Fair housing group amends U.S. Bank complaint

Fair housing group amends U.S. Bank complaint

The National Fair Housing Alliance said it amended a fair housing complaint it filed with the federal government over the maintenance and marketing of bank-owned foreclosures by U.S. Bank.

The alliance alleges that the bank is not caring for foreclosures in minority communities as well as it is tending those in primarily white neighborhoods in the Chicago area, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Indianapolis, Memphis and Milwaukee. The original complaint, which included Chicago, was filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in April 2012.

Locally, the complaint involves foreclosed homes in Dolton, Hazel Crest, Matteson, County Club Hills, Waukegan, Evanston, Aurora and on Chicago’s south side.

Ex-Countrywide executive denies fraud at BofA trial over mortgages

Ex-Countrywide executive denies fraud at BofA trial over mortgages

A former executive of Bank of America’s (>> Bank of America Corp) Countrywide unit told a federal jury on Tuesday that she did not knowingly sell toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the run-up to the financial crisis.

A former executive of Bank of America’s (>> Bank of America Corp) Countrywide unit told a federal jury on Tuesday that she did not knowingly sell toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Rebecca Mairone, a former chief operating officer of Countrywide’s Full Spectrum Lending Division, is the lone individual defendant in the lawsuit brought by the U.S. government against the bank, which acquired Countrywide in 2008.

The trial, now in its fourth week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, is centered on the government’s allegations that Countrywide defrauded Fannie Mae (>> Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (>> Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp), the government-sponsored mortgage finance companies, by selling them thousands of defective mortgages. Countrywide sped up approvals to unqualified lenders in a process it called the “high-speed swim lane” (HSSL), or “Hustle.”

JPMorgan Expected to Admit Fault in ‘London Whale’ Trading Loss

JPMorgan Expected to Admit Fault in ‘London Whale’ Trading Loss

Updated, 10:25 p.m. | For JPMorgan Chase, fines totaling billions of dollars are no longer sufficient to placate the government. Now the bank’s regulators want something stiffer: a mea culpa.

A month after JPMorgan acknowledged that “severe breakdowns” had allowed a group of traders in London to run up $6 billion in losses, the bank has preliminarily reached a rare agreement to admit that the trading blowup itself represented reckless behavior, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

The bank could settle with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as soon as this week, according to the people briefed on the negotiations, who were not authorized to discuss the private settlement talks. Aside from admitting some wrongdoing, the bank is expected to pay about $100 million to resolve the case, a trading debacle last year that has come to be known as the London Whale episode.

Libor E-Mails, Fannie-Freddie Survival, Finra: Compliance

Libor E-Mails, Fannie-Freddie Survival, Finra: Compliance

A Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) employee said clients never like to know how they were “screwed” in an e-mail concerning a 2007 swap deal that is at the center of a U.K. court fight over whether banks can be sued for manipulation of benchmark interest rates.

The e-mail was disclosed in court documents on the first day of an appeal hearing in London where Indian property firm Unitech Ltd. (UT) is seeking to invalidate an interest-rate swap and loans with Deutsche Bank because of alleged rigging of the London interbank offered rate. The case is being heard with a similar case Guardian Care Homes filed against Barclays Plc. (BARC)

“No one likes to know he got screwed,” Sanjay Agarwal, Deutsche Bank’s Mumbai-based head of Indian corporate finance, said in a 2007 e-mail referring to the swap deal that was cited in Unitech’s court documents.

Unitech and Guardian say they wouldn’t have signed the swap deals with the banks if they had known about Libor-related misconduct, which became a global scandal when London-based Barclays was fined by U.K. and U.S. regulators last year.

The e-mails from Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, also show employees talking about Unitech’s understanding of the contracts. The Indian company was “outrightly ‘uneducated,’” according to another 2007 e-mail by a Deutsche Bank employee. “The client does whatever we tell him to,” another Deutsche Bank employee said.

Kathryn Hanes, a spokeswoman for Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, said the e-mails were “irrelevant” to the hearing.

Documents to Remain Open in Examiner’s Lawsuit Against Fed

Documents to Remain Open in Examiner’s Lawsuit Against Fed

A federal judge rejected the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s plea to seal documents in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former bank examiner who claims she was fired for doing her job.

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams ruled today in the case by Carmen Segarra against the New York Fed and three employees. Much of the material the Fed hoped to keep off limits, including 67 paragraphs from Segarra’s complaint and multiple exhibits, can be found on ProPublica’s website and others.

 

 

“I am not convinced that anything will be accomplished to seal or redact a complaint that is publicly available,” said Abrams in the hearing held at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.

Hank Paulson: Dimon KNEW he was not indemnified, by the FDIC, on the WaMu

Even though JPMorgan was, in Paulson’s words, “begged” to make the Bear Stearns and WaMu acquisitions, the former Treasury secretary said the government was not providing any indemnity. “Jamie knew that at the time.”

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000204621

 

 

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to go after more strategic defaulters

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to go after more strategic defaulters

Anyone thinking of skating on mortgages owned by eitherFannie Mae or Freddie Mac may want to think again. As a result of new government reports, the two companies say they are going to do a better job of going after so-called strategic defaulters.

Fannie and Freddie can pursue judgments against borrowers who walk away from their loans even though they have the ability to make their payments. That’s called a strategic default, and many borrowers are taking that step — typically throwing in the towel because their homes are no longer worth as much as they owe.

Ah, memo to LA Times: Fannie and Freddie can’t collect from California. California is an ‘anti-deficiency’ state. http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2013/10/15/dont-worry-the-l-a-times-was-wrong-fannie-and-freddie-cant-collect-anything-in-california/

J.P. Morgan Offers to Front Benefits if Government Doesn’t Pay

J.P. Morgan Offers to Front Benefits if Government Doesn’t Pay

God help us..

WASHINGTON—As if conjuring up the spirit of his bank’s founder, James Dimon is planning to take the place of the U.S. government if it goes into default—at least as far as his clients’ federal benefits go.

At a meeting of the Institute of International Finance on Saturday, Mr. Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan ChaseJPM -0.76% & Co., said he expects a deal to be reached between the White House and Congress that will raise the debt ceiling before the borrowing capacity is otherwise forecast to be exhausted on Oct. 17.  But in the event that the government runs out of cash to make a $12 billion Social Security payment due on Oct. 23, J.P. Morgan has a plan.

Mr. Dimon said his bank would fund the $6 billion to $8 billion in government benefits that the bank processes each week for its clients, even if the government doesn’t actually pay those obligations.

“We have a huge amount of clients who get direct deposit from the government, like veterans and welfare checks and Social Security, and what we want to do is to take care of our clients [by making] sure they don’t run out money,” Mr. Dimon said, speaking after he’d mentioned the plan in the panel discussion. “So you’re basically advancing the money into their account.”

JPMorgan Said to Settle CFTC London Whale Probe for $100M

JPMorgan Said to Settle CFTC London Whale Probe for $100M

Chump change!

JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay about $100 million to settle a Commodity Futures Trading Commission probe into the bank’s botched derivatives bets last year, according to people briefed on the matter.

The deal, which would bring the firm’s total settlements in the episode to more than $1 billion, may be announced as early as this week, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks were confidential. The accord resolves a CFTC assertion that the firm’s trading amounted to a “manipulative device,” the people said. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler and Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for the New York-based bank, declined to comment.