While proposals stacked up in Congress, Lew said the Treasury Department was evaluating “what we can do to make these deals less economically appealing, and we plan to make a decision in the very near future.”
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A former executive with Bank of America pleaded guilty to a sex charge, five years after his arrest in an undercover internet sting.
Joe H. Culler, Jr., 66, of Columbia, received a two-year probationary sentence.
He was arrested in September 2009 after multiple Internet conversations with an undercover Greenville police officer, who had identified himself as a 13-year-old girl.
Assistant Attorney General Lloyd Flores, Jr. prosecuted the case. Flores spoke about the Internet conversations that Culler had with the person who the defendant believed to be a young, female teenager.
“The content was not always sexual in nature but did discuss sexual topics involving masturbation and the desire to meet to have sex,” Flores said. “There was one session on the web cam where Mr. Culler identified himself and was fully on-screen when he engaged in sexual activity.”
Flores said Culler, who went by the name Joe Seamann, also sent the officer a photo of male genitals.
During the plea hearing, the defense pointed out that Culler initially believed he was talking to someone whose profile indicated she was 29 years old.
Rick Floyd was the undercover police officer who chatted with Culler. Floyd said he identified himself as a 13-year-old when Culler first contacted him.
Culler admitted he came to realize that he was chatting with a young person, even though the profile indicated otherwise.
“I became addicted to the social aspects of the Internet. I was in adult chat rooms having conversations with all kinds of people,” Culler told the judge. “I should have stopped but I didn’t. I have humiliated my wife, my children, my family and embarrassed them, along with my fellow employees and friends.”
A former head of one of Britain’s emerging ‘challenger banks’ is to take the helm of Kensington, the sub-prime mortgage lender, when it finalises a takeover by two Wall Street buyout giants.
Sky News understands that Ian Henderson, the former chief executive of Shawbrook, is to be installed in the same role at Kensington following its takeover by divisions of Blackstone and TPG.
The deal is expected to be announced to the London stock exchange on Tuesday morning, according to insiders.
Trump is certainly the definition of a welfare queen. He is certainly not a reputable and debt free business man.
When it comes to the slow-motion cataclysm that is Atlantic City, where as we reported recently the Revel Casino recently filed its second and final liquidation bankruptcy, no other name has seen more bankruptcies than Donald Trump. Or rather Trump Entertainment, because nowadays the two are anything but synonymous. In fact, the Donald is so embarrassed of his namesake legacy that a month ago he filed a lawsuit demanding that his name be stripped from the hotels making up the former.
As the AP reported at the time, “the real estate mogul said he had sued Trump Entertainment Resorts, a descendant of a corporate entity he once controlled, because it has allowed its two Atlantic City casinos, the Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal, to fall into disrepair, tarnishing his personal brand and confusing customers. “I want it off both of them,” Trump said Tuesday evening. “I’ve been away from Atlantic City for many years. People think we operate [the company], and we don’t. It’s not us. It’s not me.”
Well maybe not, although the entity known as Trump Entertainment Resorts, f/k/a Trump Hotels and Casino, certainly “was us, was he.”
It is this entity that filed for bankruptcy in 1991, then also in 2004 and again in 2009. It was at that point that the Don basically gave up and handed the keys over to the bank, or in this case Avenue Capital headed by Obama’s favorite “French ambassador” Marc Lasry, following which the properties were sold for pennies on the dollar to the Meruelo Group, which has zero relation to DJT.
“Since Mr. Trump left Atlantic City many years ago, the license entities have allowed the casino properties to fall into an utter state of disrepair and have otherwise failed to operate and manage the casino properties in accordance with the high standards of quality and luxury required under the license agreement,” Trump wrote in his lawsuit, filed in the name of Trump AC Casino Marks L.L.C.
Trump Entertainment Resorts CEO Robert Griffin declined to comment.
Trump appears particularly vexed at the impending closing of Trump Plaza on Sept. 16.
But while the closing was well-known, and a bankruptcy was speculated, as of moments ago it is now fact:
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Law360, New York (September 08, 2014, 12:39 PM ET) — Deborah Cohn, the chief trademark commissioner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who came under fire earlier this summer over allegations that she facilitated the hiring of a family member’s fiance, will retire at the end of the year, a USPTO spokesman confirmed to Law360 on Monday.
Cohn, who’s been with the agency since 1983 and took over as trademark commissioner in 2010, privately announced the move to colleagues on Monday, the spokesman said.
In July, a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office…
Source: Law360
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Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke had a striking assessment of the dangers faced by the U.S. economy in 2008, according to a recently disclosed documentfiled as part of the ongoing litigation related to the government bailout of American International Group. Bernanke reportedly said that 12 of the 13 largest U.S. financial institutions were on the verge of failure in autumn of 2008. Thus the Fed needed to take extraordinary rescue measures to save AIG and other banks to avoid financial catastrophe. Bernanke’s comment provides a vivid reminder of the danger posed by too-big-to-fail institutions.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which included the orderly liquidation living wills requirement, was meant to prevent future rescues of systemically important financial institutions. But the idea that current regulations are capable of solving the too-big-to-fail problem was challenged by the recent regulatory rejection of 11 banks’ living wills. Some argue that living wills are a work-in-progress that will improve over time. However, the truth is that living wills are a myth meant to calm the populace. It is impossible to neatly unwind a failed SIFI, since the failure of such a large institution will necessarily cause unacceptable collateral damage.
There are several options for dealing with too big to fail. Unfortunately, some of the most promising options are also among the most unlikely.
SIFI banks might voluntarily reengineer themselves to become small enough to fail again. The SIFI experiment is relatively recent, having begun in the mid-1990s in the midst of deregulation and large bank consolidation. Since the experiment went bust within 10 years of its start, with all of the country’s largest banks requiring government bailouts, one might question the usefulness of preserving such a toxic model. But big banks continue to be implicitly supported by the government, and they have little incentive to give up the benefits that their size accrues to them.
An alternative would be to make big banks too safe to fail by substantially increasing their equity capital levels, along the lines of the proposal outlined by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig in The Bankers’ New Clothes. Raising capital requirements would reduce the benefits of being big. Unsurprisingly, banks are fighting this proposal.
My preferred approach would be to reduce the size of SIFIs so that they are small enough to fail. This could be achieved through ring-fencing various business lines and spinning off others. This action reduces the size of a bank’s vulnerability rather than simply responding to the crisis. Whatever alleged loss of efficiency banks incurred would be offset by increased financial stability. Unfortunately, an equally stiff resistance to this idea can be expected.
Another possibility would be for legislators and regulators to recognize that big banks are de factogovernment-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and should managed as such. Hopefully, they would be managed with better results this time. While this may be wishful thinking, such an approach would at least recognize the issue of SIFIs as a political problem that requires a political solution.
I knew that the rising of non-banks would be a major issue since the lawmakers never bother to include non-banks guidelines into Dodd-Frank bill. It didn’t take a rocket science to figure out that the large banks involved in the financial crisis would dump their mortgage servicing rights to the non-banks in order to clean up their balance sheets.
Ranjan and Gita Chhibber said they failed in their year-long effort to save their Ashburn, Virginia, home because of forces beyond the couple’s control — a $1.3 billion mortgage deal between Bank of America Corp. (BAC:US) and Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. (NSM:US)
After the Chhibbers lost a small business and a chunk of their income in 2013, they spent three months working with Bank of America to modify their loan. Before it was done, the bank sold their mortgage last year to Nationstar, a nonbank servicer that has tripled in size in two years. That’s when the modification went off the rails, Gita said.
“It’s a shame it has come to this,” said Chhibber, a 58-year-old mother of four, as she packed boxes the evening before moving out of her red-brick home. “Every time I called Nationstar, they told me something different. They couldn’t find my paperwork, they couldn’t get answers to my questions, and they couldn’t tell me what the fees were that they were adding to my mortgage.”
The Chhibbers are among more than five million borrowers who have been bounced from banks to nonbanks in the past two years. As nonbank servicers rapidly grow from the purchase of home loans, some firms are billing customers incorrectly, losing paperwork and failing to honor approved modifications, according to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau statement in August. The bureau detailed new rules for mortgage transfers last month as part of its ongoing oversight of nonbanks.
John Hoffmann, a spokesman for Nationstar, the second-largest nonbank servicer, said he couldn’t discuss the reason the Chhibbers’ modification was declined. He said since there was not a modification in place when Nationstar took over the loan, the company had to start the process from the beginning. He also said no paperwork was lost.
The Californian:
The same thing that happened to Dr. (Norman) Rosen happened to my husband and me. I’m so glad he wrote to you (“Post-apocalyptic banking system home to power abuse,” Aug. 22).
After being stonewalled for years by IndyMac, we finally got somewhere when we asked Congressman Sam Farr to intervene on our behalf. His actions worked, IndyMac offered a modification,.
I wrote a letter to the editor about our success, “How Sam Farr helped us save our home.” I sent this letter Oct. 3, 2012. By November, the bait and switch happened. The interest rate increased, the length of the loan decreased and the “value” of our property stayed absurdly high. And as Dr. Rosen discovered, “there’s nothing to be done about it, sign here or get out.” That was the real deal.
When the state tax board valued our property at $161,000 three years in a row, then last year upped it to a whopping $164,000 IndyMac insisted it was worth $435,000. Never, not then, not now. They just picked a number and laid it on our loan. Then OCWEN comes along and they buy IndyMac loans, including us. No one will touch our loan.
By December of 2012, I was writing to the White House for justice or relief. The White House directed us to the Consumer Financial Affairs Department, which repeated to us “we wish we could help you but we can’t” and we reply, “Yes, you can; you can help us.” But, no, apparently no one in America can make Indy Mack tell the truth, no one.
Really? I truly dislike Americans who steal from other Americans, I’m so sick of it.
In my 70 years, I’ve completed many transactions with loan officers and banks, it always worked out for both sides, not so much in the past 10 years. It’s very disappointing.
Joan Knowles
Lockwood
And here is the bank story of Dr. Norman Rosen’s article. Click here.
NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, reminds investors in Ocwen Financial Corp. (“Ocwen” or the “Company”) (NYSE: OCN) of the October 13, 2014 deadline to seek the role of lead plaintiff in a federal securities class action lawsuit filed against Ocwen and certain executives.
A complaint has been filed in the Southern District of Florida on behalf of all persons who purchased or otherwise acquired Ocwen common stock between May 2, 2013 and August 11, 2014, inclusive (the “Class Period”).
The complaint alleges that the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws with respect to its disclosures concerning its business, operations, and prospects.
Specifically, the action alleges that during the Class Period, Ocwen made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Altisource Portfolio Solutions, S.A. (“Altisource”), a company of which one of the defendants, William C. Erbey (“Erbey”) owns 27% of Altisource’s outstanding shares, had charged exorbitant fees to Ocwen to enable defendants to create as much as $65 million in questionable fees; (ii) defendant Erbey had been personally involved in approving conflicted transactions with Altisource and other related entities which were under his control; (iii) Ocwen’s financial statements during the Class Period had been artificially inflated and failed to provide a fair presentation of the Company’s finances and operations; (iv) the Company did not comply with applicable laws and regulations; and (v) Ocwen did not employ adequate internal and financial controls.
On December 19, 2013, a New York Times article titled “Big Subprime Mortgage Loan Servicer Agrees to $2.2 billion Settlement” announced a $2.2 billionsettlement entered into between Ocwen and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in connection with the Company’s mortgage servicing business. The article announced that the Bureau “believe[s] that Ocwen violated federal consumer financial laws at every stage of the mortgage servicing process[.]”
On August 12, 2014, Ocwen filed a Form 8-K with the SEC announcing that the Company would restate its financial results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013 and the quarter ended March 31, 2014.
Following this news, the price of Ocwen stock declined by $30.84, or over 55%, from a closing of $56.00 on December 18, 2013 to close at $25.16 on June 12, 2014.
Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/OCN. There is no cost or obligation to you.
SARASOTA, Fla. — The City of Sarasota is taking steps to put a stop to zombie homes — those properties that sit unattended and unkempt after a foreclosure.
There are fewer foreclosures on the market these days to be sure, but the problem remains big enough for city officials to feel the need to act.
Foreclosed homes — with overgrown grass and in some cases squatters — have long been a problem on the Suncoast, but a unanimous vote by the Sarasota City Commissioners to move forward on a foreclosed property registry has some hoping a solution is at hand.
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