As another World Economic Forum comes to a climax, global leaders remain at odds over the role of financial regulation, and whether the industry has learned from the mistakes of the past.

In a CNBC hosted seminar on the last day of the Davos event, Katherine Garrett-Cox, the CEO of investment and savings business Alliance Trust told an audience that 2015 will be a definitive year for the industry and wanted leaders to “step right up to the plate up” and “stop talking about stuff and actually start doing stuff.”

She added: “There is so much more we can accomplish, but we can’t do that behind the bars of a prison cell.”

Garrett-Cox believes that finance hasn’t seen much of a culture change since the global financial crash of 2008, and said that the “bigger have got bigger” by virtue of some banks failing. Therefore, she argued there is an…

A complaint filed on January 20, 2015 in U.S. District Court for Nevada—Michael Harkey v. U.S. Bank et al. (Case No. 2:14-cv-00177-RFB-GWF)–really breaks down exactly what the scam of MERS is, and it does so with a level of clarity and certainty the likes of which I have rarely seen.  The document even gives the foreclosure fraud a more accurate name: “The MERS-LPS Racketeering Enterprise.”  While reading it, I thought, “This is too good not to share,” so here are a few selections, just from the section labeled “THE PARTIES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE SUBJECT MATTER”, which begins on p. 3 and can be downloaded and viewed here (to save you a trip to PACER): Harkey v. US Bank

This section of the complaint begins with a recitation of the history of the different iterations of  and relationships between “MERS”, “MERSCORP”…

Let’s jump in the wayback machine regarding some of the big banks and their robosigning/alteration/forgery/paper terrorism/document-manufacturing for a second before we get into the deposition testimony from a “senior operation specialist” with JPMorgan Chase promised in the headline.

Remember Linda Tirelli’s uncovering of the Wells Fargo document-fixing manual?  LRM covered that here:

CONSPIRACY FACT, NOT THEORY: WELLS FARGO’S MANUAL

From that article:

“In a filing in New York’s Southern District in White Plains for a local homeowner in bankruptcy, attorney Linda Tirelli described a 150-page Wells Fargo Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual created November 9, 2011 and updated February 24, 2012. According to court papers, the Manual details ‘a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.’”

And remember how Linda DeMartini of Countrywide/Bank of America testified in Kemp v. Countrywide that she had never seen a note with an endorsement on the bottom (despite the…

President Barack Obama pledged to veto any legislation that weakens new curbs on Wall Street as banks and the Republican-led Congress increasingly seek to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law.

Obama included the message in his State of the Union speech Tuesday after the House approved a measure last week that would loosen some restrictions in the 2010 law. His remarks also come as Wall Street re-emerges as a force in Washington, having successfully attached one of its top legislative goals to a government spending bill that lawmakers approved at the end of last year.

“We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or re-fighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got a system to fix,” Obama said. “If a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, it…

William Erbey is getting $1.2 million in cash and medical coverage for his wife after he stepped down from Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN), one of the largest mortgage servicers, as part of a deal with New York regulators.

Erbey, 65, will receive $725,000 as a severance payment, $475,000 in lieu of relocation benefits, and lifetime health insurance for himself and his spouse, Ocwen Financial said today in a regulatory filing. He’ll also get a $725,000 dividend from his preferred stake in Ocwen Mortgage Servicing before the firm repurchases the holding for $100.

Read on.

Peace out, Bill! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

Bill Erbey is walking toward the exit.

The chairman of Ocwen Financial, the beleaguered mortgage servicing company, is expected to step down from his position Friday after more than 27 years on the job — his reputation shredded and his net worth tattered.

Years of regulatory investigations into alleged foreclosure and mortgage -financing shenanigans caught up with Erbey last year.

Read on.

The banks have fought their war against financial reform on four fronts.

They have pushed for delays, lobbied allies in Congress to repeal aspects of Dodd-Frank, worked over regulators to make the rules as loose as possible and threatened legal challenges and filed lawsuits.

The battle has been overwhelming, with a scrappy band of pro-reform rebels outnumbered and overpowered by the empire’s resources. The public appears to be on the side of the insurgents, but perhaps can’t follow or understand debates about whether “swaps” — what are those? — should be “pushed out” or not — what’s that? (English translation below.)

During all of these fights, the banks have had a stalwart ally holding back greater reform: Establishment Democrats.

Such Democrats, the Robert E. Rubin wing of the Democratic Party, opposed moves to break up the big banks after the 2008 global crisis. These stalwarts prevented a reinstatement of the…