The endgame of Foreclosuregate is starting. According to the Wall Street Jounal Bank of America through its purchase of Countrywide, and Countrywide’s ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud allegations. Separately, Shashien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post reports that the Congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will call for prosecution of fraudulent behavior on the part of principals on Wall Street. Obviously these are part of the first moves by the investor class to take to task the predatory and fraudulent mortgage origination practices that led to the meltdown of the global financial system. This will play out over many years in the courts and in Congress . . . → Read More: Bank of America (Countrywide) sued by investors for fraud
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It seems according to Reuters, that Congress is ever divided. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has failed to produce a consensus explanation of the 2007-2009 banking debacle, as it was asked to do in May 2009. Not two partisan viewpoints, nay that would be mere bickering, we will have three reports (or Thrice, if you follow Conan…). While I love debate that makes both our legislators and the people who have elected them to represent them think hard on the issues, the lack of closure in many of the current debates along what Reuters describes as familiar Washington “ideological fault lines” is worrying for the Republic in my humble opinion. . . . → Read More: The bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people – Oscar Wilde The office of the Attorney General of the State of Florida has made a Powerpoint presentation (and posted it on Scribd) of the abuses that it has found in Florida Foreclosure-gate. It details the delegation of powers of attorney and signature powers to foreclosure attorneys and clients in servicers, multiple cases of different robo-signing irregularities, creation illegitimate documents, falsification of affidavits. I would be VERY surprised if the Florida AG does not pursue criminal and conspiracy to commit fraud cases in 2011. . . . → Read More: Florida Attorney General has a presentation on Foreclosure Abuses I read an article in Infoworld by Bill Snyder Hackers find new way to cheat on Wall Street — to everyone’s peril which reports on some work done at MIT. The gist of the hack is that by packet insertion in your competitor’s transaction stream you can slow down their trades by a few microseconds. In the HFT world this may mean that . . . → Read More: High Frequency Trading hacking Reading an interview with Gary Gorton of the Minneapolis Fed. (Hat tip to Naked Capitalism). He makes some interesting points regarding the securitization industry, its relationship with the repo market, how when collateral was deemed untrustworthy it led to hair-cutting and then full panic. Side comments on the need for new measurements to size the securitization industry, efforts to build the trust of . . . → Read More: Interview with Gary Gorton: new theory of debt, collateral, repo, crisis and regulation |
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