FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Mortgage-Backed Securities’ Category

Interesting presentation with slides and video can be viewed here…

Related educational information:

1. Robosigners and Other Servicing Failures: Protecting the Rights of RMBS Investors
2. Association of Mortgage Investors Letter To JPMorgan Trust Administration RE: Notification of and Request to Address Pervasive Issues in RMBS Trusts
3. Ocwen Scoops Up Saxon Servicing Rights
4. Invitation: County Sheriffs’ Role in Protecting Individual Liberties
5. Live Webcast Wed May 4th 9AM EDT | Presentation to Michigan House of Rep on Mortgage Fraud by Bill Bullard and Curtis Hertel, Jr.

The coming failure of Operation Twist – The Federal Reserve resurrects a program from the 1960s named after the Twist Dance.  Appropriate timing for a Dancing with the Stars nation.

The Federal Reserve has literally run out of ideas.  Operation Twist, a throwback to the 1961 action taken by the Fed named after the Twist Dance fad at the time, is now back in 2011.  This time the Fed plans to purchase $400 billion of bonds with 6 to 30 year maturities while selling bonds with shorter term maturities.  The Federal Reserve continues to deal with a debt crisis with more debt.  The market has quickly spoken shaving off 700 points in two days and many global markets are now solidly back in bear market territory.  The problem with this program is that it assumes that the only problem with the economy is that not enough people are borrowing and spending.  The Fed goes after interest rates like a lion after a zebra.  Interest rates are not a problem.  Rates are at historical lows.  The problem of course is that household income has gone south for well over a decade.  The only true winners with these low rates are the banks who can access cheap money to wildly speculate in the stock market casino.

Operation Twist largely benefits the too big to fail banks

The recent Federal Reserve move only makes it cheaper for banks to borrow and speculate.  As the above chart highlights, banks already have an abundant amount of money in their excess reserves.  Banks before Operation Twist had $1.6 trillion in reserves that are readily available to lend to the public.  The problem is twofold:

-1.  Banks are keeping this money because of their horrific balance sheets.

-2.  Banks are now back to using due diligence and with the average per capita income at $25,000 not many credible borrowers are coming to the table.

In other words, these excessively low rates continue to bailout the too big to fail banking syndicate.  This comes at the expense of savers and those that are prudent.  The average savings account in the U.S. is paying roughly 0 percent while banks can charge 15 percent or higher on credit cards.  Banks can simply keep that $1.6 trillion and actually earn interest on it.  Wouldn’t you like to get free money and earn easy interest on it?  The mission of the Fed is to protect the banking system and this is like rule number one of the banking Ten Commandments.  The success of the overall economy is only a factor if it aligns with banking profits.

Operation Twist is also a failure because households in America are in the process of deleveraging after reaching a peak crisis in debt.  Households are maxed out.

Read the rest at My Budget 360

Last Friday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency filed lawsuits against 17 of the largest banks and financial institutions in the world.  FHFA is seeking a total of $196 billion in restitution from these institutions for not disclosing risky mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that went sour. The government news release said, “The complaints filed today reflect FHFA’s conclusion that some portion of the losses that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac incurred on private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) are attributable to misrepresentations and other improper actions by the firms and individuals named in these filings.”  (Click here to read the complete press release naming all banks being sued.)

“Misrepresentations and other improper actions,”—that’s it?  This is all just sloppy work where the banks didn’t pay attention to the facts?  What an outrage!  There are still no criminal prosecutions, let alone any investigations of the major banks that caused a global meltdown.  By the time this is over, millions of homes will be foreclosed upon.  The bankers that caused the mess have been rewarded year after year with huge bonuses since 2008!  The FBI and the SEC can’t find a single criminal act by a single one of these 17 institutions?  The incompetent (and I think criminal) scoundrels responsible are still in charge!

Goldman Sachs was one of the 17 banks sued by the government.  That complaint said, “Goldman Sachs Mortgage Company, GS Mortgage Securities Corp. and Goldman, Sachs & Co.’s misconduct was intentional and wanton. The immediate victims of Goldman Sachs Mortgage Company, GS Mortgage Securities Corp. and Goldman, Sachs & Co.’s fraud was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two Government-sponsored entities whose primary mission is assuring affordable housing to millions of Americans.”

If there are allegations of “fraud,” why have there been no criminal prosecutions of Goldman Sachs or any of the other institutions?  As early as 2004, the FBI was warning of widespread mortgage fraud.  CNN reported, “Rampant fraud in the mortgage industry has increased so sharply that the FBI warned Friday of an “epidemic” of financial crimes which, if not curtailed, could become “the next S&L crisis.”  Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said the booming mortgage market, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, has attracted unscrupulous professionals and criminal groups whose fraudulent activities could cause multibillion-dollar losses to financial institutions.  ‘It has the potential to be an epidemic,” said Swecker, who heads the Criminal Division at FBI headquarters in Washington. “We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis,’ he said.”  (Click here for the complete 2004 story from CNN.)  The financial crisis cause by mortgage fraud was not even close to the size of the S&L crisis—it was at least 40 times bigger!!  Why didn’t the FBI stop it, and why are they not prosecuting the crime now?

And what about the “robo signing” stories that came to light in the last few years?  There were countless reports documenting the creation of millions of mortgage documents by foreclosure mills across the country.  They were effectively forging documents, such as Promissory Notes, so banks could illegally foreclose on homes.  The banks reportedly “lost” the proof they owned the property and had the right to take back millions of homes.  If that was the case, how did the banks create mortgage securities without the required paperwork?  Documents such as Promissory Notes are required to be filed with the mortgage-backed securities.  No Promissory Note—no security.  Why is the Securities and Exchange Commission not prosecuting securities fraud?  If there were no documents in a large part of the securities, how did the ratings companies give triple-A grades to what are now called “toxic assets?”  Why aren’t the ratings companies being pursued criminally?

The fact is, not a single high profile New York banker has been prosecuted criminally.  But, hope springs eternal; Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein recently hired a high profile defense attorney.  I am not holding my breath on any sort of criminal charges to be filed against Mr. Blankfein.

In closing, I just want to add what I think is one of the most preposterous things about the $196 billion lawsuit.  Bank of America is being sued for $6 billion by the government.  At the first of the year, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner forgave B of A $127 billion in possible buy backs of sour mortgage debt sold to Freddie Mac.  I wrote about this extensively in a post titled “B of A Settlement, Another Taxpayer Rip-off.”  Just a few weeks ago, Fannie Mae agreed to buy $73 billion in troubled mortgage debt from B of A.  These two deals amount to $200 billion in back door bailouts for just one of the 17 banks being sued.  We gave B of A more than $200 billion from Fannie and Freddie alone, and the government is suing to recover $6 billion?  I have to wonder, is our government stupid, corrupt or both?

The government has not investigated or prosecuted crime that is obvious to anyone with a 10^th grade education.  Federal officials are giving the bankers that caused the entire financial calamity huge bailouts while pretending to punish them with a slap on the wrist.  I think if there were widespread and genuine criminal prosecution, the entire system would collapse.  That is probably why unmistakable crimes are being ignored by most federal and state authorities.  Until fraud is removed from the system and criminal acts are punished, the country will not recover.   Vibrant economies cannot thrive in an environment of lawlessness and mistrust.

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

All I can say is No, really?

The Federal Housing Agency, which oversees U.S. mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is preparing to file suit against “more than a dozen” big banks, the New York Times reported..

The suits — which seek billions in compensation — allege that lenders including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank inaccurately represented the mortgage securities they put together and sold during the housing bubble.

The report sent Asian and European equity markets lower and was weighing on U.S. stock futures. Shares in Deutsche Bank fell more than four percent in Frankfurt, dragging the German DAX 30 index down 2.7 percent, MarketWatch reported.

• Why now?  Specifically, I have repeatedly pointed out that Citifinancial’s former chief risk officer testified under oath before the FCIC that the firm knew in 2006 that the majority of the loans it was packaging up and selling did not meet their own stated quality standards and written evidence of communication of this knowledge (emails) to the upper levels of the organization was presented to the committee.  So why sit on this until the ability to sue is about to expire?  What are the political considerations?
• Who knew yesterday about this and was shorting bank stocks?  They were ridiculously weak yesterday and the fact that Goldman is spinning off Ocwen and similar and had reached a settlement on similar issues with state regulators hardly accounts for the broad, across-the board sell-off in the banking sector.  To go with this series of lawsuits I’d like to see some insider trading ones.

The amount in question – $30 billion according to reports – is not particularly large, when one looks across a dozen banks.  But the precedent may be important.

I have long argued that until and unless the institutions responsible for knowingly selling off bad paper are brought to justice and forced to eat their cooking – that is, absorb the losses due to them for their conduct – we cannot claim that “market discipline” has returned in any meaningful way.  This is a non-trivial problem, because as of today banks, especially in Europe, are running with very thin capital irrespective of their protests that everything is fine.  It is not, as evidenced that there is no mark to the market and if there were they would all be instantly rendered insolvent.  As such they are insolvent whether they wish to admit it or not, as the only value that any asset has is that which someone is willing to pay you.

Pretending otherwise may be politically expedient but it is factually bankrupt.

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline.

This deal will also submarine efforts by both defrauded investors in MBS and unfairly foreclosed-upon homeowners and borrowers to obtain any kind of relief in the civil court system. The AGs initially talked about $20 billion as a settlement number, money that would “toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners,” as Gretchen Morgenson reported the other day.

The banks, however, apparently “balked” at paying that sum, and no doubt it will end up being a lesser amount when the deal is finally done.

To give you an indication of how absurdly small a number even $20 billion is relative to the sums of money the banks made unloading worthless crap subprime assets on foreigners, pension funds and other unsuspecting suckers around the world, consider this: in 2008 alone, the state pension fund of Florida, all by itself, lost more than three times that amount ($62 billion) thanks in significant part to investments in these deadly MBS.

So this deal being cooked up is the ultimate Papal indulgence. By the time that $20 billion (if it even ends up being that high) gets divvied up between all the major players, the broadest and most destructive fraud scheme in American history, one that makes the S&L crisis look like a cheap liquor store holdup, will be safely reduced to a single painful but eminently survivable one-time line item for all the major perpetrators.

But Schneiderman, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the securitization practices of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and other companies, is screwing up this whole arrangement. Until he lies down, the banks don’t have a deal. They need the certainty of having all 50 states and the federal government on board, or else it’s not worth paying anybody off. To quote the immortal Tony Montana, “How do I know you’re the last cop I’m gonna have to grease?” They need all the dirty cops on board, or else the whole enterprise is FUBAR.

In addition to the global settlement, Schneiderman is also blocking an individual $8.5 billion settlement for Countrywide investors. He has sued to stop that deal, claiming it could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses.”

If Schneiderman thinks $8.5 billion is an insufficient, fractional payoff just for defrauded Countrywide investors, then you can imagine how bad a $20 billion settlement for the entire industry would be for the victims.

In that particular Countrywide settlement deal, it looks like Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Fed, Pimco and other players negotiated on behalf of defrauded investors. They told the Times they were happy with the deal, but investors outside the talks told Gretchen they weren’t happy with the settlement.

Schneiderman apparently listened to those voices instead of the Mellon-Fed-BofA crowd, which infuriated the insiders who struck the actual deal. In a remarkable quote given to the Times, Kathryn Wylde, the Fed board member who ostensibly represents the public, said the following about Schneiderman:

It is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.

This, again, is coming not from a Bank of America attorney, but from the person on the Fed board who is supposedly representing the public!

This quote leads one to wonder just what Wylde would consider “indefensible,” given that stealing is pretty much the worst thing that a bank can do — and these banks just finished the longest and most orgiastic campaign of stealing in the history of money. Is Wylde waiting for Goldman and Citi to blow up a skyscraper? Dump dioxin into an orphanage? It’s really an incredible quote.

The banks are going to claim that all they’re guilty of is bad paperwork. But while the banks are indeed being investigated for “paperwork” offenses like mass tax evasion (by failing to pay fees associated with mortgage registrations and deed transfers) and mass perjury (a la the “robo-signing” practices), their real crime, the one Schneiderman is interested in, is even more serious.

The issue goes beyond fraudulent paperwork to an intentional, far-reaching theft scheme designed to take junk subprime loans and disguise them as AAA-rated investments. The banks lent money to corrupt companies like Countrywide, who made masses of bad loans and immediately sold them back to the banks.

The banks in turn hid the crappiness of these loans via certain poorly-understood nuances in the securitization process – this is almost certainly where Scheniderman’s investigators are doing their digging – before hawking the resultant securities as AAA-rated gold to fools in places like the Florida state pension fund.

They did this for years, systematically, working hand in hand in a wink-nudge arrangement with clearly criminal enterprises like Countrywide and New Century. The victims were millions of investors worldwide (like the pensioners who saw their funds drop in value) and hundreds of thousands of individual homeowners, who were often sold trick loans and hustled into foreclosure when unexpected rate hikes kicked in.

In a larger sense, even the (often irresponsible) people who simply bought more house than they could afford were victims of this scam. That’s because in many of these cases, credit simply would not have been available to those people had the banks not first discovered a way to raise vast sums of money dumping crap loans on an unsuspecting market.

In other words: if Bank of America hadn’t found a way to sell worthless subprime loans as AAA paper to the Chinese and the Scandavians in May, you can be sure that it wouldn’t be going back to Countrywide in June to lend out more money for more subprime loans.

And Countrywide, in turn, wouldn’t then have been sending masses of reps out into the ghettoes to offer juicy home loans to undocumented immigrants and refis to confused old ladies on social security.

This is as bad as white-collar crime gets. But to Wylde, it doesn’t rise to the level of being “indefensible.” Until they do something worse than this, we apparently should support the banks, and make sure they don’t have to pay more than a fraction of what they made off of this kind of crime.

What is most amazing about Wylde’s quote is the clear implication that even a law enforcement official like Schneiderman should view it as his job to “do everything we can to support” Wall Street. That would be astonishing interpretation of what a prosecutor’s duties are, were it not for the fact that 49 other Attorneys General apparently agree with her.

In Schneiderman we have at least one honest investigator who doesn’t agree, which is to his great credit. But everyone else is on Wylde’s side now. The Times story claims that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and various Justice Department officials have been leaning on the New York AG to cave, which tells you that reining in this last rogue cop is now an urgent priority for Barack Obama.

Why? My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone Magazine