The Housing Vultures – New Book Review

A Review by Francesca Mari

Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream by Aaron Glantz

“In an alternate reality, the one progressives wanted, the government wouldn’t have bailed out the banks during the 2008 crash. When mortgage-backed securities began catching flame like newspaper under logs, the government would have prioritized struggling homeowners instead. It would have created a corporation to buy back the

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[UNREGULATED] DERIVATIVE COMPLAINT – Blackrock, Pimco Sue U.S. Bank Over Trustee Roles

By Sydney Sullivan

The main focus this week, Blackrock & PIMCO, et al v. U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, was so powerful it deserves to be highlighted. As usual legal protocol, the Plaintiffs’ claims are accepted by the court to be true. For example, the next move for the Defendant might be to file a motion to dismiss, a court must accept all well-pleaded facts as true, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.

WARNING: The contents of this complaint is likely to make certain foreclosure judges with hefty Plaintiff hedge funds preferred shares in their investment portfolios extremely nauseous.

Plaintiffs Blackrock & PIMCO and a multitude of subsidiaries, affiliates, associates, closely related and closely held companies for each sued U.S. BANK NATIONAL  ASSOCIATION for BREACH OF CONTRACT; VIOLATION OF THE TRUST INDENTURE ACT OF 1939; BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY; BREACH OF DUTY OF INDEPENDENCE; AND NEGLIGENCE.  Continue reading

How Do You Fix SEC Broken Windows? The answer is – you can’t!

By Richard Bowen

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently announced it is discontinuing their enforcement program requiring admissions of wrongdoing and the prosecutorial approach they were supposedly taking after the 2008 financial crisis. Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said the SEC would drop the “broken windows” strategy of pursuing many cases over even the smallest legal violations, and may also pull back from trying to make some companies admit to wrongdoing as a condition of settling with the SEC.” 

Remember in 2013, under Mary Jo White’s leadership, the SEC announced it would make companies and individuals admit wrongdoing as a condition of settling civil charges in certain cases. Continue reading

When The Economy Crashes There Will Be A Reallocation Of Money Not A Reset!

An Interview and Email with Bix Weir – RoadtoRoota.com

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What Happened on Wall St. Ahead of the Crisis? We May Yet Find Out

New York Times
Street Scene
WILLIAM D. COHAN

db-streetscene-master768The eighth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis is almost upon us, making this as good a moment as any to take stock of how little we know still about the bad behavior and deception that occurred inside the big Wall Street banks that helped to cause it — and how little we may ever know.

A wave of settlements between Wall Street and the Justice Department and regulators resulted in fines in excess of $200 billion flowing from the shareholders of these firms into the coffers of the various federal and state government entities. These payments still feel to me more like extortion than justice. After all, if the prosecutorial arm of the federal government that regulates you demands a 10- or 11-figure payment, it seems pointless to argue. Continue reading

The Securitization Debacle – A U.S. Pension Shortfall: $3.4 Trillion+ [$3,400,000,000,000]

By Sydney Sullivan

looting the pension fundsShortfall. Unfunded. Underfunding. Sounds like a minimal pension issue – however, it is anything but that. You may have heard the words “shortfall” when your state refers to it’s government budget or pension plan; and, if you are young (say, under 40), you’ve probably not given it a second thought. Just so you know “shortfall” is defined as “a failure to come up to expectation or need” and at 40 it seems like there will be plenty of time and ways to make up a shortfall… not so much when you are 60.

If you’re like many Americans, you’re worried about retirement. Maybe before the new century securitization scheme was launched, a “shortfall” might have been more easily explained and handled. But after 2000, the Wall Street securities system ramped up and took deficits to a new high while lining the pockets of Wall Street traders. How did this happen?

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A Refreshingly Honest Email

IMHO – This was a refreshingly honest email received from the Alan Grayson for U.S. Senate by the Committee to Elect Alan Grayson campaign today.

Print  Dear Sydney,

ALAN GRAYSON 2016 PHOTOYou probably get the same nonsense e-mails from the Democratic Party as I do — touting nonexistent matching contributions, fake fundraising goals, feigned intimacy, faux indignation, etc. Until now, I could live with all that, because I always thought of the Democratic Party as a force for good. But now there is this whole new thing, this new Big Lie.

The dictators who have seized the machinery of the Democratic Party are raising money from Democrats and spending it to defeat a Democrat. Namely me.

Oh, they’ll screech in their e-mails about how much they’re concerned about Donald Trump’s election, or the Koch Brothers’ dirty money, or whatever. They beg relentlessly for us to contribute to them, lest we open the seventh seal and usher in the apocalypse.

Well, they’re bearing false witness. And if Judgment Day ever does come, they surely will go straight to hell.

One of these so-called Democratic groups, the Church of Senator Harry Reid (otherwise known as the Senate Majority PAC) is spending $1 million against our campaign, less than two months before our primary election. They are taking our blue money, under the false pretense of helping Democrats, and instead using it to defeat a member of our own party!

Why me? Because I am unbought, unbossed, and unwilling to worship their Wall Street idols. Because my flock is The People — citizens who believe in democratic government free from special interests and corruption, where our leaders are chosen by us, not dictated by the Establishment.

What’s at stake now in our election? Democracy itself. And an opportunity to take back our Party from the corrupt bag-men who have stolen it from us.

As long as YOU still believe that it’s possible for We, the People, to beat the liars, we can win. Will you lift up our campaign, with a contribution of $15 or whatever you can afford?

We’re not willing to pass the collection plate on Wall Street to fund this campaign. We’re leaving it to our opponents to collect their thirty pieces of silver. We’re counting on you, and thousands of other progressives, to come together — to fund our movement, and to fuel our political revolution. Whether I win or lose this election should be up to the voters, not the party autocrats.

It’s still possible for ordinary people to come together and take charge of our government and our lives, and defeat the un-Democratic Party oligarchs. Chip in $15, or whatever you can afford, to help us do just that >>

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

CONTRIBUTE

This post is for information purposes only. It is not meant a a political advertisement.

Trump’s GOP Calls for Significant Changes to Housing in 2016 Platform

HOUSINGWIRE says: Party platform blasts “corrupt business model” of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

Okay, think about this – Fannie and Freddie were collaborators, if not the actual architects, and helped set up and patent this corrupt housing scheme. If you haven’t watched THE BIG SHORT yet, the time is NOW (it’s on Netflix). Then watch it again – there were good guys on Wall Street. Not everyone was involved in the corruption, albeit it few and far between. In fact, for many years America had a moral and more ethical financial community. But shortly after President Reagan began deregulating the industry and President Clinton signed off on the whip cream and cherry topping by deregulating Glass-Steagall – Wall Street went to hell in a hand-basket.


According to the Republican Party platform, which can be read in full here, one of the GOP’s goals for 2016 and beyond is to “advance responsible homeownership while guarding against the abuses that led to the housing collapse.” Continue reading

Chart: The Epic Collapse of Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank on Verge of Collapse?

Deutsche-Bank-Image

Posted on by Neil Garfield

“there is no such thing as a soft landing in a cornered marketplace…

Despite claiming $52 TRILLION “notional” value in derivatives (nearly all the money in the world) DB has posted a shattering loss and according to the IMF poses the most serious systemic loss to the financial system. Reports indicate that 29 DB employees were at the root of manipulating the LIBOR index which is used as the primary index for variable rate loans. Nobody has addressed the issue of whether adjusted payments should be scrutinized even while knowing that the index was rigged.”

See http://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-epic-collapse-deutsche-bank/

Nothing equals nothing. The fact is that Deutsche Bank allowed itself to be window dressing on bogus REMIC Trusts as though the DB trust department was managing the money for investors. Other than ink on paper, the trusts did not exist and neither did any assets of the purported trusts. DB led the way as a principal party in creating the illusion of “something” when in fact there was nothing at all. READ MORE HERE

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Derivative Damage – What Can Go Wrong When Private Equity Takes Over a Public Service

hqdefaultWhether you know it or not the derivative damage that caused the 2008 financial massacre and millions upon millions of foreclosures continues to plague America in ways that are unfathomable.

You can blame deregulation of the financial industry, too much dirty money in state and federal politics, outright bribery, a lack of moral and ethical behavior and a significant blur between the three branches of government that were originally designed to be oversight protection.

You may not know that the $700 TRILLION+ debt created on Wall Street took out (destroyed, eliminated, stole) billion$ of pension and retirement funds from nearly every aspect of government, trade unions and corporate 401ks to the point that severe cutbacks had to be made from furloughs to total haircuts… And now these lousy, corrupt and bribe-r-us bankster created investment vehicles have wiped out the futures of millions of American families – and many don’t even know it yet… but your politicians do.
See: The Sucker Punch – The Elite’s Attack on Pension and Retirement Funds Continue reading