New York regulators said Monday that 11 lenders have agreed to monitor and maintain vacant properties in an effort to protect them and combat neighborhood blight.

The banks, mortgage companies and credit unions represent nearly 70 percent of the New York market and will adopt practices to limit damage from so-called “zombie properties,” according to the Department of Financial Services. They agreed to best practices that include checking within 60 days any residential properties that are delinquent on loans to begin determining if they are abandoned, the department said.

The 11 lenders are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi Mortgage, Ocwen, Nationstar, PHH, Green Tree Servicing, Astoria Bank, Bethpage Federal Credit Union, M&T Bank and Ridgewood Savings Bank.

“The wave of zombie properties that arose in the wake of the financial crisis harms local communities and threatens the long-term health of the mortgage market,” department Superintendent Ben Lawsky said. Many…

As promised, the Justice Department has extracted guilty pleas in FX rigging cases involving JP Morgan, Citi, RBS, and Barclays and as we said twice last week and once this morning, the banks received waivers which ensured that none of the penalties that should rightfully be associated with those pleas will actually apply to the banks.

What do traders say to one another when conspiring to rig a $5 trillion-a-day market you ask?  Here are some examples from the Barclays consent order:

One particular chat room, referred to by the participating traders and other traders as the “Cartel” included FX traders from Citigroup, JP Morgan, UBS, RBS and Barclays who specialized in trading the Euro.

One Barclays FX trader, when he became the main Euro trader for Barclays in 2011, wasdesperate to be invited to join the Cartel because of the trading advantages from sharing information with the…

Eric Mains is fulfilling a dream many Americans have had since the onset of the financial crisis seven years ago: He’s attacking fraud in the banking industry as aggressively as he can, using every possible tool under the law to achieve justice —and win some money back for himself.

Mains, a former team leader with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), has become so bitterly embroiled in a six-year dispute with his mortgage lender that he left the regulatory agency, fearing that he might have to eventually name it as a defendant in a federal lawsuit. He’s one of a small yet determined band of people still fighting foreclosure (the seizure of property) cases with obscure and sometimes arcane arguments, built on a simple yet mind-blowing premise: The true ownership of millions of mortgages issued during the housing bubble was fatally corrupted, and now it’s impossible to prove who actually…

A law firm with offices in Brooklyn and Florida saw its fraudulent mortgage rescue practice shut down Wednesday when a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered it to halt its activities. Litvin Law Firm and Litvin, Torrens & Associates, led by attorney Gennady Litvin, had been charging customers across the country hundreds of dollars in monthly fees, typically $595 or $750, for services they claimed would help avoid foreclosure. In fact, the firm does not have a nationwide presence and was not even licensed to represent many of the people who were paying fees. Some “clients” never spoke to an attorney. Others were duped by promises of “forensic loan audits” and “a level of service that usually is only enjoyed by large corporate clients,” and found the services had very little value in saving their homes. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hit them with a lawsuit last year after hearing…

It’s worth repeating again since Sen. Bernie Sanders is running for President in 2016 and has been spot on about Wall Street. Sanders exposed those corporate dodgers that took trillions in bailouts:

Sanders said,

There really is no shame. The Wall Street leaders whose recklessness and illegal behavior caused this terrible recession are now lecturing the American people on the need for courage to deal with the nation’s finances and deficit crisis. Before telling us why we should cut Social Security, Medicare and other vitally important programs, these CEOs might want to take a hard look at their responsibility for causing the deficit and this terrible recession.

Our Wall Street friends might also want to show some courage of their own by suggesting that the wealthiest people in this country, like them, start paying their fair share of taxes. They might work to end the outrageous corporate loopholes, tax…