Wells Fargo Bank has been ordered to pay a Dallas woman more than $8 million by a state judge who concluded the bank defrauded her in serving as a trustee for a trust established by her relatives in Midland when she was orphaned at age 7.

In court filings and during a 2012 bench trial before State Judge Emily Tobolowsky, Angela Militello alleged that she had been deceived by Wells Fargo, which was acting as the trustee in a trust set up for her as a child. (The original complaint is here.)

Wells Fargo sent a trust officer to Dallas County in 1999 to discuss Militello’s trust, she alleged. At a Dallas restaurant, he informed her she needed to “open a new account” and produced papers for her to assign to create a revocable trust.

In 2006, following her divorce, Militello asked her trust officer how she might get $200,000 to  buy a house where she…

Bankers and new accounting rules are emboldening governments to borrow-and-bet their way out of pension problems, a strategy that’s backfired in the past.

This story was co-published with the Washington Post.

If there were ever a time not to bet the moon on the stock and bond markets, it’s now, with U.S. stocks at near-record highs and interest rates on quality bonds at near-record lows. But Wall Street is urging state and local governments to do just that — and they’re listening.

Despite the risks, governments are lining up to issue billions of dollars in new debt to replenish their depleted pension funds and, as a bonus, take some pressure off strapped budgets. In some cases, the borrowing makes their balance sheets look vastly better.

Bankers, who make fat fees for raising the money, are encouraging this borrow-and-bet trend. Their sales pitch is that borrowing at today’s low interest…

Zerohedge:

The Simpsons had it right all along:

With the provocative and dramatic Greek “time out” language pulled from the final finmin and summit draft language, the two most humiliating aspects of the latest extend and pretend “deal” for the Greek people will be the return of the Troika’s (surely we can call it the Troika again as part of the Greek capitulation) IMF mission to Athens, and the escrowing of some €50 billion in  Greek assets in a liquidation fund.

Granted said fund will not be domiciled in Luxembourg as was originally envisioned, but Europe will still have control and first refusal rights over what are technically Greek properties, in the process Athens handing over about 25% of Greek GDP (and sovereignty) over the Brussels.

What are these assets? For the answer we go to the horse’s mouth, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who laid out the holdings of the proposed…

CONTACT: Bill Sorrell, Attorney General, (802) 828-3171

A small but closely watched number of Long Island homeowners are asking judges to dismiss foreclosure cases against them, saying lenders missed New York’s six-year deadline to file such lawsuits.

Already, a judge has thrown out a Sound Beach couple’s foreclosure case because the lender took too long to file its second lawsuit, after the first one was dismissed. The case has drawn intense scrutiny from attorneys who represent homeowners and lenders. In interviews with Newsday, attorneys said more homeowners have filed court papers seeking the same result.

As Long Island struggles to emerge from its yearslong foreclosure crisis, the deadline could mean a yet-to-be-determined number of Long Island homeowners win their foreclosure cases and stay in their homes.

Read on.

Behind the veneer of “all is well” being promoted by both world Governments and the Mainstream Media, the political elite have begun implementing legislation that will permit them to freeze accounts and use your savings to prop up insolvent banks.

This is not conspiracy theory or some kind of doom and gloom. It’s basic fact.

When a Cyprus bank went bust in 2013, the Government SEIZED 40% of ALL SAVINGS DEPOSITS OVER €100,000.

Here’s the timeline:

·      June 25, 2012: Cyprus formally requests a bailout from the EU.

·      November 24, 2012: Cyprus announces it has reached an agreement with the EU the bailout process once Cyprus banks are examined by EU officials (ballpark estimate of capital needed is €17.5 billion).

·      February 25, 2013: Democratic Rally candidate Nicos Anastasiades wins Cypriot election defeating his opponent, an anti-austerity Communist.

The initial stage of this took over six months to develop…