Think Progress – by Igor Volsky
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) embarrassed government regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday morning as she demanded to know why they won’t reveal how frequently big banks illegally foreclosed on homeowners. In January, regulators abandoned a case-by-case review of foreclosure fraud conducted by some of the nation’s largest banks in favor of a $9.3 billion settlement. Under the deal, most of the 4.4 million homeowners who were foreclosed on in 2009 or 2010 received less than $1,000 each.
Fair housing advocates and Democratic lawmakers panned the agreement, claiming that it short-circuited a more detailed review process (known as Independent Foreclosure Review) and let banks off the hook for illegally foreclosing on millions of homeowners. Regulators had initially claimed banks broke the law or made errors in 6.5 percent of all the loans reviewed, though the number has since been revised upward.
During the hearing, Warren pressed officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and The Federal Reserve for answers about how frequently banks broke the law, only to discover that regulators didn’t know the exact number before reaching their settlement and were now unwilling to publicize the error rate. “You’re saying that the [you] did not have an estimate in mind of how many banks had broken the law and how many home owners were the victims of illegal activities?” Warren asked in disbelief. She pressed for public disclosure, but was told that the information about banks’ illegal activities is proprietary and may not ever be released:
WARREN: So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not a decision tell the families who have been illegally foreclosed against?
RICHARD ASHTON (FEDERAL RESERVE): We haven’t made a decision about what information we would provide to individuals. […]
WARREN: So I just want to make sure I get this straight. Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law and you’re not going to tell the homeowners or at least it’s not clear if you’re going to do that?
Watch it:
Last week, the Government Accountability Office issued a report of the reviews and concluded that regulators at the Fed and OCC gave banks “too much leeway” in how the reviews were conducted, implying that the shoddy review process led to a hastened settlement instead of a complete review process. “On Tuesday, regulators released new information suggesting that banks may have made errors in as many as 30 percent of all loans that qualified for a review,” the Huffington Post reported.
Elizabeth Warren……She’s a woman? No way! She’s not a woman. She’s a man with a wig. It looks like Mrs. Doubtfire.
Yep NC, I think you are right. I think I can see that adams apple there. LOL
Guys, that’s just mean. Not everyone is born beautiful (especially once they reach a “certain age”) and if she was, you’d bash her for that. LOL Geez. Are you saying that you’re both look like Adonis?
Hey, I just joined the “Bald Is Better” club, so give me a break, Angel. LOL
Nothing wrong with that. 🙂 I have a good friend who began shaving his head, smooth with a straight razor, at the onset of early baldness (I think he said he was a bit younger than you are, when it happened). He’s pushing 68 and looks like he’s in his 40’s.
At least you’re not dying what’s left of your hair, wearing it in a pony tail and spray painting the bald spot, like Steven Seagal. Yuck!
Yea Angel, you are right and that was rotten of me and NC. Yea, my ex once said when we first got together something like I was a cross between Atlas and Adonis ROFLMAO hahaha. Anyway Elizabeth Warren did do a good job getting on that guy didn`t she.
hahaha. I bet your right. Warren is NOT in your corner. She’s just stepping on the lower/.middle class to get ahead….just like all the rest. She has done NOTHING to further the cause of the people. She is all talk just like the politicians.
If I’m wrong….please cite some examples.
Very smart lady. Thank you for standing up for the victims of this fraud. You certainly made those two pompous asses look like the dishonest people they are!!
Agreed. We need more like her in office.
Or it could just be a dog and pony show. All talk and hype, no action… when is something actually gonna be done to stop these guys(banks)??
Carroll Quigley quotes:
(this guy had access to the inner workings of the banking elite, the banks work on feudalism land law fellow serf.)
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank…sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”
(note) Every bank uses the same law as Fannie-Mae, (pasted below), chattel mortgages are based on the feudal land law, and the serfs only had permission to use the land, because the king owned the land. To prove this, go to your local law library, locate the code the bank used to foreclose, find the original code enactment (footnotes), it will be chattel mortgage law.
Fannie Mae Selling Guide
Definitions:
defines “Mortgage” as: “Collectively, the security instrument, the note, the title evidence,
and all other documents and papers that evidence the debt (including the chattel mortgage, security agreement, and
financing statement for a cooperative share loan); an individual secured loan that is sold to us for retention in our
portfolio or for inclusion in a pool of mortgages that backs a Fannie Mae-guaranteed mortgage security. The term
includes a participation interest where context requires.” Selling Guide, Part XIII, Glossary.