The public-to-private sector “revolving door” has crossed into the macabre twilight zone.

Moments ago an announcement by giant bond manager (technically, these days “merely above average height” bond manager, considering the collapse in the TRF’s AUM since Bill Gross’ departure over a year ago) revealed that public service cronyism is not only alive, but has never been better, when in a press release it reported that former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, ex-U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and former ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet will form the backbone of a “global advisory board” at Pimco.

Bernanke, Trichet and Brown, along with Ng Kok Song, former chief investment officer of Singapore’s GIC Pte, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, an ex-director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, will provide Pimco their “collective view on global economic, political and strategic developments and their relevance for financial markets,” the Newport Beach, California-based firm said in…

PR Newswire:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The following is being released by Bond Law, PLLC:

On December 10, 2015 Wells Fargo will return to DC Superior Court in order to face Dennis Comer’s predatory lending lawsuit. Mr. Comer, an African-American army veteran, initially filed his predatory lending claims against the bank in 2010 after Wells Fargo steered him into a high-priced, subprime loan. WellsFargo later foreclosed on the property. Wells Fargo won a motion to dismiss Comer’s claims in 2013. After a victory in the DC Court of Appeals on January 29, 2015, Mr. Comer’s predatory lending case against the lending giant will finally proceed to discovery. Mr. Comer’s case is one of only a few claims filed by an individual homeowner that has survived against the giant bank

Is the Federal Reserve failing at its own stress tests?According to its own watchdog, the answer is yes.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an article that cited a recent report from the Fed’s Inspector General, which wasn’t too kind to the Fed’s handling of the stress tests required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act,

According to the WSJ report, the Fed IG found that the Fed was not properly administering the stress tests, which are performed on the nation’s largest banks to test their financial footing in the case of another massive recession.

According to the WSJ, the Fed IG identified a number of issues with the Fed’s internal procedures, which the Fed has already begun “revamping” as the result of the IG’s report.

From the WSJ:

The changes affect implementation and administration of procedures—such as how the Fed staffs the tests—not core policy questions…

Author Michael Lewis joins Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and director Adam McKay for a freewheeling conversation on the making of their biting satire about the financial crisis, victim blaming and what happens if The Donald actually makes it into the White House.

Seventy-seven pages into his 2010 best-seller, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, author Michael Lewis stops to congratulate readers with a “gold star” for getting this far. After all, the detailed analysis of the financial-industry machinations that led to the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the Great Recession (and, arguably, the election of President Obama in 2008) is a whirlwind of such headache-inducing terms as collateralized debt obligations and triple-A tranches woven together by the personal stories of the men who foresaw the implosion and made millions. “Nobody wants to read about credit default swaps,” jokes Lewis today. “And nobody wants to…

Mastan v. Salamon (In re Salamon), 528 B.R. 171 (9th Cir. BAP 2015) –

The bankruptcy court disallowed the claim of a deed of trust creditor on the grounds that it was barred by the applicable state anti‑deficiency statute.  The creditor contended that it was entitled to treat its non-recourse loans as recourse loans under the Bankruptcy Code, which trumped the anti‑deficiency statute.

The debtor acquired an apartment building subject to two pre-existing loans secured by the property.  The acquisition was financed by the seller through a “wraparound” note and mortgage, which covered the first two loans, and an additional new loan.

Huffington Post:

Nearly a decade ago, I wrote an article about how workers in a peculiar American industry were beginning to worry about subprime home loans. They were Wall Street lawyers who specialized in a dark financial art called securitization — bundling up assets, such as home mortgages, into bonds for sale to investors.

The financial pipeline supplying the loans was beginning to dry up as more and more people fell behind on their mortgages, the lawyers told me.

It was the beginning of a two-year slide that culminated in the failure of Lehman Brothers and brought the American economy to the brink of collapse.

Like most people, and most journalists, I didn’t see it coming. I wrote my story, then unwisely turned to other topics. I had no idea that the entire mortgage industry was wormed through with rot and disease and fraud, that the mortgage bonds that had…

Pacific Investment Management Co and other investors have sued Citigroup Inc over the bank’s alleged failure to properly monitor toxic securities backed by more than $13.8 billion of mortgage loans, resulting in $2.3 billion of losses.

According to a complaint filed Tuesday night in a New York state court in Manhattan, Citigroup breached its duties as trustee for the 25 private-label trusts dating from 2004 to 2007 by ignoring “pervasive and systemic deficiencies” in how the underlying loans were underwritten or being serviced.

The investors said Citigroup looked askance at the loans’ “abysmal performance” out of fear it might “jeopardize its close business relationships” with loan servicers including Wells Fargo & Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co, or prompt them to retaliate over its own problem loans.
Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/25/us-citigroup-pimco-lawsuit-idUSKBN0TE2MC20151125#Bk9vqKEToqdG55gP.99

Wiring a federal agent or informant would have been legal.

But the feds crossed the line by secretly installing microphones in at least three locations outside a California courthouse in 2009 and 2010 and eavesdropping on private conversations, says a motion. It was filed by defendants in a criminal case over claimed manipulation of foreclosure sales by real estate investors to drive down prices, reports the Recorder(sub. req.). The filing seeks to prevent the use of hundreds of hours of recorded evidence against the defendants.

With the OK of the Department of Justice and FBI lawyers, the government made the warrantless recordings with electronic bugs hidden in a planter, a wall-mounted metal sprinkler box and vehicles parked near an entrance to the San Mateo County courthouse in Redwood City, the defendants allege. This violated the defendants’ Fourth Amendment rights, says a motion to suppress (PDF) filed Friday in the…