Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Well, for legal and compliance officers representing mortgage servicers who often cite concentration risk as a justification for maintaining an expansive network of legal service providers, it “just ain’t so.”

Ironically, it is this focus on concentration risk that leads to slower case resolution and increased servicing costs overall.

Risk is inherent in all litigation. There are direct financial risks such as legal fees, court costs and other expenses incurred due to attorney action or inaction (e.g., sanctions, opposing party legal fees, refiling fees associated with lack of prosecution dismissals), along with indirect risks such as extended resolution timelines and reputational harm.

Mortgage servicers too often ignore the real risk of law firm failure. This risk, now a recurring reality in the default servicing world…

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A federal judge Thursday said he does not believe Wells Fargo breached contracts or misled homebuyers, but he’s not sure he can deny borrowers class certification on that basis.
Karen and Jeffrey Lucia et al. say Wells Fargo failed to offer permanent loan modifications to homeowners who participated in the federal Home Affordable Mortgage Program from April 2009 to March 2010.
A trial period agreement required the bank to notify borrowers if they qualified for permanent loan changes within three months, the plaintiffs say.
In August 2013 the Ninth Circuit reversed dismissal of two class actions accusing Wells Fargo of offering temporary loan modifications with no intention to make them permanent. Offering borrowers permanent loan modifications was one of two conditions the bank agreed to when it accepted federal bailout money in 2008, according to the lawsuits .
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria heard…

Huffington Post:

Presidential candidate and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee struggled to explain during Tuesday’s Democratic debate why he voted in favor of deregulating big banks in 1999. 

CNN host and debate moderator Anderson Cooper asked Chafee how he could press Hillary Clinton on Wall Street when he voted for a bill repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, a landmark financial regulation bill that separated the banking industry from the securities industry. 

“Glass-Steagall was my very first vote,” Chafee said. “I’d just arrived, my dad had died in office.”

Chafee was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat held by his father, John Chafee, until his death in 1999.

Cooper continued to press Chafee, asking if he didn’t understand the bill before voting on it.

“I think you’re being a little rough,” Chafee replied.

And here is his vote in 1999. Click here.

On a side note : The final vote of the…

By Shelley Erickson, January 18, 2013

The contents in the synopsis of the Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse will bring you up to speed on how, why and what happened causing the recent crimes against the homeowners by the banks, S&P and our politicians that led us into the HAMP & MOD SCAM AND NOW SETTLEMENT SHAM.

For nearly 20 years, in particularly the last 10 years, the courts, foreclosure defense attorneys, homeowners and politicians have been bamboozled by the blur and use of “MERS” – the service mark for the MERS® eRegistry system owned and operated now by MERSCORP Holdings, Inc.

“MERS” first became the acronym, an abbreviation for the first Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., in 1995. This corporation was registered in Delaware on October 16, 1995. In 1997 Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. registered “MERS” as the service markwith the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its mortgage loan eRegistry system. This original MERS corporation has long since been eaten up by other entities created by its executives and board of directors to replace it over the past 18 years. Bottom-line: The original Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. is dead and it died in 1998… RIP

AUSTIN, TX (October 6, 2015) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, joined by the Travis County Commissioners’ Court, issues the following statement regarding the recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Harris County v. MERSCorp Incorporated:

Most people will never notice that the public paperwork you typically expect to be recorded with the County Clerk whenever you buy a house, get a new lender, or refinance your mortgage isn’t being filed at all. A group of residential lenders created MERSCorp (Mortgage Electronic Recording System) several years ago for its own purposes and for bypassing the public record. This group has succeeded in creating its own private registry. The Travis County Commissioners Court, supported by the Travis County Clerk, joined a federal lawsuit in Nueces County to put a stop to this secret, substitute recording system.

via Travis County –…

Ben Bernanke’s hawking his new book, “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath,” and telling every interviewer he doesn’t really get why Main Street remains bitter over his efforts.

Well, Ben, the Cowardly Lion had more courage than you.

In several of Bernanke’s interviews, he attempts to strike a populist note by exclaiming that he wrote in the book, “more bankers should have gone to jail” or been criminally prosecuted.

To begin with, I watched virtually all of Bernanke’s testimony to various congressional committees and his press conferences.

I can’t recall a single time that he expressed the view that there were criminals behind the 2007-2008 financial crisis when he was leading the Fed.

Furthermore, does anyone think that, back in the days of the crisis, if the Fed chairman had called for a few heads or pointed out some names of people…

Ramin Bahrani’s “99 Homes” throbs with the public fury and private horror of the real-estate collapse.

Set in Orlando suburbs, the movie plunges into the ugly, contentious dramas of foreclosure. It’s a war movie where thresholds are the battle lines.

“This is our home!” cries Andrew Garfield’s Dennis Nash from his doorway when police and a real estate broker for the bank, Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), gather on his lawn to evict him, his young son (Noah Lomax) and his mother (Laura Dern).

via Eviction, desperation artfully driven home | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune.

Law360, New York (October 8, 2015, 5:59 PM ET) — A former Deutsche Bank currency trader pled guilty Thursday in New York federal court to charges alleging an eight-year plot to manipulate the published value of the key Libor interest rate, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Prosecutors say Deutsche Bank senior trader Michael Curtler reported false information used in the calculation Libor. (Credit: AP) Michael R. Curtler, 43, was released on a personal recognizance bond on Thursday, according to court records, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank…

Source: Law360