American homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments will get a small break from the government this holiday season: They won’t be evicted until after the new year.  What a treat- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will temporarily cease stealing homes they don’t own for two short weeks.

The Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae, which is operated by the federal government, said it will not evict homeowners between Dec. 19, 2016, and Jan. 2, 2017, though legal proceedings may continue. Fannie Mae declined to say how many families the hiatus would affect.

Since the housing crisis began in 2007, the US government has stood behind the mortgage market, rushing in as banks rushed out. In 2008, it nationalized the two largest holders of mortgage loans, Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). Fannie and Freddie guarantee and securitize loans made…

State takes final steps to implement new foreclosure laws

December 7, 2016

In May, 2011, Peter Belli filed a complaint in Boston. With guidance from whistleblower experts at Mahany Law, he accused Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corporation of massive mortgage fraud in a False Claims Act “qui tam” whistleblower lawsuit.

Over five years later, and after a trial that lasted five weeks, a jury found both the corporation and its CEO, Jim Hodge, guilty of knowingly representing to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that certain loans were properly prepared and eligible for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance, when in fact they were not.

Belli had managed several Allied branches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona, and other states. He was thus in an ideal position to observe Allied Capital’s fraudulent practices, and he was determined to bring the scheme to light. Unfortunately, he passed away before the verdict came out only days ago in Texas. The move to a Texas court had been…

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., announced Monday that he has joined 14 of his colleagues to introduce legislation, the Justice for Victims of Fraud Act of 2016, to give Wells Fargo customers who were victims of a fraudulent account scheme their day in court.

The senator said Wells Fargo is using the forced arbitration clauses it tucked away in the fine print of contracts customers signed when they opened legitimate accounts to prevent the Wells Fargo customers with fraudulently opened accounts who were harmed from joining together and taking Wells Fargo to court.

“What Wells Fargo did was outrageous,” Merkley said. “Opening millions of fraudulent accounts was a jaw-dropping betrayal of their customers’ trust, and one that had a real cost for many consumers. Whether it’s fraudulent fees or a falsely-damaged credit score, consumers should have every recourse when it comes to these violations—especially since customers never actually agreed to…

Mnuchin was and remains “the guy between the guys.” Billed as the organizer of OneWest his role was to provide a layer between the founders and the rest of the world. His prospective appointment As Secretary of the US Treasury means that the TBTF banks would have a lackey to do what the banks wanted the US Treasury to do.

The United States “absolutely must” complete unfinished work ending the too-big-to-fail bank problem that helped plunge the global economy into recession eight years ago, an influential Federal Reserve policymaker said on Saturday.

Attorney Linda Tirelli, a rockstar in the arena of foreclosure defense, has just filed an adversarial bankruptcy suit in the Southern District of New York naming the following as defendants: Bank of America, Nationstar, U.S. Bank, and Recontrust. As many former and soon-to-be-former homeowners know, this group is a veritable rogue’s gallery of home/wealth/livelihood/sanity thieves and scam artists.  The fact that Tirelli is going after this financial mafia family is heartening, because Tirelli gets results.

So I read through her complaint, filed on November 29, 2016.  You can read it here.  What follows are my first impressions and sections of the complaint that stood out to me.

The Remedies

I am thrilled to see that Tirelli is going for the jugular with this complaint, and not shying away from what her client (and millions of people who are or have been in the same situation) truly deserves.  Namely…

see http://www.npr.org/2016/11/29/503755613/trumps-potential-treasury-secretary-headed-a-foreclosure-machine

There two ways of looking at this prospective appointment by President-Elect Trump.

One is that this appointment signals the intent to further “expedite” foreclosures instead of digging deeper into the real facts and fraud by Wall Street banks. Such an effort would eliminate the possibility of the US Treasury clawing back huge sums of money for nonexistent bank losses stemming from alleged defaulted loans.

Some may remember that the infamous TARP bailout was first described and approved as covering losses from the loans to residential homeowners. Then it evolved.  The description and approval was to cover losses from failed mortgage bonds. But neither defaults nor bond failures were actual losses of the banks.

They had sold the loans and bore no risk. And they were selling bonds not buying them. Then it evolved again. The description and approval was to cover lost profits on hedge products, insurance and…