MFI News

Providence Council OKs fine for disregarding foreclosure law

January 27, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

Philip Marcelo, Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE — The City Council has approved a $2,000 fine for banks or lenders that fail to follow the city’s new foreclosure ordinance, which requires that lenders attempt to renegotiate mortgages with homeowners before filing a deed of foreclosure with the city.

The fine was among a number of amendments that received final approval from the council Thursday. The amendments were proposed by Mayor David N. Cicilline’s administration and are expected to be signed by the mayor later this month.

The new language introduces substantive changes to an ordinance put into effect in September to slow the tide of foreclosures.

The first local law of its kind in the state, it encourages lenders to try to modify a mortgage so that a homeowner can remain in his or her home. A similar one has since been adopted by the City of Cranston.

According to Cicilline, the amendments were requested to address problems noted since the rollout of the new mandates.

As it is written, the “foreclosure mediation ordinance” requires a meeting between lenders and homeowners prior to foreclosure.

Any lender failing to comply with the requirements would not be able to have a deed of ownership recorded by the city Recorder of Deeds, a step necessary to complete the foreclosure process.

But the city has found that failure to comply with the ordinance can lead to breaking the chain of title, which affects the value of the property and creates problems for the purchaser. (Read more)

Tagged: foreclosure help, Providence Foreclosure laws, Rhode Island Foreclosures

Bank of America Attempts To Steal House From Elderly MA Couple Ruining Son’s Homecoming From Iraq

January 21, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

WCVB-BOSTON — A Massachusetts couple says their son’s homecoming from Iraq was spoiled when Bank of America/Countrywide foreclosed on their Florida home, which they owned free and clear, according to a lawsuit.

Homeowner Charlie Cardoso, of New Bedford, was shocked to hear that the bank, with whom he never had a mortgage, foreclosed on his Spring Hill, Fla., home, despite telling the bank it had the wrong house.

The Cardoso’s tenant was forced to leave the Florida home, and the bank seized the home, changed the locks and removed personal property from the house and garage, the family claims.

They said Bank of America’s foreclosure spoiled the couple’s plans to welcome home Cardoso’s wife’s son, who had just completed his third tour of duty in Iraq.

Upon notice of the seizure, Charlie Cardoso drove to Florida to protect his house, missing the homecoming.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Behind Cancelled Foreclosure Auctions?

January 13, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

The fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the holiday now have “unlimited” support from the government may signal new methods of dealing with the foreclosure crisis that once again will destroy the prudent in our country and reward the Wall Street bankers with another gift.

So why have cancellations risen so much in the last few months? This has to do with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, and JP Morgan. All these lenders went on a foreclosure “holiday” that by their own admissions, ended on January 3rd. So that in itself would account for many of the auctions recently canceled.

Now part of this may come from the foreclosure holiday but why cancel February? It probably has to do with HAMP and also something with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now having unlimited support.

You can understand why the shadow inventory numbers are off the charts yet looking at standard data paints a deceiving picture.

401k/IRA Screw Job Coming?

January 13, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

Now this is a guaranteed rape job.

In a short conversation this noontime that CNBC apparently has omitted from their archives (Why’s that folks?) Rick Santelli was talking about a potential to effectively force money into the Treasury market.

Where would they get this? From your 401k and IRA accounts!

Let me tell you what this is – it is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Treasury market!

Forcing people into Treasuries as an “annuity” is exactly what Social Security allegedly is. Except that Treasury stole the money that was collected in FICA taxes and spent it!

Could the Fed Be Manufacturing Another Crash?

January 11, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

A week ago, I wrote an essay titled Bonds, Not Stocks, Will be the Big Story in 2010. In it, I detailed how the US Treasury is now facing a debt spiral: a situation where it needs to issue roughly $150 billion of new debt per month WHILE rolling over TRILLIONS in existing debt at a time when investors are willing to lend to it for shorter and shorter periods of time.

Indeed, in the next two months alone, the US must roll over $133 billion in debt.

And this is coming at the precise time that the US will begin issuing roughly $150-300 billion in new debt to finance our $1.5 trillion deficit.

The big question now is… WHO’S going to be buying this stuff?

Trilateral Geithner: Corrupted Regulator?

January 11, 2010 by admin · 1 Comment

Timothy Geithner is a rising star within the membership of the Trilateral Commission: He is highly educated, has extensive regulatory experience, and is wiling to bend, break or obscure the rules to favor his global elite bosses.

In November 2008 when Geithner was President of the NY Federal Reserve, just before becoming Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, recently discovered e-mails reveal that Geithner and the NY Fed pressured the bailed-out AIG into keeping it’s mouth shut about which banks were receiving taxpayer funds in exchange for toxic assets known as “credit swaps.” (This story was made possible by copies of e-mails between Fed and AIG officials that were recently secured by California Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA.))

Furthermore, the NY FED and AIG then conspired to officially hide the event when AIG was required to make a regulatory filing to the SEC on December 24, 2008: The Fed crossed out the reference on its records and AIG excluded the facts on their filing.

Lenders must issue bad-credit alerts

January 10, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

By Kenneth R. Harney / The Nation’s Housing

It’s been a six-year wait, but the Federal Reserve and Federal Trade Commission have finally come out with important consumer-protection rules that Congress mandated in 2003.

On Dec. 22, the two agencies published regulations designed to safeguard mortgage applicants from needlessly high interest rates caused by erroneous or outdated data in consumers’ credit files.

The rules require lenders to alert consumers whenever negative credit information causes people to face higher interest rates, bigger down payments or less-than-optimal terms on loans underwritten with “risk-based” pricing.

Risk-based pricing is standard these days on mortgages, credit cards, car loans and most other financial products.

Generally, lenders will charge you higher fees and interest rates the lower your credit score is.

The problem: Consumers’ credit records sometimes contain “junk” information – incorrect or outdated reports of late payments, unpaid bills, charge-offs or judgments. Any of these can severely depress your credit score.

Americans have the right to demand correction of these errors, but frequently have no idea that problems even exist.

For years, the only time you’d learn of trouble was when you got rejected for a loan.

Federal law grants consumers turned down for loans the right to “adverse-action” notices encouraging people to check their credit files for errors.

But with the rapid spread of risk-based pricing, fewer and fewer applicants ever actually got rejected for loans.

Instead, lenders simply charged higher interest rates to compensate for the perceived risk involved in giving credit to a shaky consumer.

The entire subprime-mortgage industry, which lit the fuse for what eventually became the housing bust, was based on this premise. Lenders simply charged borrowers with low credit scores far more than they did consumers with “prime” scores.

But in 2003, Congress passed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act amid fears that many consumers faced high interest rates for no good reason.

Among its long list of reforms, FACTA introduced the concept of free annual credit reports for everyone.

It also ordered the Fed and FTC to come up with a “risk-based-pricing notice” that consumers would get whenever their credit scores triggered high interest rates or other adverse treatment.

The idea was to warn people about possible credit-file errors before someone accepted an overpriced loan. (Read more)

Tagged: FACTA enforcement, mortgage lending

Geithner’s Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure

January 8, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Willem Buiter Warns of Massive Dollar Collapse

January 8, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned.

The long-held assumption that US assets – particularly government bonds – are a safe haven will soon be overturned as investors lose their patience with the world’s biggest economy, according to Willem Buiter.

Professor Buiter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member who is now at the London School of Economics, said this increasing disenchantment would result in an exodus of foreign cash from the US.

Lenders Struggling to Keep up with Demand for Short Sales

January 6, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment

Thinking he’d found a cheap vacation home, Louis Pallante in April bid $300,000 for a fixer-upper in Toms River.

And then he waited to hear from the seller. And waited. After finally learning six months later that his offer had been rejected, he upped his bid to $315,000. But before he could close on the property, it went into foreclosure, only adding to his frustration.
“I can’t get a number or a name or anything from anyone,” said Pallante, 55, a reinsurance claims manager from Belleville.

Like many New Jersey residents hunting for discounted real estate, Pallante is learning firsthand there is nothing short about the short-sale process, in which lenders unload properties for less than they’re owed and borrowers get their debt wiped clean.