulate the markets. Original story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFeyqdzYcizc
Now, Goldman Sachs with the help of the Federal prosecutors have asked the presiding judge for the trial scheduled to begin in November to seal the courtroom in order to keep the trial, evidence of the market manipulating software away from the public: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303891804575576693537306332.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
Not only are stock prices being manipulated along with silver prices as claimed by CFTC commissioner Chilton, there are reason to believe other commodities, oil and future market prices are also being manipulated as touched upon here: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/high-frequency-traders-might-be.html
Jim Cramer brags to manipulating stock prices: March 2007
Professor William Black, former deputy director of the FSLIC, whose actions directly led to over 1,000 convictions in the Savings and Loan scandal in the 1980's claims the US housing bubble was based mainly on fraud: "There was fraud at every step in the home finance food chain: the appraisers were paid to overvalue real estate; mortgage brokers were paid to induce borrowers to accept loan terms they could not possibly afford; loan applications overstated the borrowers' incomes; speculators lied when they claimed that six different homes were their principal dwelling; mortgage securitizers made false reps and warranties about the quality of the packaged loans; credit ratings agencies were overpaid to overrate the securities sold on to investors; and investment banks stuffed collateralized debt obligations with toxic securities that were handpicked by hedge fund managers to ensure they would self destruct." and: "These frauds came from the banks, and they propagated through the system through a series of echo epidemics...This fraud spread through the system and that's why we have a crisis in foreclosures. This stems from the underlying fraud by the lenders in mortgage loans to the tune of well over a million cases a year by 2005."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/post_1115_b_772820.html
Robert Shiller, Professor of economics at Yale University compares the current US mortgage fraud crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930's: "Shiller said the danger of foreclosuregate -- the scandal in which it has come to light that the biggest banks have routinely mishandled home ownership documents, putting the legality of foreclosures and related sales in doubt -- is a replay of the 1930s, when Americans lost faith that institutions such as business and government were dealing fairly."
He's not alone. Lynn Turner a former chief accountant at the SEC adds: "The amount of gimmickry and outright fraud dwarfs any period since the early 1970's, when major accounting scams like Equity Funding surfaced, and the 1920's, when rampant fraud helped cause the crash of 1929 and led to the creation of the S.E.C."
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/fraud-caused-great-depression-and-this.html
On a related subject, SIGTARP Barofsky says he has over 130 active criminal investigations involving TARP funds. Video: http://worlduntaintednews.com/archives/1307
Yesterday I linked the latest quarterly report from SIGTARP Barofsky. In his report, Barofsky accused Treasury of changing their accounting practices to show the taxpayer loses from AIG will be substantially less. In a bizarre response, Treasury answers with: "... SIGTARP instead sought to generate a false controversy over AIG to try and grab a few, cheap headlines."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/27/facts-aig
Stating that SIGTARP is trying to grab a "few, cheap headlines" makes Treasury look defensive.
More on TARP's accounting practices: "The Obama Administration is also engaging in phony accounting on its expected TARP losses, the latest sleight of hand being magically reducing its expected losses from AIG by $40 billion through a reclassification process. But the biggest source of his false accounting is extend and pretend. The biggest banks are carrying second/junior mortgage portfolios at huge premiums to their real values, which is close to zero. Merely marking the seconds down to something a tad more realistic would easily create $150 billion of losses to Citigroup, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells, in a worst case scenario, much more"
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/10/obama-no-longer-bothering-to-lie-credibly-claims-financial-crisis-cost-less-than-sl-crisis.html
More claims of blatant fraud and manipulation in the US financial markets are leveled by Bart Chilton, the head of the CFTC. Mr. Chilton speaks to the manipulations of the silver markets that several have spoken about for years. Of course, those that spoke out were called "tin foil hatters", sore losers, etc. Mr. Chilton's comments: "the public deserves some answers to their concerns that silver markets are being, and have been, manipulated.” I believe there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets. There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price.” Full text of Chilton's comments here: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/10/full-text-of-cftc-commissioner-bart.html
Back in July, 2009, Goldman Sachs accused an employee of stealing software that could be used to manipulate the equity markets. Of course, one has to wonder what GS was doing with software that could be used to manipulate the markets. Original story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFeyqdzYcizc
Now, Goldman Sachs with the help of the Federal prosecutors have asked the presiding judge for the trial scheduled to begin in November to seal the courtroom in order to keep the trial, evidence of the market manipulating software away from the public: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303891804575576693537306332.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
Not only are stock prices being manipulated along with silver prices as claimed by CFTC commissioner Chilton, there are reason to believe other commodities, oil and future market prices are also being manipulated as touched upon here: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/high-frequency-traders-might-be.html
Jim Cramer brags to manipulating stock prices: March 2007