Roy Cooper Demands BOFA Temporarily Halt N.C. Foreclosures During Recession

Bank Of America Gets Friday Deadline To Halt Foreclosures In N.C.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper is giving Bank of America until Friday to halt foreclosure proceedings in the state amid concerns the Charlotte bank and other lenders haven't properly reviewed documents.

In a letter sent to the bank, Cooper questioned why Bank of America voluntarily suspended foreclosures in 23 states that involve a judicial process but not in its home state. North Carolina requires a "quasi-judicial" process in which clerks of court frequently review affidavits submitted by banks.

"If Bank of America has halted foreclosure proceedings in other states due to flaws in its affidavit process, we do not understand why Bank of America should routinely continue with foreclosures with the same flaws in North Carolina," Cooper's office wrote.

The attorney general wants the bank's foreclosures suspended until it shows its processes are legal. Bank of America said it's responding to officials' concerns.

"Our initial assessment findings show the factual loan information underlying our foreclosures is accurate," spokesman Dan Frahm said, adding the bank continues its "exhaustive efforts to assist our customers who have been unable to make their mortgage payments."

The statement did not address how Bank of America would respond to the Friday deadline set by Cooper.

Cooper has asked 13 other large mortgage servicers to also halt foreclosures in the state until they prove compliance. Those lenders have until Oct. 12 to respond to the attorney general's questions.

North Carolina is also seeking more information about practices at Ally Financial, which has halted foreclosure-related evictions in North Carolina and 22 other states.

In an interview, Cooper said lenders could be breaking an N.C. law requiring a good-faith effort to work out loan modifications if they're improperly handling foreclosure paperwork. One of his main concerns is that homeowners get a "fair shot" at loan modifications, he said.

The attorney general has broad powers to investigate unfair and deceptive business practices, including assessing civil penalties. Cooper said he didn't want to discuss possible penalties until he has heard back from the lenders.

"We are looking to work with the lenders to make sure they get it right," he said.

Among the lenders, Wells Fargo has said its procedures are appropriate and that it doesn't plan to halt foreclosures. BB&T and HSBC also said their processes comply with the law. Citigroup said it doesn't believe a suspension is necessary because it has no reason to believe its employees haven't been following procedures. JPMorgan and Ally have said they are reviewing affidavits and will fix any problems.

SunTrust said it's reviewing the attorney general's letter, while MetLife said it intends to cooperate. OneWest declined comment. Others didn't respond or couldn't be reached.

The attorney general's move comes after Bank of America, Ally and JPMorgan Chase stopped some foreclosure-related actions in about half of the country after concerns that employees and outside lawyers signed documents without verifying information. JPMorgan's moratorium includes North Carolina.

Attorneys general in other states and members of Congress have also called for foreclosure suspensions as well as investigations of lenders' procedures. On Wednesday, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., called on bank regulators to review the foreclosure activities at Bank of America, JPMorgan and Ally.

In some cases, in a process nicknamed "robosigning," bank employees have said they have rapidly signed documents, raising questions about whether they are properly verifying information about homes that are being foreclosed upon. In a deposition obtained by the N.C. attorney general, a Bank of America employee in Texas testified that she would sign as many as 8,000 documents in a month, often in batches.

In another case, a Wells Fargo supervisor based in Fort Mill testified to signing 50 to 150 documents per day. A Wells spokesman noted a judge reviewed the bank's procedures and dismissed the borrower's case, confirming the foreclosure as valid.

Although foreclosures are traumatic for homeowners and damaging to neighborhoods, analysts say the selling off of these homes to financially stable buyers is an important step in a much-needed recovery for the housing market. "If you freeze foreclosures, the overhang in housing gets worse," said Virginia-based banking consultant Bert Ely. "The market isn't clearing."

Cooper said he hopes lenders can work quickly through the process of verifying their practices.

"We don't want to stop foreclosures that are legitimate and need to happen," he said.

"We want to make sure that homeowners are getting a fair shot at keeping their homes and the process has been done legally."










New Foreclosure Mess Shows Need For Reform In North Carolina

For many North Carolina homeowners, losing their homes to foreclosure was devastating. It is beyond outrageous that many banks were so cavalier with the process that employees didn't even bother to read or verify the information in foreclosure documents.

It is even more dismaying to us that one or both of Charlotte's big banks may be among the culprits in this travesty of faulty work known as "robo-signing."

Bank of America has halted foreclosures while it investigates and straightens out faulty paperwork. It's delaying foreclosures in 23 states including South Carolina. Over the weekend, questions arose about Wells Fargo's foreclosure documents. Wells said it doesn't plan to delay foreclosures because it's confident its foreclosures documents are accurate.

We're not so confident. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper is right to ask lenders to suspend foreclosures in this state until they can show their process conforms with the law. Given how badly this state was hit with foreclosures, banks involved in lending to North Carolinians should be probing robo-signing practices.

Nationwide, Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit and JPMorgan Chase have halted tens of thousands of foreclosures. Ally stopped evictions here and in 22 other states. Robo-signing is so prevalent more banks are expected to follow suit.

What are those practices? In some cases, bank employees admit they signed foreclosure papers without reading them or determining if crucial information - such as how much borrowers still owed on the property - is accurate. Sometimes documents were notarized illegally with indications that the notary did not actually witness the signing of papers.

These practices are unacceptable. Some appear to be illegal. The N.C. attorney general's office notified Ally last week that using unverified affidavits could constitute fraud. Cooper is right when he says that such practices could mean that "some N.C. homeowners may not be getting a good-faith shot at loan modifications."

This mess is exasperating. The reckless lending practices of financial institutions helped cause the foreclosure tsunami that swept over the country. That damage has been so hard to repair in part because many have been tight-fisted with money they could have loaned consumers and small businesses. Many lenders have been reluctant to modify mortgages, instead moving much too swiftly on foreclosure.

Some of that rush resulted in faulty paperwork that will be costly to fix. Courts may impose sanctions on lenders or force banks to pay borrowers' legal costs in these cases. Judges may even dismiss the foreclosures, barring lenders from refiling and awarding the home to the borrower.

These lenders deserve to be penalized if they failed to meet legal requirements before evicting defaulting borrowers from their homes. Consumers, who often also were losing their financial stability, deserved that consideration.

Belatedly, many lenders will now have to meet those requirements. Investigations by attorneys generals in several states and a probe by federal regulators are forcing them to do so. It did not have to come to this. But it is an apt reminder of why reforms and better oversight of financial institutions are so badly needed.


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Sources: BOFA, McClatchy Newspapers, Wikipedia, WRAL, Google Maps

Democrats Call Out GOP Leaders For Racist Tea Party Behavior

Dem Rep Calls On GOP To Condemn Biased Slurs Hurled At Frank, Lewis



Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) took to the House floor tonight to call on Republicans to "distance" themselves from the ugly epithets allegedly yelled at minority members of Congress by anti-health care reform protesters gathered on Capitol Hill today.

Ryan called on Republican pols who addressed today's anti-reform rally to "come out and condemn" the protesters for their alleged slurs against black members and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who is openly gay.

"This behavior is irresponsible it does not belong in a civilized society," Ryan said of the protests. Video after the jump.

Ryan seemed visibly upset by the allegations, but he didn't refrain from using a questionable phrase himself to describe the protesters.

"I wanted to come to the floor today after hearing about experiencing and reading some of the reports about what happened here today in the nation's capitol to some of the finest servants that this institution has ever seen by some of these tea bagger protesters who have been out today," he said.

Ryan said that that it was now up to the Republicans to condemn what was said.

"We call on the Republicans to say 'shame on you' to that kind of behavior," he said.




Tea Partiers Call Lewis 'N****r', Frank 'F****t', At Capitol Hill Protest


Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today's protest on Capitol Hill--the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation--went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming "kill the bill"... and punctuating their chants with the word "nigger."

Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, "kill the bill and then the N-word" several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Cannon House office building.

"People have been just downright mean," Lewis added.

And that wasn't an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed "Barney, you faggot"--a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.

After that incident, Capitol police threatened to expel the protesters from the building, but were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed. Tea party protesters equipped with high-end video cameras were summoned to film the encounter and the officers ultimately relented.

After the caucus meeting, TPMDC's Evan McMorris-Santoro caught up with Frank, who reflected on the incident.

"I'm disappointed at a unwillingness to be just civil," Frank said. "[T]he objection to the health care bill has become a proxy for other sentiments."

"Obviously there are perfectly reasonable people that are against this, but the people out there today on the whole--many of them were hateful and abusive," Frank added.

Asked by TPMDC whether today's protesters were more hateful than at other rallies, Frank took issue with party leaders for aligning themselves with the movement.

I do think the leaders of the movement, and this was true of some of the Republicans last year, that they think they are benefiting from this rancor. I mean there are a couple who--you know, Michele Bachmann's rhetoric is inflamatory as well as wholly baseless. And I think there are people there, a few that encourage it.

"If this was my cause, and I saw this angry group yelling and shouting and being so abusive to people, I would ask them to please stop it," Frank concluded. "I think they do more harm than good."



Shortly thereafter, the same group of people surrounded Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as he entered a first-floor elevator. Above the cacophony, I heard one man call Waxman a "crook" and a "liar."

"This is incredible," House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told reporters of the slurs. "It's shocking to me." He said he hadn't heard such vitriol since March 15, 1960 when he was protesting segregation laws that forced him to sit in the back of buses. "A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this, is not about health care at all," Clyburn said. "I think a lot of those people today demonstrated this is not about health care."

What is it about, a reporter asked?

"It's about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."


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Sources: TPM, Youtube, Google Maps

Bank CEOs Including (Brian Moynihan) Testify About Exec Compensation

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Blankfein Defends Goldman Sachs Amid Grilling by Crisis Panel



Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., mounted a defense of his firm amid a grilling today by members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Goldman Sachs is a market-making firm that acquired securities, including mortgages, that were repackaged and sold to clients, and sometimes at a loss, Blankfein told commission Chairman Phil Angelides in response to questioning.

“We represent the other side of what people want to do,” said Blankfein, 55. “Because we had this risk, because we were accumulating positions which, by the way, we acquired from clients who want to sell them to us, we have to go out ourselves and provide and source the other side of the transactions so that we can manage our risk.”

Chiefs of Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. defended their firms’ actions and blamed the crisis on conditions such as low long-term interest rates and U.S. government policies that encourage and subsidize home ownership. Blankfein bore the brunt of three hours of questions on issues ranging from short-selling to its dealing with insurer American International Group Inc.

Angelides pressed Blankfein on Goldman Sachs’s sale of mortgage-backed securities, its requests to the credit-rating companies for the highest rating while betting the securities will later fail.

“It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars,” Angelides told Blankfein. “It doesn’t seem to me that that’s a practice that inspires confidence in the markets.”

SEC Probe

The Securities and Exchange Commission and brokerage regulators are examining how Wall Street firms bet against mortgage-linked securities to profit as their clients took losses, people familiar with the matter said in late December after report.

Blankfein and the other executives testified in the first day of hearings of the commission, led by Democrat Angelides, the former California Treasurer, and Bill Thomas, a Republican who is a former congressman from California. The commission was created by Congress to examine the causes of a collapse that roiled global markets and led to a $700 billion U.S. government bailout of the nation’s banks.

“Many firms were too highly leveraged, took on too much risk and did not have sufficient resources to manage those risks effectively in a rapidly changing environment,” Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, 65, said. “The financial crisis has also made it clear that regulators simply didn’t have the visibility, tools or authority to protect the stability of the financial system as a whole.”

Risk Management

JPMorgan’s focus on risk management and prudent lending, helped the firm avoid setbacks experienced by other companies, said Jamie Dimon, 53, JPMorgan Chase’s chairman and CEO.

The CEOs lead two days of hearings that include Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and attorneys general from Colorado and Illinois. The panel has six members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans and has the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

Blankfein said the firm’s practice of marking assets to market daily helped it decide to cut risk earlier than some rivals. Goldman Sachs was the biggest U.S. securities firm before it and Morgan Stanley converted to banks during the crisis, gaining lending support from the Federal Reserve.

By contrast, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, 50, said mark-to-market accounting exacerbated the crisis as thinly traded assets often had to be recorded at fire-sale prices, triggering losses and further sales.

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Downward Cycle

“The market began to anticipate this downward cycle, and question companies or structures that would become subject to it, in a self-fulfilling way,” Moynihan said in his remarks.

Dimon echoed Moynihan’s concern about mark-to-market accounting.

“Although we are a proponent of fair-value accounting in trading books, we also recognize that market levels resulting from large levels of forced liquidations may not reflect underlying values,” Dimon said.

Congress is considering a financial regulatory overhaul, with the Senate crafting legislation after the House passed a measure last month with rules for derivatives, powers to break apart financial firms whose collapse would threaten the economy and a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The banking industry and the nation’s biggest business lobby have fought to scale back the legislation.

Financial Profit

Profit at financial institutions, which kick off earnings season with JPMorgan’s fourth-quarter report on Jan. 15, has rebounded and may triple by 2011, according to analyst surveys compiled by Bloomberg News. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender, said last week that it expects to pay record bonuses to some investment bankers. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are all based in New York.

All of the executives provided prescriptions for how regulators and the government should deal with banks whose failure could put the economy at risk -- the so-called too-big- to-fail institutions.

Blankfein, who heads the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, proposed that regulators require firms to submit to continuing public “stress tests” to examine whether they have adequate capital. Regulators may require companies to raise so-called contingent capital if stress tests deem they need more capital.

Automatic Re-capitalization

“Making recapitalization automatic if capital levels fall below a public threshold would minimize systemic risk and force shareholders and bondholders to bear the burden of the firm’s mistakes, not taxpayers or the economy,” Blankfein said.

Dimon called for a regulatory authority that would manage failures of large financial institutions in such a way that shareholders and creditors would be at risk.

“A regulator should be able to terminate management and boards and liquidate assets,” Dimon said. “There is much that can be learned from the process by which the FDIC closes banks today,” he said, referring to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Moynihan said the size of banks shouldn’t be limited and legislation to separate consumer and investment banking -- like the Glass-Steagall law that was overturned in 1999 -- shouldn’t be revived.

“Those arguing for a return of Glass-Steagall are effectively arguing that Bear Stearns was a more stable entity than JPMorgan Chase,” he said. “I don’t see how that is tenable.”



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Sources: AP, Bloomberg News, MSNBC, Google Maps

Obama's Mortgage Relief Program Provides Little Hope For Homeowners...Foreclosures

(NY Times) Billions To Fight Foreclosure, But Few New Loans



They milled about the hallways of the cavernous State Supreme Court building in Jamaica, Queens — 42 homeowners whispering, studying old bills, waiting for a court officer to call their names and wave them, one by one, through a door.

There, in a dusty, high-ceilinged room with a steam radiator that never stopped wheezing, they took a seat across a table from a lawyer for a mortgage company. Then their work began: trying to persuade a stranger not to foreclose on their home.

The Obama administration’s plan to rescue Americans from foreclosure plays out day after day in rooms like this. On this day, as on most, nothing happened. One lawyer, visibly bored, put in a brief, token appearance. A few others seemed barely familiar with their cases. Another asked for more records, hinting that maybe next month the lender might talk about a settlement.

Ismail Ali, a silver-haired immigrant from Guyana, hoped to save his home in Ozone Park. “If it takes you another three months to evaluate me, and I keep paying, will I get a new mortgage?” he asked, almost pleading.

The lawyer shrugged, not unsympathetically. “I can’t answer that for you,” he said.

Ten months ago President Obama announced a $75 billion program to keep as many as four million Americans in their homes by persuading banks to renegotiate their mortgages. Lenders have accepted more than one million applications and cut three-month trial deals with 759,000 homeowners. But they have converted just 31,000 of those to the permanent new mortgages that are the plan’s goal.

In New York City, where 20,000 homeowners faced foreclosure this year, a recent study by the Center for NYC Neighborhoods found that lenders have offered new or trial mortgages to just 3 percent of the homeowners who have sought help.

Big mortgage companies — servicers, in the parlance of the industry — stand at the heart of this program. Many of the servicers that have agreed to participate are subsidiaries of the nation’s largest banks — Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

They say their performance is improving. “We ourselves stated that we fell short of our customer service goals,” said Mary Coffin, executive vice president for loan servicing at Wells Fargo. “Now we are doing three modifications for every foreclosure.”

But a drove of critics, including homeowners, nonprofit loan counselors, legal services lawyers and court officials, say these companies are also at the heart of the problem. Servicers, they say, pile delay upon delay, and too often steer homeowners into new mortgages with onerous terms. Some companies have insisted that homeowners waive their right to sue before getting a new mortgage, even though the Obama plan prohibits such demands.

Administration officials have vowed to shame servicers into action. And New York State lawmakers, like their counterparts in a few other states and cities, have tried to slow the headlong hurtle toward foreclosure by requiring lenders to negotiate with troubled borrowers in court.

Leonard N. Florio, a court-appointed referee, oversees such sessions in that dusty room in Queens. He is a chatty man and punctilious about not taking sides. But as he watched Mr. Ali, the Ozone Park homeowner, load his piles of bills and receipts back into his shopping bags, he could not help noting a pattern.

“I have yet to see an attorney for a servicer cut a deal,” he said. “Update this, update that. I mean, what’s the holdup?”

Loan servicers argue that homeowners are as often to blame: Many cannot show proof of income, and fail to make payments even on modified mortgages. And millions are in bigger trouble than the public realizes, burdened with monthly payments so exorbitant that even a reduced mortgage payment will not save their home.

The servicing companies make money either way. The Obama program pays them $1,000 for each loan modified, and another $1,000 per year for three more years if the borrower avoids foreclosure. On the other hand, the companies make large sums charging late and legal fees on overdue mortgage payments, and sometimes it is cheaper to foreclose than to cut the mortgage payment.

These same companies turned billions of dollars in profits during the fat years of the bubble. Four years ago, lenders strung banners from storefronts in Jamaica and Cypress Hills and Bedford-Stuyvesant, promising “You will not be turned down!” A no-documents-needed mortgage was easily obtained, often accompanied by the flimsiest of appraisals.

Now the lenders toss up daunting hurdles. Homeowners say they send and resend thick piles of documentation, only to be told that their papers have been misplaced, or that their pay stubs are out of date. Housing counselors dial a dozen times just to get a servicer on the phone.

“It’s a constant Catch-22: They never give you their name,” said Gerald Carter, a counselor with the Parodneck Foundation in New York City, which receives city and state money to advise homeowners. “You call back and say, ‘No, I was talking to Bob last time,’ but Bob wouldn’t give his last name — not even an employee ID number. So you start over.”

Last month, the Legal Aid Society of New York sued the federal government and a mortgage servicer, Aurora Loan Services, on behalf of four Queens homeowners. Aurora, which has a $116 billion loan portfolio, was a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers before that firm went bankrupt; it offered loans with interest rates just a bit lower than subprime rates, which are typically a few percentage points higher than rates on conventional mortgages.

The lawsuit charges that Aurora, and by implication many other servicers, systematically denied homeowners access to the federal rescue program. And, the lawsuit asserts, the Obama plan provides far too few safeguards for homeowners.

“The servicers ignore their obligations, and are throwing unaffordable agreements at people and setting them up for another default,” said Oda Friedheim, a staff lawyer with the Legal Aid Society.

Asked to respond, an Aurora spokeswoman e-mailed a statement saying the company tries to prevent foreclosure for its customers.

Tom Vellucci, 54, is one of the four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and a soldier in this army of the potentially dispossessed. Once a maintenance man for an insurance company, with a modest home in Floral Park, Queens, he lost his health and then his job. When a tenant stopped paying rent, he fell behind on his mortgage. A so-called rescue firm offered to negotiate better terms and wheedled Mr. Vellucci and his wife, Maria, out of $8,000 in fees.

When the inevitable foreclosure notice arrived in March, the Velluccis called Aurora Loan Services and asked for a break. The company, he said, responded by piling on legal fees and giving them a four-month trial agreement that did not reduce their monthly payment.

The Velluccis say they drained their savings making payments. Then the couple asked Aurora if they could revise their mortgage terms under the Obama rescue plan. They say the company refused, saying their mortgage was not eligible because it was owned by investors.

Aurora makes a similar statement about investor-owned mortgages on its Web site. These claims are not true. The Obama program requires companies to make an effort to modify such mortgages.

Sitting on a bench in the Queens courthouse, where he has become a regular, Mr. Vellucci ran his fingers through thick black hair and shook his head. “We kept trying to pay on faith, all faith, so we could prove we were honest people,” he said. “Now all we look like is stupid.”

Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Treasury Department’s Home Ownership Preservation Office, is not inclined toward tough talk about servicers, perhaps because the Obama plan, which she oversees, lacks enforcement teeth. Asked about Aurora’s refusal to consider modifying investor-owned mortgages, she suggested a reporter call the program’s compliance unit.

“If it is reported in The New York Times and someone chooses to audit it, that’s important,” she said.

She sees a brighter day coming. “We are holding the servicers accountable to report to us,” she said. “They are being much more transparent.”

For now, however, the Velluccis and thousands like them dangle perilously close to calamity.

Born in Italy, Mr. Vellucci and his wife migrated here as teenagers. They raised children, bought a house, lived their dream in Technicolor. Then his kidney gave out and their economic slide began. After court on this day, he would go for dialysis. The couple hope the lawsuit might give them one more shot at the Obama plan.

“I don’t sleep at night, I don’t sleep at all,” he said, rising slowly. “I tell Maria, ‘If we lose the house, I want to stop my dialysis.’ I want to die, honestly.”








Are Obama's & NACA Mortgage Relief Programs Scams?



Despite Millions of struggling American Homeowners seeking Gov't assistance to remain in their residences via Loan Modifications/ Loan Restructures from Pres. Obama's Making Homes Affordable (HAMP) or NACA's "Save the Dream" Tour, only about 4% (31,000 homeowners) applicants were approved.

This is absolutely unreal and totally unacceptable!

Something is most definitely wrong with this picture!

So Pres. Obama and NACA's programs are basically ineffective?

I've included NACA in this blog post because NACA employees use Pres. Obama's HAMP program Debt Ratio formula when assisting homeowners during "Save the Dream" tours.

4%?? Only 31,000 people??

According to several news reports (listed below) Banks are blaming the low number of approved Loan Modification/ Loan Restructure applications on lost paperwork.

What kind of lame excuse is that?

Where are the billions of dollars Pres. Obama and Congress allocated for Foreclosure Prevention earlier this year?

Better yet why won't NACA CEO Bruce Marks open his books to show real numbers of long term, proven success rates from his program to Congressional members?

Why is it ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis was the ONLY Federally Funded Housing program official required to open her organization's books to Congress?

Could it possibly be that Obama's HAMP program was perhaps intentionally set up to only approve a very small number of Loan Modifications in order to help banks stay profitable?

Doesn't this sound like something Tim Geithner might do?

No offense but for some reason I don't trust Tim Geithner. (Sorry Tim)

Could it be that participating Banks and NACA's CEO Bruce Marks are being paid by H.U.D. and Congress for each Submitted Application versus each APPROVED Loan Modification/ Loan Restructure application? (Permanent Loan Mods)

OMG! Isn't that considered a Scam??

When assisting Homeowners do NACA employees ensure all required, up to date paperwork is included with each Loan Modification/ Loan Restructure application?

So in essence it really doesn't matter to NACA or Pres. Obama's HAMP Program Administrators if Loan Mod applicants are approved for Long Term results or not, because Banks and NACA will be paid regardless.

Seems as if NACA's CEO Bruce Marks may have secret ties to Wall Street despite his claims of being a radical "Bank Terrorist".

Thus I'll ask this question again:

Why is it Congress jumped so quickly to deny funds for ACORN's Housing program unless CEO Bertha Lewis could prove her program was successful (by opening her books) but NACA's Bruce Marks can still receive Federal & State Funds without doing so?

Something is definitely wrong with this picture don't you think?

Again I'm speaking of Long Term or Permanent results, NOT 90-day trial periods.

Also due to the Recession millions of Homeowners are now living in "Underwater Homes", which means Property Tax values on those homes have dropped significantly.

When banks are processing Loan Modification applications, do they take that factor into consideration?

If so the Escrow on those loans should be reduced as well correct?

However in regions like Charlotte-Mecklenburg City & County officials have chosen to INCREASE Property Tax values on thousands of Underwater Homes.

Of course most of the residents living in those Underwater Homes are Middle Class & Low Income Minority Citizens.

What's the purpose of approving Homeowners for a Loan Modification/ Loan Restructure without including the decreased Tax Value on residential properties?

Considering the current Economic Recession our country is experiencing, why are City and County Officials Nationwide choosing NOT to lower Property Tax Values on homes, especially homes located in Middle and Low Income Communities as a best practice for their struggling Constituents?

Hmmm. This is certainly something to think about and inquiring minds want to know.

I propose that Congress should call Tim Geithner and Bruce Marks to Capitol Hill for inquiries about the operations of these two weak Foreclosure Prevention programs.

Immediately afterward Congress needs to than launch thorough investigations into Pres. Obama's HAMP and NACA's so-called "Mortgage Relief" programs.

Investigate as in requesting Pres. Obama's HAMP program officials & NACA CEO Bruce Marks to provide clear evidence and proof each program (since inception) has successfully helped at least close to 1 Million (combined) Homeowners versus just a paltry 31,000.

Don't you agree?

After all both programs are being funded with Taxpayer money just like ACORN was.

Only 4% (31,000 people) approved for Long Term results Indeed!




More tax dollars for the self-proclaimed Bank Terrorist

Despite receiving taxpayer money, NACA doesn’t provide public reports on either its loan-brokerage business or its campaign to modify mortgages. Jim Campen, an economics professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, says he tried in the 1990s to analyze the performance of loans arranged by NACA, but Mr. Marks refused to provide data.

Mr. Marks says he feared the data would be used by another nonprofit to discredit his group. NACA does provide information to lenders that work with it, he says, but sees no duty to disclose it to the public.

“He’s been very effective in shaking money out of the banks,” says Mr. Campen, but “he’s not one to open up his records to public scrutiny.” Wall Street Journal
Article dated * May 20, 2009




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Sources: NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Michelle Malkin, NACA, Youtube, Google Maps

Moynihan's East Coast Ties Sure To Affect Charlotte BOFA HQ Decisions

BofA names new CEO. Jeffrey Harte, of Sandler O'Neill, discusses Bank of America's choice of Brian Moynihan as its new CEO.

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And Mr. Brian Moynihan It Is!


Big surprise!

Brian Moynihan has long been the inside choice to replace Ken Lewis.

Lewis just got a little too radioactive post-bailout and had to rush his retirement.

However once BAC paid back TARP and did some back channel Lobbying of Congress and Regulators, made a head fake toward an outsider, Moynihan was back on track.

You have to love what Chris Whalen told Bloomberg about Moynihan’s elevation:

"The fact that Regulators would accept this is a complete indictment of the Fed and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency,” said Chris Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, a Torrance, California-based research firm. “Ken Lewis’s cronies were allowed to pick his son".

It does not hurt that Moynihan has deep ties to Boston, pleasing Rep. Barney Frank, ranking godfather of the Banking Industry.

For that reason, be VERY skeptical of reports that Moynihan will be “working from” Charlotte.

Either the guy moves here or not.

I’m guessing not.

It was never really a short-term option to move BAC’s entire HQ to Boston. Too costly.

But let’s watch and see where the real power goes in this operation in the years ahead.





Bank of America Names Brian Moynihan To Replace CEO Ken Lewis


Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, promoted Brian T. Moynihan to chief executive officer, opting for an insider to repair the company after the tumultuous takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. prodded Kenneth D. Lewis into early retirement.

Moynihan, the 50-year-old head of the consumer banking unit, takes over at year’s end, the Charlotte, North Carolina- based bank said yesterday in a statement. Lewis, 62, said in September he’d step down Dec. 31.

“Our core businesses are the right ones, we just have to execute,” Moynihan said in an interview after the board gave him the title of president and CEO. “As the recovery takes hold, we need to do a better job with risk management.”

Bank of America’s new boss must stanch defaults on consumer loans tied to the recession, which led to two losses in the past four quarters. He must also integrate Merrill Lynch and smooth relations with regulators after they clashed with Lewis over the purchase. The bank paid back $45 billion to the U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program on Dec. 9.

Moynihan takes charge of the biggest U.S. lender by assets and deposits, the No. 1 home lender and the largest issuer of debit cards. He’ll also oversee underwriting, trading and retail brokerage operations of New York-based Merrill Lynch. The bank counts 53 million consumer and small-business customers in 150 countries at 6,000 offices, and the company’s stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Investors React

“The good news is that he knows the company and isn’t coming from the outside,” said Mike Holland, chairman of Holland & Co. LLC, which manages more than $4 billion. “The fact that he has a background in wealth management and corporate banking is a very good order for what they need.” Holland doesn’t own any shares and said the appointment may turn him into a buyer. The stock was little changed at $15.28 in 9:39 a.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

The board’s six-member search committee, led by Chairman Walter Massey, chose Moynihan during an early afternoon meeting in Charlotte yesterday. The full board assembled at 6 p.m. New York time and after presentations from lawyers, its executive search consultants and Massey, voted unanimously for Moynihan, according to spokesman Robert Stickler.

Moynihan, who had been working with Lewis earlier in the day, said he left his 58th floor office at about 7:30 p.m. after being called into the meeting and was greeted with applause by Lewis and the 13 other directors who were attending; one undisclosed member was connected by phone.

Internal and External

“I was pleased,” Moynihan said when asked about how he responded. The 10-week selection process was worthwhile, he said, “as long as it had a good outcome.”

Bank of America sorted through half a dozen internal candidates including Gregory Curl, 61, the bank’s chief risk officer, who was initially favored by Lewis because of his lengthy experience, a person familiar with the matter has said. Lewis strongly endorsed Moynihan at the meeting, the person said, and repeated it in the company’s statement.

Moynihan was chosen after two board members spoke with the staff of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and learned that Curl might be the focus of his probe into the Merrill Lynch takeover, the New York Times reported. The newspaper cited a Dec. 7 letter from Cuomo’s office to the bank’s lawyer, Lewis Liman at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP, that said investigators “are seriously concerned that Mr. Curl has provided testimony that was intentionally or recklessly false.” The bank declined to comment, Stickler said.

Kelly Drops Out

Robert Kelly, 55, CEO at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and the leading outside candidate, dropped out on Dec. 14 after the board offered a $20 million compensation package, the person said. Kelly was among at least five industry Executives who rebuffed the board’s overtures.

An internal candidate usually is the best choice because “the transition is easier and you usually have to pay the new CEO much less than if you have to go outside,” said Mike McCauley, senior corporate governance officer at the Florida State Board of Administration, which owns 25.4 million Bank of America shares.

Compensation

Moynihan wasn’t among the bank’s five highest-paid executives in 2008, so his compensation wasn’t disclosed at the time and the statement yesterday didn’t discuss the matter.

Moynihan joined Bank of America through its 2004 purchase of FleetBoston Financial Corp., where he led the brokerage and wealth management unit and directed strategic development for six years. At Bank of America, he has been president of the global wealth and investment management unit, spent a month in 2008 as general counsel, then replaced former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain in January to head the investment bank and wealth management units. In August, he was assigned to head the retail bank, including oversight of credit card operations.

Since Lewis’s resignation announcement, analysts including Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities LLC had cited Moynihan as a favorite for the CEO post because of his ties to search committee directors Charles “Chad” Gifford, Thomas May and Thomas Ryan, three Bostonians who had been on the Fleet board.

Diverse Mix

“The grace period will likely be short as Moynihan is put to the test [and] as Bank of America works to mend bridges with both Investors and Regulators,” Todd Hagerman, an analyst with Collins Stewart Plc, said in a report today. “Moynihan’s success will be measured by his ability to realize long-promised merger synergies and a greater emphasis on organic growth.”

Moynihan must show investors that Bank of America’s diverse businesses can be effectively managed rather than broken into smaller pieces, said David Kotok, chairman of Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors, which oversees $1.2 billion. “There is a question whether this model even works in the post- crisis world,” Kotok said. “He has a task ahead of him.”

Bank of America posted losses in last year’s fourth quarter and the third quarter of 2009. Still, the bank posted a cumulative profit of $6.5 billion for the first nine months of this year, aided by gains at Merrill Lynch from trading stocks, bonds and currencies.

The U.S. injected $45 billion into Bank of America through the purchase of preferred shares, including $20 billion approved in January after the Merrill Lynch takeover to keep the deal from collapsing. The bank redeemed the shares earlier this month after raising $19 billion through a stock sale.

Merrill Merger

Documents released during a congressional investigation of the Merrill purchase show Moynihan as general counsel played a role in conducting the transaction and advising Lewis. The CEO was later criticized by investors and regulators for not telling shareholders about Merrill’s $3.6 billion in employee bonuses and mounting losses.

Moynihan’s relations frayed with Representative Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who leads the House Oversight Committee. After Moynihan testified on his role in the Merrill takeover at a Nov. 17 hearing, Towns said he didn’t believe some of the banker’s answers and that Moynihan “didn’t show the kind of leadership a company would seem to need.”

“I hope Mr. Moynihan appreciates the debt Bank of America owes to U.S. taxpayers,” Towns said in a statement yesterday.

Credit Cards

Bank of America is addressing consumer and political concerns by providing more clarity to customers in credit cards, home loans and other retail businesses, Moynihan said. His own success as CEO will be measured by whether customers, investors and employees “say we are doing a better job,” he said.

Moynihan is an Ohio native, a graduate of Brown University and the University of Notre Dame School of Law. The CEO and Bank of America will be based in Charlotte, and there are no plans to move the headquarters, Stickler said.

Moynihan praised Tom Montag, who heads the bank’s capital markets unit, for helping retain senior bankers and noted that Bank of America has ranked second in investment banking fees for three straight quarters.

“To perform that way in these tough economic times is a real testament to that business,” he said.

The bank needs brokerage and investment-banking fees to overcome higher losses in its credit-card and home-loan businesses, which make up about 36 percent of revenue this year. The U.S. unemployment rate stood at 10 percent in November, and

Lewis told employees in September when he announced his departure that “a near double-digit unemployment rate is bad medicine for a bank that serves consumers.” He predicted that “the next two quarters will be difficult.”





Brian Moynihan named Bank of America CEO


Bank of America's board has selected Brian Moynihan as the bank's new chief executive, spokesman Bob Stickler said this evening.

Moynihan, previously the bank's consumer banking head, will have his office in Charlotte and the bank will remain headquartered in Charlotte, Stickler said.



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Sources: Bloomberg, MSNBC, The Meck Deck Blog, John Locke Foundation, McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Praises Passge Of Diluted, Partisan Financial Reform Bill

The President explains that while he continues to focus on jobs, it is also profoundly important to address the problems that created this economic mess in the first place. He commends the House of Representatives for passing reforms to our financial system, including a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and blasts Republican Leaders and financial industry lobbyists for their joint pep rally to defeat it.





Home prices up, more borrowers Underwater. CNBC's Diana Olick reports that while home prices show a slight gain, about 25 percent of homeowners owe more on their mortgages than they are worth.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

House kills Bankruptcy Mortgage Relief in Wall Street bill


The House has rejected an effort to expand a Wall Street regulation bill with mortgage relief that would let debt-ridden homeowners reduce their payments in bankruptcy court. The vote was 241-188 to reject.

The provision would have revived a previous bill that passed the House but later failed in the Senate.

Democrats hoped that by inserting the provision in the regulatory legislation they would have had another opportunity to make it law. Aiding homeowners through bankruptcy had been a key feature of President Barack Obama's foreclosure fighting proposal, but the president did not push for it.

Banks and credit unions have lobbied against the bankruptcy measure. They say it would force a flood of bankruptcy filings and ultimately drive up mortgage rates.





US House Passes Broad Wall Street Regulatory Overhaul


The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession.

The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators.

The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it.

While a victory for the administration, the legislation dilutes some of President Barack Obama's recommendations, carving out exceptions to some of its toughest provision. The burden now shifts to the Senate, which is not expected to act on its version of a regulatory overhaul until early next year.

The president praised the House action Friday, and called on Congress to act swiftly to get the bill to the White House for his signature.

"The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington," Obama said. "We have a responsibility to learn from it and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again."

The legislation would govern the simplest payday loan and the most complicated high-finance trades. In its breadth, the measure seeks to impose restrictions on every house of finance, from two-teller neighborhood thrifts to huge interconnected conglomerates.

Democratic leaders had to fend off a last-minute attempt to kill a proposed consumer agency, a central element of the legislation and one the features pushed by the White House. The agency would take over consumer protection powers from current banking regulators, and big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vigorously opposed the idea.

Democrats said the broad legislation would help address problems that led to last year's calamitous financial crisis. Republicans argued that it overreached and would institutionalize bailouts for the financial industry.

"Let's put it to the American people: Do you prefer the Republican position of doing literally nothing to rein in these abuses or should we try to rein them in?" Rep. Barney Frank, who led the Democratic effort on the bill, asked moments before the final vote.

Republicans cast the regulatory bill as a burden to business and argued that it would continue to protect companies considered too big to fail. They offered an alternative that called for special bankruptcy proceedings to dismantle failing financial institutions. That alternative failed.

"This house has been on a spending spree, a bailout spree and a regulatory spree that I could never have imagined in any of my prior 18 years here in Congress," Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

Consumer advocates cheered the survival of the consumer protection agency but said the overall legislation fell short, especially in the regulation of complex investment instruments known as derivatives.

The legislation aims to prevent manipulation and bring transparency to the $600 trillion global derivatives market. But an amendment by New York Democrat Scott Murphy, adopted 304-124 Thursday night, created an exception for nonfinancial companies that use derivatives as a hedge against price, currency and interest rate changes rather than as a speculative investment.

The amendment also provided an exception for businesses that are considered too small to be a risk to the financial system.

A Democratic effort to make more companies subject to derivatives regulations and to abusive-trading rules failed.

When the Obama administration first proposed a package of regulations, it called for regulations of derivatives without any exceptions. But a potent lobbying coalition that included Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., Coca-Cola and other big companies persuaded lawmakers to dilute the restrictions.

"It does fall well short of what the administration promised and what everybody assumed we would get," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "It's a weakness in the bill and a win for Wall Street. Hedge funds and others that are not bona fide hedgers of commercial risk will slip through this language."

The bill would create a Financial Services Oversight Council made up of the Treasury secretary, the Federal Reserve chairman and heads of regulatory agencies to monitor the financial markets for potential threats to nation's system.

It would identify firms and activities that should be subject to heightened standards, including requirements that they place more money in reserve. Companies would have to plan for their own demise, detailing how they would be dismantled if they failed. The government could dismantle even healthy firms if they were considered a grave risk to the economy. Large firms with assets of more than $50 billion, and hedge funds with at least $10 billion in assets, would pay into a $150 billion resolution fund that would cover the costs of dismantling such a company.

It was that fund that Republicans argued amounted to yet another bailout pool.

The Federal Reserve, criticized for not spotting last year's crisis, would lose power in the legislation. The measure would limit the Fed's unilateral ability to inject large amounts of money into financial institutions. It also would take away the Federal Reserve's consumer regulation authority and would subject it to a broad audit by Congress' investigative arm.

The legislation also takes on Wall Street compensation. Company shareholders would get a nonbinding vote on the pay of top executives. Federal banking regulators would have to approve compensation practices, though not actual pay, at banks and bank holding companies.





Dems paint Wall St. vote as big win


Not a single Republican cast a “yes” vote for the Wall Street reform bill in the House Friday.

Democrats could hardly contain their glee.

“Seriously?” was the subject line of an asked the headline of an e-mail from Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse after the House vote.

“Representative Mary Bono Mack has apparently learned nothing from the near-collapse of big banks and financial institutions that put our entire economy at risk,” read the e-mail sent to Mack’s California district and more than three dozen other target GOP incumbents by the Democratic Campaign Committee, slamming the incumbents for backing Wall Street over consumers.

With polls showing voters furious at Wall Street and their big fat bonus checks, Democrats smell an opportunity to turn their political fortunes around with the help of the financial reform legislation that’s moving through Congress.

The DCCC is raising money to produce “hard-hitting” spots against Republicans who sided with financial lobbyists “trying to kill reform,” according to a Nov. 10 fundraising e-mail. And the rhetoric during and after the debate this week made clear, Democrats – at least in the House – will try to turn their Republican opponents into Wall Street’s lapdogs and saddle them with the populist outrage still burning in the heartland.

The pitch may not be as easy as it sounds. Sure, opposing legislation that cracks down on greedy bankers, enhances consumer protection and puts an end to taxpayer bailouts sounds like political suicide. But Republican strategists disagree that this was a bad vote for their party.

“Opposing Barney Frank is not going to be a political liability” in swing districts, said GOP pollster Adam Geller, who worked for Christopher Christie’s successful 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. Voters see Frank – and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the other major face of the bill – “as kind of on the left extreme,” he said.

And a closer look at Friday’s votes shows the issue isn’t that black and white in every Democratic district.

Quite a few Democrats in tough reelection races bolted off the party line to oppose the bill, undermining the notion that Democrats have the undisputed political high ground on this one. The 27 Democrats who opposed the bill included highly vulnerable members such as Reps. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), Zach Space (D-Ohio) and Tom Perriello (D-Va.) – who took flak at home for voting “yes” on Democrats’ climate change bill. There were also a number of less-imperiled but still-worried Democrats that voted no.

And Democratic party brass also tacitly acknowledged that the politics on this aren’t so clear cut when they agreed to give Idaho freshman Walt Minnick a floor vote on his controversial amendment to gut the new consumer protection agency at the heart of the legislation. While the bulk of their rank-and-file opposed the measure, leadership wanted to give moderate Democrats the vote to help insulate themselves against industry-financed attacks next fall, leadership aides said, giving these lawmakers a chance to vote with the Chamber of Commerce – a strong opponent of the newly created consumer-protection agency that highlighted the vote politically.

After some tough whipping, Democratic leaders were able to defeat the amendment, 223-208, with 33 Democrats supporting it. But they were scared for a few hours that they might not be able to, said leadership aides.

Those votes suggests that voters in some of these tough Democratic districts the Republican arguments that the legislation amounts to a perpetual bailout, harmful government control of the economy and job-killing layers of bureaucracy might be more likely to resonate.

“As in the case of health care and energy policy, this bill was about empowering the government and not the individual. Government control and command was not what made America the largest and most successful economy in the world,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.). “The array of new regulations and taxes on consumers, investors and businesses will destroy jobs and further undermine the fragile economy.”

Nonetheless, Democrats’ own polling gives them reasons for optimism. A recent survey done by Democratic polling firm Anzalone Liszt for Americans United for Change found that 70 percent of voters – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – want to see major reform of the financial system.

Most Americans aren’t aware of the reform measures put forward by the Obama White House, but when voters heard descriptions of the proposals to beef up oversight of big banks, create a new consumer protection watchdog and crack down on corporate abuses, support shot up from 35 percent to 60 percent, the poll found. Independents were particularly supportive of the plan after hearing the description.

“This creates an opportunity for the President and members of Congress to address major financial concerns of voters and to be seen as standing up for working families,” said a memo from pollsters John Anzalone and Matt Hogan.

In an interview, Anzalone said the financial reform bill could be “the populist issue of the cycle, bringing strong accountability and oversight to Wall Street. There’s no good way to spin this one, except voting for it because it’s a good bill and people think it’s a good bill.”

Republicans who oppose the bill “are going to pay a very heavy price,” DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) warned Thursday on a conference call with reporters. He referred to a much-publicized meeting of banking lobbyists convened by House Minority Leader John Boehner earlier in the week to rally against the bill, saying “it was very clear whose side the Republicans were on, and they were on the side of protecting the special interests and allowing us to once again get ourselves in a mess where the taxpayers are left holding the bag for bad decisions on Wall Street.”

“This Republican recession based on [their] Wild West mentality cost this country millions of jobs and these guys should be ashamed of themselves,” fumed Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), taking a page from the Anzalone polling memo, which urged lawmakers to stress how financial reform will prevent future job losses.

“There is some risk” to voting against legislation framed as a reform of Wall Street, acknowledged Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, a moderate Republican who is running for Joe Biden’s Senate seat. “Democrats have presented it as such – and I’m not sure it’s a fair presentation. I think it’s up to Republicans to be able to rebut it, maybe better than we have so far.”

Most Republicans dismiss the idea that their vote against the financial package would come back to haunt them.

“Anyone who expects a political advantage by supporting this bill is ignoring the public opposition to the Democrats’ agenda of big government and fewer jobs,” said National Republican Congressional Campaign spokesman Paul Lindsay.

“There’s a political opening on any bill, whether you vote yes or no, somebody can always spin it in a way that’s not advantageous to you,” said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.).

“Good policy at the end of the day makes good politics. And someone can just as easily argue that this is disastrous policy that would give us too big to fail banks, turning banks into utility companies that hurt the little guy,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

“They’ll use it for ads, absolutely. Of course. You can twist your mind into pretzels on every one of these votes because they can twist, distort and demagogue just about any vote around here. If you let that guide you, then you’re running around in circles around here.”




Federal Judge: ACORN Funding Restored


A Federal Judge in New York ordered that ACORN’s federal funding be restored, rolling back a slew of Congressional actions that sought to stop taxpayer money from flowing to the community group on the heels of a fall full of embarrassments for it.

Nina Gershon, a district judge in New York, issued a preliminary injunction directing the US Department of Housing & Urban Development, the Office of Management & Budget, and the Treasury department to disregard a bill signed into law by President Obama that prohibited federal funding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

“The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial,” Gershon wrote in her opinion. “Because it does not, and because the plaintiffs have shown the likelihood of irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, I grant the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.”

Gershon said that “none of the government’s justifications stand up to scrutiny” and that “no non-punitive rational” is obvious.

ACORN was the subject of bi-partisan disdain in September, after undercover videos were released that seemed to show the organization’s employees offering advice on how to break the law. Republicans and Democrats voted to stop federal funding of the group – a measure signed into law by the president on the back of an appropriations bill.

In November, the group sued the federal government, claiming that the provision, attached to the legislative branch appropriations bill, was a bill of attainder – unconstitutional legislation that unfairly punishes one group. As part of this lawsuit, ACORN sought a Restoration of Federal Funding.

With Friday’s injunction, ACORN stands to begin receiving funds once again, including between $40,000 and $60,000 for housing assistance, according to the decision from the district court in eastern New York.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitutional Rights for all Americans and for the citizens who work through ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership,” ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in an emailed statement.

It is also is the second in a string of victories for ACORN. An investigation by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger largely absolved the organization from any wrongdoings or illegalities in a hidden-video scandal which allegedly showed the organization’s employees offering advice on how to dodge taxes while setting up a prostitution ring of underage illegal immigrants.

Republicans are already hammering away at the decision. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a longtime critic of ACORN and author of a report on the group’s problems, framed Gershon as an “activist judge” appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

“This left-wing activist Judge is setting a dangerous precedent that left-wing political organizations plagued by criminal accusations have a constitutional entitlement to taxpayer dollars,” Issa said in a news release. “The Obama administration should immediately move to appeal this injunction.”


Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Politico, Fox News, My Fox33.com, CNBC, ACORN, Youtube

House Rejects Expanded Mortgage Help In Wall Street Reform Bill

House kills Bankruptcy Mortgage relief in Wall Street bill


The House has rejected an effort to expand a Wall Street regulation bill with mortgage relief that would let debt-ridden homeowners reduce their payments in bankruptcy court. The vote was 241-188 to reject.

The provision would have revived a previous bill that passed the House but later failed in the Senate.

Democrats hoped that by inserting the provision in the regulatory legislation they would have had another opportunity to make it law. Aiding homeowners through bankruptcy had been a key feature of President Barack Obama's foreclosure fighting proposal, but the president did not push for it.

Banks and credit unions have lobbied against the bankruptcy measure. They say it would force a flood of bankruptcy filings and ultimately drive up mortgage rates.




House approves Financial Reform bill



A little over a year after Congress bailed out the financial system, the House on Friday passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial architecture and the rules that govern it, seeking to prevent a repeat of last year’s meltdown.

Friday’s 223-to-202 vote was a major victory for the Obama administration, which has made Wall Street reform a policy and political imperative, second only to health care on its agenda. But like so much of the White House’s other legislative agenda, this too, was a partisan win, as not a single Republican voted for the bill.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) aggressively made the case for Republicans to oppose the bill, and in the end all of them did. In addition, 27 Democrats voted no. ]

The massive plan touches nearly every corner of the financial universe, from the now-opaque and largely unregulated derivatives market to consumer products like credit cards to credit rating agencies to executive compensation. It also creates a new consumer financial watchdog agency.

“The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to learn from it, and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation, and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again.”

The legislation sends a clear message to Wall Street that “the party is over. Never again will the reckless behavior [of] a few threaten the fiscal stability of our people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a news conference after the final vote. The legislation, she continued, would “inject transparency and accountability into our financial system.”

The action now moves to the Senate, where the final outlines of the financial reform package remain murky. Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced draft bill Nov. 10, but has since gone back to the drawing board, with key members on his committee now working in two-person bipartisan groups to tackle the thorniest issues.

Obama and congressional Democrats have put considerable emphasis on the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The provision was the object of some of the most intense lobbying of the entire package up until the very end. Hated by the financial industry and big business, the CFPA became the cause célèbre of liberals and consumer advocates.

Rep. Walt Minnick, a Blue Dog Democrat from deep-red Idaho, offered an amendment that would have stripped the new standalone watchdog out of the legislation and replace it with a council of existing regulators to deal with consumer protection laws. Democratic leadership tried to keep the amendment off the House floor. But Blue Dogs and the moderates that make up the pro-business New Democrat Coalition threatened to oppose the rule governing the bill unless that and other amendments were ruled in order.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Roundtable and other industry groups lobbied members to support Minnick’s amendment; the Chamber – which has run a multimillion-dollar campaign against the CFPA — made it a key vote.

Democratic leadership whipped members against it, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took to the floor to speak against the measure, a sign of leadership’s concern that Minnick could win.

“Very frankly my friends, when you wring your hands about the cost of this referee called the consumer financial protection agency… pales into insignificance in the $1.5 trillion dollars that we have borrowed to get this country out of the deep, deep, deep hole caused by the failure to regulate properly,” Hoyer said, addressing statements from Minnick and his supporters that creating a new stand-alone agency would cost $4.6 billion – a figure Hoyer disputed.

"And it wasn’t the rich guys on Wall Street that paid that price, it was every one of our taxpayers that paid that price. So when you talk about cost, the cost of doing nothing, the cost of not having a referee on the field, skews the game so badly that the little guys, the guys who sent us here, the guys who asked us to protect them from those over which they have now power to protect, they said protect us. And that’s what this debate is about.”

In the end, Minnick’s amendment was defeated, 223 to 208, with 33 Democrats supporting it and eight Democrats not voting.

CFPA’s opponents still embraced the close vote as a sign of progress, and certainly the fate of the provision is cloudy when it comes to the more conservative Senate.

“More than 200 members supporting the Minnick amendment represents a significant victory for real consumer protection reform. It demonstrates that there is support for an alternative to new government bureaucracy, and gives us fresh momentum for an open and deliberative debate in the Senate about more effective approaches to both protect consumers and improve access to credit for our nation’s small businesses,” said Ryan McKee, senior director of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who crafted much of the legislation with the Treasury and shepherded it through the House, described the package as the most significant increase of financial regulation since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. He said it was needed to deal with “the catastrophe inflicted on this country by a lack of sensible financial regulation” a year ago.

“The free market – particularly when it is in an innovative phase – works best with a clearly defined set of rules. And that’s what we’ve done,” Frank said. The legislation would “give full [rein] to the creativity of the financial community and their ability to play their role but it will limit the kind of abuses we’ve had.”

Republicans tried to send the entire bill back to committee as well as kill the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which the Obama administration just announced that it is extending through October 2010.

The motion was defeated, 232 to190.

“Today, House Democrats voted to continue TARP and go right on spending taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon,” charged House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

To many experts, the real meat of the package is the so-called dissolution authority it would grant federal regulators to put failing massive financial institutions to death without the need of taxpayer bailouts.

Administration officials have said that the absence of such authority is what forced them to seek taxpayer money to deal with firms such as Lehman Brothers or the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers to rescue mega-insurer AIG.

Under the bill, the fund would collect $150 billion from the largest financial institutions to pay for the cost of winding down one of their own should another crisis strike. Critics charge that taxpayers will still be on the hook since the fund may not cover the cost of another meltdown.

“There is no bailout fund,” Frank said during debate Thursday, taking on Republican charges that the bill amounts to a perpetual bailout fund. “The bailouts of AIG and Bear Stearns, not possible, illegal under this bill. If a company fails, it will be put to death. Yes, we have death panels, but they got the death panels in the wrong bill. The death panels are in this bill. We will spend money to get rid of them in ways that will minimize damage, money that will come from the financial community.”

The legislation also created a systemic risk council of existing regulators to act as the ranger atop the fire tower, keeping its eye on the entire forest rather than the individual tress as existing prudential regulators do.

The legislation also included a controversial – but wildly popular among members of Congress – measure from libertarian favorite Ron Paul (R-Texas) to greatly expand the Government Accountability Office’s power to audit the Federal Reserve.


Sources: Politico, My Fox33.com