Five years ago this month, GMAC became the first mortgage servicer to announce that they would suspend foreclosure operations, due to irregularities in their document preparation. Within a few weeks every major mortgage servicer in America followed suit. This is usually called the robo-signing scandal, but to be more precise we gave it the name foreclosure fraud. It ended with the five leading servicers, including GMAC, signing the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement.

Except it didn’t end, and this past week I was handed inconvertible proof of that fact. The scenario is so fantastical that if I didn’t have a working knowledge of foreclosure fraud I wouldn’t have believed it. But it appears to be very real.

Bill Paatalo is a former cop who worked in the mortgage industry as a loan officer and, from 2002-2008, the President of Wissota Mortgage in the Midwest. Since 2009, after experiencing his own…

While I agree that the foreclosure crisis was not caused by subprime event, the article leaves out  that The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report (you can get it online) on the housing meltdown found most of the blame with risky lending practices by the banks, inflated home values by appraisers, and banks making money from originated fees by bundling and selling off a lot of the risk as MBS mixed with good and bad loans and getting the blessing of an A+ rating by the credit rating agencies.

Each month, the NBER Digest summarizes several recent NBER working papers. These papers have not been peer-reviewed, but are circulated by their authors for comment and discussion. With the NBER’s blessing, Making Sen$e is pleased to begin featuring these summaries regularly on our page.

The following summary was written by the NBER and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Making Sen$e. We will tell you, however…

• Credit Suisse report shows cash is leaving bond, equity funds
• First back-to-back months of simultaneous outflows since 2008

Mom and pop are running for the hills.

Since July, American households — which account for almost all mutual fund investors — have pulled money both from mutual funds that invest in stocks and those that invest in bonds. It’s the first time since 2008 that both asset classes have recorded back-to-back monthly withdrawals, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse estimates $6.5 billion left equity funds in July as $8.4 billion was pulled from bond funds, citing weekly data from the Investment Company Institute as of Aug. 19. Those outflows were followed up in the first three weeks of August, when investors withdrew $1.6 billion from stocks and $8.1 billion from bonds, said economist Dana Saporta.

“Anytime you see something that hasn’t happened since the last quarter of 2008…

Here’s Bloomberg:

China has cut its holdings of U.S. Treasuries this month to raise dollars needed to support the yuan in the wake of a shock devaluation two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Channels for such transactions include China selling directly, as well as through agents in Belgium and Switzerland, said one of the people, who declined to be identified as the information isn’t public. China has communicated with U.S. authorities about the sales, said another person. They didn’t reveal the size of the disposals.

The latest available Treasury data and estimates by strategists suggest that China controls $1.48 trillion of U.S. government debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That includes about $200 billion held through Belgium, which Nomura Holdings Inc. says is home to Chinese custodial accounts.

The PBOC has sold at least $106 billion of reserve assets in the last two weeks…

Yet, no jail time for the banksters….

A bookkeeper who failed to report mortgage fraud was sentenced to two years’ probation, with six months to be served on home confinement, for his conviction for concealing massive financial institution fraud.

Ignacio Huergo was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $736,254.25 to M&T Bank.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Trini Ross, who is handling the case, stated that Huergo worked for the companies of Frank Garcia, Federal Guaranty Mortgage CompanyandGuaranty Realty and Investment as a bookkeeper and tax preparer between 2006 and 2008.

Read on.

“The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.”—Donald Trump

25 hedge fund managers made more than 24 billion, enough to pay the salaries of 425,000 public school teachers.

The billionaire Republican front-runner assailed hedge fund managers in a Sunday appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation in which he portrayed himself as a champion of the middle class.

“They’re paying nothing. And it’s ridiculous,” Trump said of those who make a living running hedge funds. “I want to save the middle class. You know, the middle class—the hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky. And, by the way, when the market collapses, like it is now, the market is going down, they’re losing a fortune.”

Sanders, the leading challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, has routinely gone after hedge fund managers during his populist campaign.

For Trump, who often…

By James Kwak

“Fed Tells Big Banks to Shrink or Else,” the Wall Street Journal proclaimed in the headline of its lead story today.* If only.

What the Federal Reserve actually did is impose new, additional capital requirements for the largest banks. JPMorgan Chase, for example, will have to hold 4.5 percentage points more capital than it would have had to otherwise. This is clearly a good thing, since it means that the banks that could do the most damage to the financial system will be a little bit safer. But it is neither a complete solution, nor is it the draconian constraint that the banks and the Journal make it out to be.

For starters, the rule will have no effect on seven of the eight banks in question (JPMorgan is the exception), since they already have enough capital to meet the new requirements. That alone should let you…

I met Colossus when I worked as a personal injury paralegal. I became even better acquainted with this computer program after I set up the Personal Injury Protection (PIP) department at the law firm where I worked. Within a short period of time, I had figured out which keywords and CPT codes were accepted and which were rejected. However this did not guarantee that the claim would be paid. It was my job to wrangle with the insurance adjuster in the event that Colossus rejected a valid claim, which was often. I once drafted a complaint for 24 cents because the insurance adjuster was rude. Yep, 24 cents. The attorney who signed the complaint laughed but I was able to get $2,100 in attorney’s fees plus the 24 cents and our court costs from the insurance company before any court appearances.

Allstate always had a reputation of not settling claims…