Clatsop County is joining 11 other counties in a $50 million lawsuit against a private mortgage registry over recording fees.

The lawsuit alleges that Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, owes the counties millions of dollars in unpaid fees.

“We think we’re probably missing out on somewhere between $35,000 or $70,000 a year in filing fees,” Clatsop County Manager Cameron Moore said.

Under state law, whenever mortgage debt is bought or sold, the transfer must be recorded in county records. MERS, a private registry created in 1995 by the banking industry, has been serving as the owner of record. The mortgage-industry company has, for years, essentially transferred the beneficial interest of a property to itself, circumventing the typical filing fee owed to the county clerk’s office, Clatsop County Counsel Heather Reynolds told county commissioners last week.

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OKLAHOMA CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The law firm of Federman & Sherwood has initiated an investigation into Banc of California, Inc. (NYSE: BANC) with respect to possible violations of federal securities laws.

On October 18, 2016, an article published on Seeking Alpha alleged that Banc of California, Inc. (“BANC”) had concealed numerous connections between it and Jason Galanis, who has been convicted of criminal securities fraud, including that: (1) CEO Jason Sugarman was the founder, CEO, and indirect owner of a company controlled by Galanis; and (2) separately, Galanis controlled BANC’s founding shareholder. The Seeking Alpha article also alleged that BANC had used an off-balance sheet lender to make loans to insiders. On this news, shares of BANC fell to close at $11.26 per share on October 18, 2016.

Additionally, BANC stated in its Securities and Exchange filing on November 10, 2016, that it is delaying the filing of its Quarterly…

Five of the country’s biggest banks detailed tweaks to their business models in hopes of persuading regulators they could absorb significant financial distress without requiring taxpayer funds to stay afloat.

The stakes are high for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of AmericaCorp., and three others. If regulators deem these revisions of their so-called living wills—made public by the government Tuesday—to be insufficiently credible, those institutions could be ordered to hold higher levels of capital on their books, or to restructure and shed business lines.

Regulators are facing considerable pressure from politicians to use this process to break up the biggest banks, with many—notably Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren—arguing these institutions remain “too big to fail.”

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America’s biggest banks are closing hundreds of branches.

Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan shut 389 branches since the third quarter of last year.

Bank of America, which had over 6,000 branches before the financial crisis has now shrank to 4,629, according to third quarter accounts.  The bank has cut 112 financial centers from last year.

Paul Donofrio, CFO of Bank of America, said the closing of branches was part of a “shift to self-served digital channels, mobile, online, and ATM” in a 3Q earnings call transcript.

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A New Jersey law firm that helped Wells Fargo Bank N.A. foreclose on thousands of homeowners has sued the lender, saying the bank’s delayed efforts to fix its robo-signing problems led the law firm to collapse.

Lawyers for the Zucker, Goldberg & Ackerman law firm, which laid off most of its 335 workers last year, are accusing Wells Fargo of taking several years to comply with a 2010 New Jersey Supreme Court order that called for lenders to show that they were properly submitting mortgage details before foreclosing on a property.

The order, which required banks to submit their internal foreclosure policies, paralyzed foreclosures throughout the state. The average time for the foreclosure process—from filing the lawsuit to a sheriff’s sale—grew from about 200 days to about 1,000 days, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark.

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A group of senators is already asking the Department of Justice to use a new policyto target individuals at Wells Fargo for corporate misconduct (and maybe even more) in the wake of the fake account scandal surrounding the bank.

The senators’ push for prosecution seems to focus mainly on the executives at Wells Fargo, including departed CEO John Stumpf, for their roles in setting up and overseeing an incentive program that led to the bank’s employees setting up millions of fake accounts in consumers’ names in order to get sales bonuses.

But the state of California is making a move that could lead to a whole new world of hurt for Wells Fargo, its current and former executives, and the 5,000 former employees who opened the fake accounts.

According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, which has been all over this scandalsince the beginning

Housingwire:

Before Ohio, the city of Chicago, the state of California, and the state of Oregon all suspended ties with Wells Fargo in the wake of the scandal.

And now, two members of the legislative body that oversees the city and county where Wells Fargo is headquartered want the city to suspend any business with Wells Fargo as well.

To that end, two members of San Francisco’s board of supervisors, John Avalos and Jane Kim, plan to introduce a motion on Tuesday morning that would direct the city and county of San Francisco to cut business ties with Wells Fargo.

The supervisors will introduce the motion during press conference Tuesday morning on the steps of San Francisco city hall, and will be joined by representatives from theAlliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the California Reinvestment Coalition and CalPIRG.

Additionally, San Francisco Treasurer José Cisneros will take…

Behind Closed Doors, Hillary Clinton Sympathized With Goldman Sachs Over Financial Reform

Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s previously secret speeches to big banks and trade groups in 2013 and 2014 show her exalting the work of her hosts, hardly a surprise when these groups paid her up to $225,000 an hour to chat them up.

Far from chiding Goldman Sachs for obstructing Democratic proposals for financial reform, Clinton appeared to sympathize with the giant investment bank. At a Goldman Sachs Alternative Investments Symposium in October 2013, Clinton almost apologized for the Dodd-Frank reform bill, explaining that it had to pass “for political reasons,” because “if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it’s all the fault of Wall Street, you can’t sit idly by and do nothing.”

Clinton added, “And I think the…

An attorney representing a Wells Fargo employee told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the bank’s “rampant scandals” may’ve cost his client and countless others a stable retirement. That lawyer filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Wells Fargo late last week on behalf of client Francesca Allen.

The lawsuit, filed in Minnesota, comes weeks after regulators found that Wells Fargo employees had secretly created millions of unauthorized accounts, without their customers knowing it, since 2011. It alleges that the “criminal epidemic was created by Wells Fargo’s senior executives,” and in doing so, attorney Adam Levitt argues that bank executives put their employee’s retirement plans at risk because their plans are largely tied to Wells Fargo stock.

“For Wells Fargo and its executives to knowingly hurt their employees the way that they have in this respect and others is simply reprehensible,” said Levitt, the head of Consumer Protection and Product Liability Litigation at…

Yes, Hillary should ask Jamie “tempest in the teapot” Dimon  that question.

Yesterday, building on the momentum afforded her by a series of articles in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton asked the audience at a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio: “What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in one year.” Clinton was referring to the New York Times revelation on Sunday that Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return showed a loss of $916 million. (See video clip below.)

If Hillary really wants to know what kind of genius can lose a billion dollars in one year or $6.2 billion in the case of traders at JPMorgan Chase, she should ask the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon. The $6.2 billion London Whale loss at JPMorgan Chase is far more scintillating a feat since it involved wild derivative gambles in London in 2012 using the taxpayer-backstopped, insured savings deposits at the largest bank in…