Who is the real freeloader?

Condo loan denied? Blame the building

Before making a loan to a would-be buyer, lenders comb through the building’s financial statements to see if too many condos remain unsold, or if units are mostly rentals instead of owner-occupied. Lenders also look to see if the building’s cash reserves, which help cover maintenance costs, are too low.

These factors—which have nothing to do with a potential buyer’s finances—can put a choke hold on a loan.

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JPMorgan said to ask current and former staff (not board, CEO, or execs) to help fund U.K. tax settlement

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) asked more than 2,000 current and former employees to contribute to a settlement with the U.K.’s tax authority over their use of an offshore trust for bonus payments, according to a person briefed on the situation.

Employees who participated in the trust were asked to help fund a payment of at least a few hundred million pounds if they want to settle with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the U.K. tax authority, the person said, asking not to be named because the talks are private. The bank and workers may pay about 500 million pounds ($802 million) total, the Financial Times reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information.

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Shadow banking worries limit China’s rebound

Telegraph UK:

Charlene Chu from Fitch said credit growth is running at a brisk 20pc, including off-book lending. She said the output generated by each extra yuan of lending has fallen from 0.75 to 0.30 this year, a sign that credit-driven growth is nearing exhaustion.

Zhiwei Ziang from Nomura said the central bank is worried about shadow banking excesses and is likely to impose curbs early, keeping the economy on a short leash.“Financial risks in the trust loan sector are mounting and the regulators will probably have to tighten controls. We would expect growth momentum to weaken,” he said.

CFPB, DOJ to Collaborate on Enforcement of Fair Lending Laws

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on enforcing fair lending laws. Because both agencies have authority to protect against discriminatory lending, this agreement will help to avoid duplicating efforts.

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Financiers bet on rental housing

DAVID N. MILLER, a master of bailouts, steps to the dais and coolly explains how the financial world went crazy.

It is February 2010. The anger behind Occupy Wall Street is building. Flicking through slides, Mr. Miller, a Treasury official working with the department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, lays out what caused the housing bubble: easy credit, shoddy banking, feeble regulation, and on and on.

“History has demonstrated that the financial system over all — not every piece of it, but over all — is a force for good, even if it goes off track from time to time,” Mr. Miller tells a symposium at Columbia University in remarks posted on YouTube. “As we’ve experienced, sometimes this system breaks down.”

But, it turns out, sometimes when the system breaks down, there is money to be made.

Mr. Miller, who arrived at the Treasury after working at Goldman Sachs, described himself as a “recovering banker” in the video.

Today, he has slipped back through the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street. This time, he has gone the other way, in a new company, Silver Bay Realty, which is about to go public. He is back in the investment game and out to make money with a play that was at the center of the financial crisis: American housing.

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