Several U.S. states have joined the investigations swirling around the illegal manipulation of the bank-to-bank interest rate known as “Libor” — an international scandal that may have cost governments and consumers billions of dollars.
Read more: More states join Libor scandal investigations – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_22094393/more-states-join-libor-scandal-investigations#ixzz2DjdiwvAW
Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) can be sued in a federal lawsuit in New York over mortgage foreclosure practices without violating the terms of a settlement reached with the bank in another case, the Justice Department said.
The department, in a filing yesterday in federal court in Washington, said the bank’s allegation that the U.S. breached the terms of the $5 billion deal by suing in federal court in New York for hundreds of millions of dollars based on conduct that Wells Fargo is no longer liable for is “flatly inconsistent” with the terms of the settlement.
The New York case is premised on Wells Fargo, the biggest U.S. home lender, knowing that the origination of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration didn’t meet agency requirements, resulting in “substantial losses” to the FHA insurance fund, according to the filing.
The settlement “only bars the government from asserting a very specific type of claim, i.e., where its ’sole basis’ is Wells Fargo’s submission of a false annual certification in connection with maintaining its status as an FHA-approved Direct Endorsement Lender,” John Warshawsky, a Justice Department lawyer, said in the filing.
Rest here…
Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc., which survived the U.S. real estate collapse five years ago with the help of derivative bets against subprime mortgages, is promoting the opposite trade to clients as housing recovers.
The firm, which teamed with four other dealers to create the ABX indexes, benchmark contracts that offered investors a way to protect against the risks of a crash, said in a Nov. 28 report on its top 10 market themes for 2013 that clients should buy some of the derivatives.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) doesn’t have to turn over portions of e-mails sought by U.S. regulators in a probe of potential energy-market manipulation because a judge said they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson in Washington today denied a request by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force JPMorgan to provide unredacted copies of 25 e-mails. Robinson said she reviewed the documents and agreed that the redacted portions are confidential communications with JPMorgan’s lawyers.
Could the Volcker Rule get erased before it’s fully written?
In a strongly worded letter to the five regulators tasked with writing the much-maligned rule that places limits on banks’ trading abilities, the House Financial Services Committee urged transparency during the rulemaking process — or the right for Congress to amend or repeal the outcome. (Read More:No Volker Rule Until 2013: Sources.)
In the letter — sent Thursday morning to regulators and obtained by CNBC — the committee’s ranking Republicans Reps. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., and Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, challenged the amount of time that has passed since regulators made public the most recent draft of the rule.
“The resulting confusion has only made it that much more likely that whatever final rule you issue will compound the regulatory uncertainty that continue to plague our economy,” Reps. Bachus and Hensarling wrote.
If you’ve lived in NY for a long time, it is very hard to forget this now famous, headline. I think the Daily News will be able to reuse this title page again sometime over the next month or two. NY and NJ have stuck out their hands, and requested a very lumpy $80B from Washington to cover the cost of the clean up from Sandy.
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A woman in Tualatin, Ore., says she’s at the end of her rope fighting a three-year battle with Wells Fargo for mistakenly stating she has missed mortgage payments on her home, which is now in foreclosure.
Dee Dingman, 79, and her late husband moved into their four-bedroom home in 1967. After her husband, Leland, died in March 2008, Dingman took out a new mortgage while she paid off his medical bills, never missing a payment. Court records show she promised to pay $308,000 plus interest on June 16, 2008.
The next year, after Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia was completed in Jan. 2009, Dingman began receiving foreclosure notices. She believes the bank did not corrrectly process her payment since around Oct. 2009. But her bank records show her mortgage payments have been deposited by Wells Fargo. Despite efforts to clear up the mistake and paying nearly $12,000 in attorney fees, her home is now in judicial foreclosure.
“I’m really very tired of it,” said Dingman. She has been employed by the local Kmart since it opened 40 years ago but stopped working when the store closed last month.
She continues to pay her monthly mortgage amount of over $2,300 while paying an attorney to help her clear up the mistake.
By Chip Parker, Jacksonville Bankruptcy Attorney:
Even if you surrender your home in bankruptcy, you are still liable for your homeowner’s or condominium owner’s association dues that become due after the date of filing.
As a general rule, all the debt that you owe on the day you file your bankruptcy is discharged, including past-due HOA and COA dues. However, because you remain the deed-title owner of your real property until your lender takes the property back, you owe current dues and assessments going forward.
But this doesn’t answer the question, “Should I pay?” Well, the answer depends on your plan, but one thing is for sure. You should pay your HOA and COA dues if you continue to live in the home or if you continue to rent out your rental property.
Fighting your Foreclosure after bankruptcy:
The report by the non-partisan research arm of Congress did not name but unambiguously described several individual cases involving Fed directors that created the appearance of a conflict of interest, including:
To read a more detailed analysis of the GAO report prepared for Sen. Sanders, click here.
To read the full GAO report, click here.
Fannie Mae unveiled three new exit options for borrowers involved in the deed-in-lieu of foreclosure process Wednesday.
The guidelines are part of the servicing alignment initiative and mirror policies previously outlined by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie also announced it has renamed the deed-in-lieu of foreclosure process as a ‘mortgage release’ and is using that term throughout the servicing guidebook.
The government-sponsored enterprise said servicers are required to implement the policies for all loans under consideration for mortgage release on or after March 1, 2013.
Fannie noted the GSE is now offering three exit options for borrowers involved in deed-in-lieu of foreclosure procedures. The first is the standard mortgage release or immediate move process.
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