TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2013

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ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

Bank of America Foreclosure Reviews: How Promontory Became a Shadow Regulator (Part VA) Promontory has been an influential player virtually from its inception. Its founder and CEO, Gene Ludwig, was the Comptroller of the Currency under Bill Clinton and recognized the potential of the then-sleepy agency to end run other regulators.* After a stint as vice chairman of Bankers Trust, Ludwig established Promonotory and began hiring former regulators, along with attorneys with financial industry experience and former bank officers. . Its roster includes former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, former Nixon and Ford administration official and NASD chief Frank Zarb, and Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder as advisors. Uber lobbyist Ken Duberstein is also on the advisory board. Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin is a former Promontory managing director. Their current staff is virtually an alumni association of the people who ran TARP.

Corporations Could Face More Cases of Criminal Liability Ms. White explained in a speech in 2005 as part of a securities law program just how broad the principle of corporate criminal liability is under the New York Central case: If a single employee, however low down in the corporate hierarchy, commits a crime in the course of his or her employment, even in part to benefit the corporation, the corporate employer is criminally

Lawmakers Ask for More Abandoned Foreclosure Review

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) sent a joint letter dated January 31 to the OCC and the Fed requesting specific information, including the results of all performance reviews and reports from servicers and independent contractors hired to review borrower files. The letter also requested documents completed by the Fed or the OCC.

Financial Dermatologists The Yellow Pages that arrived at my door yesterday. This strange book is an object of great fascination to a generation that has grown up watching YouTube and relying on Wikipedia instead of World Book and Brittanica. It was pure Kismet, but when I opened the volume, it was to Lawyers-Bankruptcy. It turned out to be an enlightening experience. The Yellow Pages is perhaps the only place one can find concentrated advertising by bankruptcy.

Use of portions of bank foreclosure settlement questioned In February, the state got $30.2 million as part of a multi-billion-dollar national settlement with five major banks accused of defrauding homeowners by signing off on foreclosure documents without verifying the information they contained. Republican Gov. Scott Walker decided to use the bulk of the money $24.3 million to pump up The rest, Walker the states general fund. assured, would be used to mitigate the damage

Homeowners and sellers escape 'fiscal cliff' with key benefits Although it wasn't a total win for homeowners and sellers, the patchwork legislation that emerged from the "fiscal cliff" fracas on Capitol Hill came pretty close. In fact, it even reached back and resuscitated two key tax benefits for housing that had expired more than a year ago. Now homeowners will be able to take deductions on their 2012 tax returns that they assumed were no longer available.

In Prince Georges, hundreds of vacant houses drag down neighborhoods The two-story brick house in Clinton had been vacant for two years when the vandalism began. First, a door was busted. Then a window was shattered. Then the air conditioning unit was stolen. Neighbors tried for months to get the foreclosed house on Student Drive boarded up. Finally, about 6 p.m. New Years Day, Leroy Button looked out his window and saw the fiveyear-old house across the street.

'Bailout': Neil Barofsky's Adventures in Groupthink City There is an interesting moment when Barofsky and his deputy Kevin Puvalowski realize that, over a year into the bailout, Treasury official Herb Allison, a close confidant of Geithner, has made a subtle change to the language describing the aims of the ill-fated HAMP mortgage modification program. Allison ends up claiming that the goal of the program was only to make 3 to 4 million offers of trial modifications, as opposed to actually helping 3 to 4 million people stay in their homes, which is what the president and the Treasury originally announced.