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

Banking Committee member Sherrod Brown wants to know whether banks changed any behavior after penalties

WSJ (sub. req.):

A powerful Democratic senator has launched an inquiry into bank misconduct, asking top financial institutions to turn over information about the settlements they have entered into with federal agencies over the past decade. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, asked banks in a letter dated Sept. 30 to to provide details of any “legally enforceable judgment, agreement, settlement, decree or order dated January 1, 2005 to the present,” involving 15 federal agencies including the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and several Treasury Department units. The inquiry could add fuel to growing criticism by lawmakers and others that such settlements have failed to deter repeated bank misbehavior.

Doesn’t take personal responsibility…Bernanke needs to crawl back under the rock with Greenspan…

Here’s FT with Bernanke’s take:

The former chairman of the Federal Reserve has hit out at Congress for failing to do its part to bolster America’s rebound from the financial crisis, saying the US central bank had been unfairly criticised when the recovery “failed to lift all boats”.

In his newly published memoir, Ben Bernanke admitted the Fed had failed to spot some of the dangers building before the financial crash, and said that the controversial rescues of Bear Stearns and the insurance company AIG had damaged its political standing and “created new risks to its independence”.

As suggested by the title of his book, The Courage to Act, Mr Bernanke argues that the Fed’s policies under his leadership were justified and helped usher in a stronger recovery than in many other countries. He draws a…

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she will lay out her plan to rein in Wall Street “abuses” within the next week.

“I’m going to be proposing in the next week what I think will be the best way to go after Wall Street abuses and rein in the too-big-to-fail banks and other institutions,” Clinton said at an Iowa campaign stop.

Clinton said her plan would focus on more than banks, taking into account any kind of financial institution that causes disruption in the marketplace.

“What I’m proposing is that we go after the risk,” Clinton said. “If they are so big that they are causing disruptions in the marketplace, that’s a risk. So I have what I consider to be a more comprehensive approach toward what we need to do to rein in the big institutions, including the banks.”

Clinton also indicated that she would address…

Since January 2014, HousingWire has reported on what appears to be a tragic trend of suicides and mysterious deaths of financial executives and bankers.

Here is just a little of our past coverage.