FDIC HAS ALREADY PAID $1 BILLION TO ONEWEST, ESTIMATES IT WILL PAY $1.4 BILLION MORE

December 16, 2014- Pasadena, CA: At a press conference today, LA community leaders will release new data that has not previously been shared with the public about the amount of money the FDIC has paid to OneWest Bank under two controversial shared loss agreements. OneWest is part of a proposed, Too Big To Fail bank merger with CIT Group, a merger that over fifty organizations are opposing.

After the CEO of the bank refused to disclose how much money the bank received from the FDIC, the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FDIC. According to data provided to CRC, the FDIC has already paid out over one billion dollars ($1,028,404,397) to OneWest Bank. The FDIC estimates it will pay out an additional $1.4 billion to OneWest…

Rogan v. U.S. Bank, N.A. (In re Partin), 517 B.R. 770 (Bankr. E.D. Ky. 2014) –

A chapter 7 trustee sought to avoid mortgages on three properties using his “strong arm” powers, arguing that they were improperly recorded and thus did not provide constructive notice to a purchaser or lien creditor.

Liberty Blitzkrieg blog:

Agin v. Dookhan (In re Hultin), 516 B.R. 190 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2014) –

A chapter 7 trustee sought to avoid a transfer of the debtor’s real property using his “strong arm” powers based on an argument that the deed conveying the property did not provide constructive notice since it was not properly indexed in the real estate records.

WASHINGTON – On its face, the House vote late Thursday to approve a spending bill that included an unrelated provision written by Citigroup was a big legislative victory for the bank and its fellow Wall Street behemoths.

Yet it’s also a victory that may soon come to haunt the largest institutions.

What they won was the repeal of a Dodd-Frank Act provision that requires them to push out a portion of their derivatives business into subsidiaries. Big banks fought against its inclusion in the 2010 financial reform law and have been steadily fighting to repeal it ever since. The spending bill is expected to pass the Senate in the coming days.

But in finally getting what they wanted, big banks also thrust themselves back into the limelight in the worst possible way, simultaneously reminding the public of their role in causing the financial crisis and in their continuing influence over…

Yup,  a brought and paid for Congress. Congress might as well have an office for Wall Street… The corporation and Wall Street own Washington.

The acrimony that erupted Thursday between President Obama and members of his own party largely pivoted on a single item in a 1,600-page piece of legislation to keep the government funded: Should banks be allowed to make risky investments using taxpayer-backed money?

The very idea was abhorrent to many Democrats on Capitol Hill. And some were stunned that the White House would support the bill with that provision intact, given that it would erase a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, one of Obama’s signature achievements.

But perhaps even more outrageous to Democrats was that the language in the bill appeared to come directly from the pens of lobbyists at the nation’s biggest banks, aides said. The provision was so important to the profits…

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – Patricia Brown seemed to be living in a bad dream that she couldn’t wake up from. The North Buffalo widow’s house on Edge Park Avenue had been sold at a city foreclosure auction to pay the back property taxes.

With help from family members, Brown paid her bills, even those from City Hall, “Every time a bill came I would pay it, and I’ve done that for my whole life,” said Brown, “There is never anything that I would not pay, because you are supposed to.”

But Brown’s daughter Debra Nasca obtained records showing the property tax bills, and the subsequent foreclosure notices were sent to Pat’s previous address, not the address on Edge Park Avenue, “Losing her house would have been devastating–she would have died.”

Faced with losing her mom’s home that the city auctioned off for less than half of what the property is…

(Reuters) – The New York banking regulator is investigating if Deutsche Bank (>> Deutsche Bank AG) and Barclays Plc (>> Barclays PLC) used algorithms on their trading platforms to manipulate foreign exchange rates, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Benjamin Lawsky, the head of New York’s Department of Financial Services (DFS), has ordered a monitor to be installed at Deutsche Bank and already has one in place at Barclays – a move that will allow him to collect greater evidence of alleged manipulation, said the source who did not want to be named.

Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Renee Calabro declined to comment but cited an earlier statement on the probes.

“Deutsche Bank has received requests for information from regulatory authorities that are investigating trading in the foreign exchange market. The Bank is cooperating with those investigations,” Calabro said, quoting the earlier statement.

Read on.

Executives at the biggest U.S. banks are sharing notes with each other before their next round of tests with federal regulators.

WASHINGTON — Just in time for Christmas, a massive $577 billion defense-authorization bill headed for a vote in the Senate next week is packed with goodies that have nothing to do with national security.

One provision pushes forward a National Women’s History Museum in Washington, DC — long advocated by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan).

Also tucked in the bill are pet projects that would establish a Harriet Tubman national historic park in Auburn, NY, and study the creation of federal historic sites in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

In all, more than a quarter of the 1,648-page defense bill is dedicated to federal land-use projects, angering some conservatives upset that a critical defense bill is slathered with pork projects.

Sen. Tom Coburn ­(R-Okla.) tweeted that Congress was sneaking through “hundreds of millions worth of pork into unrelated Defense bill via backroom deals.”

He used the hashtag #SecretSanta to drive home the…