The Housing Justice Foundation website:

Dual Tracking, which occurs when a mortgage servicer continues to pursue foreclosure even after loan modification negotiations with the homeowner have begun, remains a destructive and wide-spread industry practice. While the loan modification process can result in mortgages avoiding default, it is too often the case that homeowners find themselves caught between two departments of the same servicer, leading to uncertainty and miscommunication.

Here is an example of the straightforward work of Activist Ron Gillis, who has fought lender abuses and fraud since 2008, and has been filing amicus briefs in cases of dual tracking. This example could prove to be a useful template or resource for those experiencing similar issues.

A debtor can bring suit in federal court to challenge collection practices under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for a debt that has been discharged in bankruptcy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Monday.

Overturning a lower court, the Second Circuit said plaintiff debtor Donna Garfield is not precluded by bankruptcy law from suing in district court on claims under the act (FDCPA) after her discharge in bankruptcy.

In Garfield v. Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC, 15-527, Judges Jon Newman, Ralph Winter and Jose Cabranes reversed Western District Judge Elizabeth Wolford, who had held Garfield could only seek relief in bankruptcy court.

Garfield failed to make payments on a mortgage for the home she obtained from Ocwen’s predecessor-in-interest, and she filed for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in 2009. She obtained a discharge of her personal obligation for the loan in August 2013, agreeing to pay…

Housingwire:

On Tuesday, Sanders again took on the Fed in a wide-ranging speech on Wall Street and the economy, but the Fed got off easy compared to the rest of Wall Street, especially the country’s biggest banks.

In his speech, Sanders detailed just how different life would be for the “too big to fail” banks under a Sanders administration. In fact, there would be no life for the “too big to fail” banks if Sanders is elected president, only death.

In the speech, Sanders said “if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

According to Sanders, in his first 100 days as President, he would order the secretary of the Treasury Department to establish a “too big to fail” list of “commercial banks, shadow banks and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the United States economy without a taxpayer bailout.”

see http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mortgage-meltdown-20151229-story.html

The article in the above link pretty much says it all. It highlights two movies — The Big Short and 99 Lives — to show the proliferation of scams that enabled the government and the banks to make it appear that there was government intervention. Like securitization, servicing, and trusteeship of fake trusts, it was and remains a complete illusion.

The bitter truth is that the Banks intentionally convoluted their scheme such that it would take intensive study, experience, training and knowledge to even pierce the first layer of their bogus scheme based mostly on a conventional Ponzi Scheme. Practically nobody in government, law enforcement or anyone else was willing to invest the time and energy. I am currently writing my own book designed to help people understand but more importantly what they can do about their situation when some stranger comes to evict them from their home.

When President Obama announced the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, on February 18, 2009, in Mesa, Arizona, he promised it would assist 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify their loans to avoid foreclosure. Almost seven years later, less than 1 million have received ongoing assistance; nearly one in three re-defaulted after receiving inadequate modifications; and 6 million families lost their homes over the same time period.

Now the program is ending.

Tucked away on page 1,983 of the omnibus spending package, signed into law earlier this month, is the following language: “The Making Home Affordable initiative of the Secretary of the Treasury, as authorized under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 … shall terminate on December 31, 2016.”

This language closes out a series of measures initiated after the financial crisis to aid homeowners facing foreclosure, but mostly, it ends HAMP. Few noted its passage…

Between takes on the set of “Billions,” Damian Lewis is standing amid a sea of Bloomberg computer terminals singing Hall & Oates to no one in particular. “Because your kiss, your kiss, is on my list,” croons the actor, clad in jeans, Pumas and a gray buttondown.

But don’t let the breezy vibe fool you: In the drama, Lewis plays a cutthroat hedge fund manager and self-made billionaire named Bobby “Axe” Axelrod whose extraordinary track record arouses the suspicions of a combative U.S. attorney, Chuck Rhoades, played by Paul Giamatti. Rhoades’ righteous zeal is tempered somewhat by a giant conflict of interest at home: His wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff), just so happens to be the in-house shrink and performance coach at Axelrod’s firm, Axe Capital.

The series, premiering Jan. 17 on Showtime and co-created by New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, arrives more than seven years after…

Three families facing evictions following tax foreclosures won a reprieve Wednesday when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order halting the action for 14 days.

The order from U.S. District Judge Judith Levy comes amid a controversy involving several Wayne County suburbs that acquired tax-foreclosed properties from the county before its annual fall auction and resold them to developers.

Eighteen affected families filed suit Monday. Levy said the case raises “federal constitutional issues, violations of due process and equal protection,” but she only has jurisdiction in three cases whose owners hadn’t yet had eviction cases filed against them in local courts.

Another hearing is set Jan. 13.

Read on.

It’s bonus season, and while many in the junk bond market should expect coal in their stocking, the rest of Wall Street remains hopeful that Santa Claus remembers them this year. Given the Fed’s rate hike, though, more than a few financiers are losing faith.

It would help, perhaps, if Wall Street had a direct line to Santa Claus. Once upon a time, it did. For much of the 19th century, Santa Claus had a branch office at No. 12 Wall Street. This was the “Saint Nicholas Bank,” established in 1853 and capitalized at $500,000.

The origins of the Saint Nicholas Bank are a bit murky. Aside from the fact that it built a safe that Bankers’ Magazine described in 1854 as “the largest in the United States, if not the world,” the new institution attracted very little notice.

At this time, state-chartered banks in the United States issued their…