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A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times. On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general. This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes. The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, (more…)

As more and more Americans face mortgage foreclosure, banks’ crucial ownership documents for the properties are often unclear and are sometimes even bogus, a condition that’s causing lawsuits and hampering an already weak housing market. Scott Pelley reports.

American Casino
Genres: Documentary and Politics/Religion
Running Time: 1 hr. 29 min.
Distributors: Argot Pictures
Directed by: Leslie Cockburn
Produced by: Leslie Cockburn, Andrew Cockburn, Tao Ruspoli (II)
Synopsis: Investigative reporters Leslie and Andrew Cockburn take on the biggest economic crisis of our lifetime: the sub-prime mortgage meltdown that has caused more than a million Americans to lose their homes. They interview Wall Street wizards who are as nervous about revealing their identity as any mobster in the witness protection program. They put a human face on the victims of bankers who targeted minority communities with no income verification loans, adjustable rates and complex language that even the pros can’t fathom. Out of this mess, the filmmakers build a case against those who used government deregulation to make a fortune for the few and create havoc for the many.

Eyecalone says… (more…)

The Illinois state attorney general has filed a lawsuit alleging that the bank sold the more costly mortgages more often to blacks and Latinos as compared with whites with similar incomes. Accusing Wells Fargo & Co. of discriminating against minority borrowers by steering them into subprime mortgages, Illinois’ attorney general sued the San Francisco bank, asking a state court to negate the loans and to fine Wells, the nation’s largest home lender. “The dreams of many hardworking families have ended in foreclosure due to Wells Fargo’s illegal and unfair conduct,” Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan said in filing the lawsuit Friday in Cook County Circuit Court. (more…)