Neil Barofsky is the author of the new book “BAILOUT: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.”  If you read anything in Neil Barofsky’s new book – BAILOUT, you MUST read
Chapter 8 “Foaming the Runway”.  

WASHINGTON (CN) – The U.S. Justice Department refuses to release the details of deals struck between federal prosecutors and alleged corporate wrongdoers, a suit filed by a law school librarian claims.
Jonathan Ashley, a librarian at the University of Virginia School of Law, sued the agency in federal court, stating that the agency wrongfully withheld the records under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the complaint, Ashley has been doing research on behalf of law professor Brandon Garrett, whose academic works focuses on the criminal justice system and the potential for prosecutorial abuse associated with the deals between prosecutors and big corporations.
Critics of such non-prosecution agreements (NPAs) and deferred-prosecution agreements (DPAs) contend they allow senior level management to escape prosecution on white collar crimes in exchange for a promise to beef up their compliance and pay a relatively nominal fine.
“Courts have been skeptical of both NPAs and…

Senator Elizabeth Warren asks Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt about principal reduction for homeowners, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on November 19, 2014.

Wells Fargo & Co and the U.S. Department of Justice are “no longer as optimistic” about settling a lawsuit accusing the country’s largest mortgage lender of fraud, a lawyer for the bank said on Tuesday.

Credit unions are enduring a crisis of creeping complexity with respect to regulatory burden, and the Credit Union National Association believes at least three bipartisan bills currently before the U.S. Senate could alleviate some of that drag.

The ever-increasing, never-decreasing regulatory burden erects barriers to their ability to serve their members, particularly in the mortgage space, CUNA says.

“The enactment of these bills would represent a small step in the right direction toward removing barriers to credit union service,” said Jim Nussle, president of CUNA. “As the Senate reassembles for the remaining weeks of the 113^th Congress, we urge passage of these important bills.”

The 113^th Congress could, despite its lame duck status, pass these bills before the Christmas recess and the swearing in of the 114^th Congress in 2015.

Read on.

No, it should be a criminal suit!

Federal prosecutors are wrestling with whether to file a civil fraud lawsuit against Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive ofCountrywide Financial, which was at the center of the subprime mortgage boom and bust, people briefed on the matter say.

This summer, the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles was said to be close to filing a lawsuit against Mr. Mozilo over his role in Countrywide’s sale of millions of mortgages to home buyers with questionable credit histories. Prosecutors there were planning to move forward with a civil fraud lawsuit nearly three years after it had abandoned a criminal investigation of Countrywide and Mr. Mozilo, the firm’s co-founder.

But Stephanie Yonekura, the acting United States attorney for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, has had lingering questions about the litigation because of arguments raised by lawyers…

And those crappy loans will be sold to either non-banks or hedge funds… Good luck to the idiots that buys the crap loans…

Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. (C) are selling multiple pools of soured U.S. mortgages to meet demand from investment firms that are pushing prices higher, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Bank of America put about $1 billion of troubled debt on the market last week, consisting of nonperforming loans and some where payments have resumed, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the offerings are private. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender also is marketing about $1 billion of soured home loans with Wells Fargo & Co., according to one of the people. Citigroup is separately selling about $1 billion of nonperforming and re-performing mortgages, the people said.

Dan Frahm, a spokesman for Bank of America, and…

Source: Alex Cartoon

While the foreclosure crisis might sound to some like duck soup, Professor John E. Campbellfrom the University of Denver Sturm College of Law has taken the time to dissect the issues in his Mortgage Crisis in a Nutshell video explaining precisely what has happened to homeowners and searching for the reasons why.

Prof. Campbell explains what has happened in the traditional sense and how Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. participated in part of the scheme. He also discusses how and why the homeowners were not intentionally at fault.

In this one-hour video, Attorney John E. Campbell explains the main aspects of the mortgage crisis that has devastated the U.S. housing market and the economy. Watch the video and then let’s discuss securitization in a little more detail below.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner might face another “stress test” of his own amid publication of his unflattering portrait of many European financial leaders.

In blunt language largely missing from his memoir, entitled“Stress Test,” Geithner portrayed continental leaders as vindictive, obsessively short-sighted and lacking a coherent policy to stave off a financial crisis that threatened to break the European Union apart, according to documents reviewed by the Financial Times.

Take European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s famous statement in 2012 that he would do “whatever it takes” to save the EU, such as buying the sovereign bonds of countries like Greece that were under the most pressure. Geithner said he was told by Draghi it was an off-the-cuff remark that he did not discuss with other bank members.

Read on.