Every State Should – AUDIT LAND RECORDS

Deadly Clear

By Sydney Sullivan

“[L]and records across the country have been polluted, diluted, laundered and rendered useless by MERS (the Mortgage Electronic Registration System), and Landtegrity.com has posted a petition demanding answers from the White House,” wrote Richard Zombeck, in the Huffington Post April 2103.

No answers have been received. Now is time to prepare for the 2014 elections and get the point across. We need to unite and visibly display our discontent for the damage done to our property records. Let’s put a bumper sticker on every car!  
Order your bumper sticker nowso that every politician can clearly see the #1 agenda on the minds of every homeowner in America is to clean up the land records.

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FX to Libor Probes Leave U.K. Traders Looking for Lawyers

FX to Libor Probes Leave U.K. Traders Looking for Lawyers

U.K. traders who’ve come under investigation for rigging benchmark rates may find themselves in another difficult situation — unable to find a good lawyer.

The top attorneys at specialist white-collar crime firms say that, in the past few months, they’ve seen the largest number of finance workers ever seeking advice as probes into the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, expand to the manipulation of currency, derivatives and precious metals benchmarks.

UBS AG : Exclusive: Ex-UBS banker Weil agrees to be extradited to U.S.

UBS AG : Exclusive: Ex-UBS banker Weil agrees to be extradited to U.S.

Raoul Weil, a former UBS banker charged by U.S. authorities five years ago for allegedly helping rich Americans dodge taxes via secret Swiss bank accounts, has agreed to go to the United States to face trial after being arrested in Italy, Weil’s lawyer and judicial sources told Reuters.

Happy Thanksgiving!

JPMorgan Pressured to Reveal $13 Billion Accord Complaint

JPMorgan Pressured to Reveal $13 Billion Accord Complaint

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) should turn over a draft complaint used as the lender negotiated a $13 billion deal to settle probes of its mortgage-bond sales and identify an employee who cooperated with the U.S. investigation, according to lawyers for a Pennsylvania bank.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, which claims its losses of more than $1 billion from JPMorgan mortgage-backed securities aren’t covered by the settlement, filed a request to force the New York-based company to comply with a judge’s order that it turn over the documents.

S&P: Banks face $104bn liability on mortgage cases

That talk about the JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM)settlement being the end of the road? Think again. Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said today that they expect U.S. Banks will have to pay between $56.5 billion and up to $104 billion to put their legacy mortgage issues behind them:

Payments at the upper end of the estimates would wipe out about two-thirds of the $154.9bn litigation buffer estimated to be held by the banks but would not cut into their regulatory capital.

Large US banks have increased their reserves in the face of a new wave of lawsuits from investors who are clubbing together to argue they have lost money from buying mortgage-backed securities comprised of bad loans.

Source: Financial Times

Bank profits take hit, thanks to faltering mortgage lending

 The LA Times has more:

The third-quarter profits also were $1.5 billion less than in the same period a year earlier, ending a streak of year-over-year increases that began when the Great Recession ended in mid-2009.

Profits were hurt by a jump in interest rates after Federal Reserve officials indicated they were preparing to reduce the central bank’s bond-buying stimulus program….

Mortgage originations were down 30% in the third quarter from the previous quarter, the FDIC said. And the end to a long period of historically low interest rates makes for “a tricky environment” for banks, Gruenberg said.

Source: LA Times

CA AG Harris bruises JP Morgan Chase: Secure her own $300M of the $13B bank mortgage settlement.

CA AG Harris bruises JP Morgan Chase: Secure her own $300M of the $13B bank mortgage settlement.

This month, Harris secured another victory, getting her own $300 million chunk of the landmark $13 billion JPMorgan Chase & Co. mortgage settlement.

Harris hasn’t let up on her effort to chase down wrongdoing tied to the 2008 financial collapse. She is pursuing Standard & Poor’s, accusing it in a $1 billion lawsuit of falsifying ratings on mortgage-backed securities, a claim that may result in triple damages….

MERS notches win in Kentucky lawsuit

A lawsuit in Kentucky brought against Virginia-basedMortgage Electronic Registration Services, or MERS, has been tossed out of U.S. District Court. The case, brought by 14 different Kentucky county attorneys against the mortgage firm, alleged MERS owed Kentucky counties millions of dollars in fees:

[The lawsuit] said the Kentucky legislature in 2006 changed state laws to require mortgage assignments to be recorded. It also instituted a $6 surcharge on recordings to provide a permanent source of funding for Kentucky’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

The judge, in ruling against the county attorneys, cited a February 2013 order from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that said county clerks lacked standing to sue MERS.

Source: Lexington Herald

Foreclosure relief funds aren’t getting to borrowers: report

Per The Columbian:

[The Congressional Research Service] found that states have disbursed widely varying percentages of their Hardest Hit money, from 21 percent in Alabama to 84 percent in Rhode Island. Some of the states hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis have distributed the lowest percentages, including Florida (26 percent), Michigan (29 percent), Arizona (34 percent) and California (36 percent). As of October, Florida still had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate. Nevada, which has distributed a little more than half of its Hardest Hit money, had the second-highest rate.

In addition to Rhode Island, Oregon and the District of Columbia also disbursed a relatively high percentage of their Hardest Hit money, nearly 70 percent each.

Source: The Columbian