FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Mortgages’ 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

….especially when it comes to your mortgage payment.

Foreclosure Hits Nearly Paid Off Home

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

You don’t have to be upside down on your mortgage to lose your house.

The Bernstein family is packing up and preparing to move out of their Sylmar house Friday after 25 years. The mortgage was practically paid off.

“What I owed on the loan was $37,000,” said Raymond Bernstein, who bought the house with his wife Diane. “I have so much equity I would be an idiot to lose the house.“

Bernstein insists a series of accidental missed payments led to foreclosure.

“My bank got bought out and my automatic payments got shut off without my knowing, then the mortgage owner then sends a notice I am behind. “

Bernstein says he worked out a repayment plan with Citibank. The bank confirms Bernstein made the first payment of $4,000 in January.

But what happened to the second payment is in dispute and the subject of a lawsuit.

Citibank says the Bernsteins missed the second payment.

Bernstein says he mailed it, “they then claimed not to get a payment and they foreclosed and sold it at auction.”

 The 2,000 square-foot, 3-bedroom, 3-bath house was sold at auction in March for $255,000.

Since the Bernsteins owed just $37,000, who gets the $218,000 in profit, the equity that the Bernsteins had built up after paying into the mortgage over the last 25 years?

“The lender, not the family gets the money in a foreclosure, “ says Lori Gay, president of Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit group that represents homeowners for free who are on the verge of losing their homes.

“It’s awful … when you lose your life’s savings and your equity,” Gay said. “Awful. In foreclosure, no one wins.”

This would be a tough situation for any family, but Raymond and Diane Bernstein have an autistic son who needs a lot of care.

Jeremy is 11 and says he is sad about moving. “It’s been the worst, scariest thing that’s happened to me, “ says his mother Diane.
 

The Bernsteins have filed two lawsuits claiming illegal foreclosure. But Raymond, who sells insurance for living, can’t afford a lawyer and has chosen to do it himself. He admits it’s not going well.

Citibank would not comment on the Bernstein’s case but sent this general statement about how they deal with foreclosures:

“We work very hard to keep borrowers out of foreclosure and in their homes. We often offer borrowers who are seriously behind on their mortgage a repayment plan. If they fail to make the payments, however, the plan is cancelled.

“We attempt to contact the borrowers by mail and telephone to advise them of the plan’s status. If the account becomes delinquent due to missed repayment plan payments, we are normally unable to offer another solution. We regret we were not able to offer further options to these homeowners.”

The Bernstein’s case reminds us that in this economy, even if you are just a few years away from owing your home free and clear —you could still lose it, if you miss enough payments.

If you are having trouble, or you are upside down, Neighborhood Housing Services offers free services.

NBC Los Angeles

You done lefyer fingerprints all over, YOU ARE SO DUMB, You are really DUMB. For Real.   There is a MASTERPIECE of journalism that spells out the particular things that have recently occurred that clearly point to what is about to happen.

You must read this article, because it brings all of the recent  chaos together in once place so you can attempt to get your arms around the catastrophe that approaches on the horizon.

Read it HERE.

I get so tired of the FOX network commentators with their eye-rolling comments about this all blowing over pretty soon, and if only those deadbeats hadn’t bought houses they couldn’t afford…

For all those who are living in a vacuum:

The crisis was caused by herculean fraud perpetrated by wall street executives and their hedge fund co-horts and the big banks.  They cooked up a scheme to leach money from the largest consumer/government supported cash-cow they could think of, which turned out to BE the mortgage market.  There is NO ARGUMENT that a FEW people made poor decisions, even willfully lied to get a bigger loan so that they could have a really nice house, in an act of huge PERSONAL GREED FOR MORE FOR THEMSELVES.  Shame on them, and they should lose their house.

But these decisions, NOT ONE OF THEM, were made with the consideration that, “GEE, this MIGHT destroy my country and even national economy and bring financial armageddon!” Many Wall Street Firms CANNOT SAY THE SAME THING.  Remember this about Wall Street Criminals:

IN FULL AWARENESS OF THE POTENTIAL CATASTROPHIC NATIONAL CONSEQUENCES THEIR ACTIONS WOULD LIKELY CAUSE:

• THEY CAUSED people to take out mortgages they couldn’t afford. They plotted elaborate marketing campaigns to capture people’s trust and to inspire false expectations about what they were able to have for themselves.
• THEY CONVINCED people to take chances they couldn’t take and falsely allayed their fears of financial consequences of these chances by making FALSE CLAIMS about what they were (and WERE NOT) signing themselves up for.
• They reassured people that this was the financially SMART thing to do: “Pay of your credit card debt with a tax-deductible mortgage!!”
• They lobbied congress to pass laws and loopholes to allow them to conduct illegal business without fear of regulators shutting them down.
• They exploited the public trust in our financial regulators in that the loan broker must be telling me the truth, because he would get into BIG TROUBLE if he didn’t! {it sickens me to write this after what happened to me with Paramount Equity Mortgage}

They built a financial HINDENBERG in a great, secret hangar on Wall Street, sucked greedily on the toxic helium teat and dreamed up even bigger profit schemes… and the balloon grew and it grew and it grew… Unconscienable wealth was had by individuals who couldn’t believe their genius at scamming BOTH the US Government AND the American Public.  One of these Executives even said that the only thing they needed to fear was: PUBLIC AWARENESS.

It is now, finally, inevitably, about to explode.

They are starting to cannibalize each other now. They are turning, wild-eyed to the “Judicial System” to protect them after they have thoroughly corrupted it.  They are scattering like roaches beneath the glaring gaze of an ever-more-informed American Consumer who, like a recovering drug addict has realized that they were sold something that was known to be addictive and would destroy them, but would enrich the person selling to them.

They are angry. They want blood, and BLOOD THEY SHALL HAVE.

Wall Street yells: “It will cause an economical meltdown! There will be hardship!”

***HARDSHIP???!***

Have you been paying attention?

We have been enduring hardship and loss for TWO YEARS NOW! We have nothing left to LOSE!

We stand together with our torches and our pitchforks and we are coming for you.  Our voice has to be awfully loud to drown out the BIG GUYS on Wall Street… but eventually, we will drown them out.

Your worst enemy: PUBLIC AWARENESS has arrived, and we have an invitation for you…

Social Apocalypse

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.