The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s supervisory actions resulted in $107 million in relief to more than 238,000 consumers, according to the ninth edition of its Supervisory Highlights.

The report outlines the illegal practices uncovered by the bureau’s examiners from May 2015 to August 2015. Check here for coverage over the CFPB’s eighth edition.

During this period, the bureau found violations in the student loan servicing, mortgage origination and servicing, consumer reporting, and debt collection markets.

Read on.

Earlier this month, it was reported that less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market. Many high-ranking government employees were given a heads-up about the impending market crash in secret meetings with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Then they used that information to engage in insider trading.

It was revealed that Senator Shelley Capito and her husband sold $350,000 worth of Citigroup stock at $83 per share, just one day before the stock dropped to $64 per share. Another shady trader was Congressman Jim Moran, who had his biggest trading day of the year days after the secret meeting, sellings stock in nearly 100 different companies.

These actions would be illegal for any American in any other circumstance, but members of Congress and high-ranking government officials are actually exempt from insider trading laws.

According to a recent report from RealtyTrac, the state of New Jersey has more zombie foreclosures than any other, and now, the state’s two senators are asking why the problem is so bad and what can be done about it.

In a letter sent last week to the heads of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Reserve Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, theFederal Housing Finance Agency and others, Sens. Cory Booker, D-NJ, and Robert Menendez, D-NJ, say that the prevalence of zombie foreclosures in the state is seriously impacting the state’s residents and its economy, and they want to know what the federal regulators are going to do about it.

“One of the enduring lessons of the Great Recession and the resulting foreclosure crisis is that economic problems are not confined with the four walls of a home,” Booker and Menendez…

The chief executive officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will have to wait two more weeks to see if Congress will vote to install limits on their compensation, after a busy Congressional calendar delayed a scheduled vote on the compensation packages of Fannie Mae CEO Timothy Mayopoulos and Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton.

The House of Representatives was due to vote last week on limiting the pay of the Fannie and Freddie CEOs, but that vote was delayed by a combined house budget vote, a vote on reopening the federal Export-Import Bank, and a vote on electing Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as the newSpeaker of the House.

Now, the vote on limiting the pay of the GSE CEOs is tentatively scheduled for the week of Nov. 16, according to the office of Rep. Ed Royce, R- Calif., who authored the House’s Equity in Government Compensation…

NY Times:

On Page 5 of a credit card contract used by American Express, beneath an explainer on interest rates and late fees, past the details about annual membership, is a clause that most customers probably miss. If cardholders have a problem with their account, American Express explains, the company “may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.”

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Vulture debt buyers are buying up questionable debt (credit card, student loan, auto, you name it) for pennies on the dollar and filing lawsuits in volume, obtaining default judgments in bulk, on junk evidence.  The CFPB is going to step in with some new rules.

Full article in the American Bar Association journal here.

Here are three names to watch out for:

THE BIG 3

The debt-buying industry plays a legitimate role in righting the economy, providing some compensation (pennies on the dollar) to banks and other lenders that discharge unpaid debts and sell them. And it is huge, having become so in less than 15 years.

The biggest firm is Encore Capital Group, based in San Diego; it is the parent of Midland Funding, the company that pursues payment. Encore last year surpassed $1 billion in revenues, a 39 percent increase over 2013, spurred by major acquisitions, among…

This could get interesting. It’s complicated but it looks like the administration is closing in on the so-called REMIC Trusts. I personally doubt if anyone is going to be willing to sign the REMIC Tax Reports. The reason is simple: the REMIC Trusts never operated and never received any investments dollars or any startup funds. They exist only on paper. Writing a trust instrument does not create a trust. It is only when there is property transferred into the Trust that the Trust is created and becomes a legal entity.  The blizzard of paperwork, forged and fabricated assignments, endorsements, backdating, etc. was meant to distract judges from the truth. It worked — up until now.

If the Trustee has some fool robo-sign the Tax reports, it is subjecting the person and the Company (frequently US Bank) to multiple Federal criminal and civil liabilities. If they say the Trust did operate…

Bank of America, N.A. v. Casey, 517 B.R. 1 (D. Mass. 2015) –

A Chapter 7 trustee sought to avoid a mortgage using “strong-arm” powers based on a defect in the acknowledgement. The mortgagee contended that the defect was cured by a subsequently recorded affidavit. The bankruptcy court found in favor of the trustee, and the mortgagee appealed.

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

In her first appearance on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton took a firm stance against America’s big banks.

Clinton stopped by to chat about various aspects of her campaign, including her staunch support for a stable middle class and an increase to the minimum wage. She even let it be known what she and Bill like to binge-watch after 11-hour-long congressional hearings. (“The Good Wife,” “House of Cards” and “Madam Secretary.” Duh.)

When Colbert turned his questioning to Wall Street reform, he asked directly if Clinton were president, “and the banks are failing, do we let them fail?”

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” the former secretary of state responded. “Their shareholders have to know that yes, they will fail. And if they’re too big to fail, then under my plan and others that have been proposed they may have…

This time, the revolving door smacked Goldman Sachs on the backside.

Lloyd Blankfein’s bank is expected to pay a roughly $50 million fine and an ex-banker is expected to plead guilty to federal criminal charges that he took confidential documents from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Post has learned.

The civil penalties against Goldman are among the harshest ever levied by New York. The settlement is being ironed out between Goldman and the Department of Financial Services.

Read on.