Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay $95 million (59 million pounds) to resolve a lawsuit accusing the Wall Street bank of misleading investors in mortgage-backed securities in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The settlement, disclosed in court papers filed Monday in New York federal court, follows years of litigation by investors over allegedly false and misleading statements over the soured securities.

The deal stemmed from a lawsuit pursued by the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi (MissPERS) and the West Virginia Investment Management Board.

The plaintiffs accused Morgan Stanley of violating U.S. securities law in packaging and selling mortgage backed securities in 13 offerings in 2006 and 16 offerings in 2007.

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In response to the insightful article by Daniel Wise, “Panel Shifts Toward Remedy in ‘Sarmiento,'” (Aug. 29), I would raise one small point. Wise lamented that “The 2009 New York law (mandating settlement conferences in foreclosure cases) specifically instructed the Judiciary to issue rules to ‘ensure’ that judges have ‘the necessary authority and power’ to see that ‘conferences not be unduly delayed or subject to willful dilatory tactics,'” but that “the Judiciary has taken no action on the Legislature’s command.”

What the Legislature actually stated was “The chief administrator of the courts shall … promulgate such additional rules as may be necessary to ensure the just and expeditious processing of all settlement conferences authorized hereunder.”¹

Although banks and mortgage servicers have argued in a number of cases that the failure of the chief administrator to have issued rules specifying what sanctions might be imposed for failing to…

The Tea Party regards Barack Obama as a kind of devil figure, but when it comes to hunting down the fraudsters responsible for the economic disaster of the last six years, his administration has stuck pretty close to the Tea Party script. The initial conservative reaction to the disaster, you will recall, was to blame the crisis on the people at the bottom,

on minorities and proletarians lost in an orgy of financial misbehavior. Sure enough, when taking on ordinary people who got loans during the real-estate bubble, the president’s Department of Justice has shown admirable devotion to duty, filing hundreds of mortgage-fraud cases against small-timers.

But high-ranking financiers? Obama’s Department of Justice has thus far shown virtually no interest in holding leading bankers criminally accountable for what went on in the last decade. That is ruled out not only by the Too Big to Jail doctrine that top-ranking…

Oh, man. Many in Congress are certainly in bed with financial institutions where, once again, they will create another financial crisis. Can’t blame the banksters first, Congress, since Congress is trying to pass another bill which I bet, the bank lobbyists wrote.

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Say hello to the next financial crisis, brought to you courtesy of the dumbest new bill of the week: H.R. 5148: Access to Affordable Mortgages Act.

Ordinarily whenever an individual wants to borrow money for a mortgage, the bank conducts due diligence… both on the borrower as well as the property.

It’s in the banks’ interest (as well as the banks’ depositors) to ensure that the property is at least worth as much as the amount being borrowed. Duh.

Congress doesn’t agree. Apparently when banks conduct property appraisals, that seems to unfairly discriminate against some segment of the population…

BOSTON – A group of Western Massachusetts banks argued before the state’s highest court on Thursday that the city of Springfield’s anti-foreclosure ordinances should be overturned.

The banks say the local ordinances contradict state laws, and a bond levied on lenders constitutes an illegal tax. “It’s not that banks are opposed to mortgage laws and reform, but to how it’s being done,” said Craig Kaylor, general counsel for Hampden Bank, one of the banks that brought the lawsuit. “These are for the state to decide, not city by city.”

But the city disagrees and says the laws are necessary to avoid blight and protect neighborhoods that have high rates of foreclosure.

Read on.

There’s another potential housing crisis coming and this one won’t be a collapse in home values.

The nation is facing a lack of affordable, physically-accessible and well-located homes for America’s aging population — especially those with low incomes, according to a new, gloomy study released today by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies & AARP Foundation.

“You’ve got a scenario with the largest generation we’ve ever had moving into their senior years combined with the fact that longevity is increasing,” says Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Realtor.com, the site of the National Association of Realtors. “And we’re fairly ill prepared to address the housing needs and challenges of them.”

Read on.