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The proposed $25 billion foreclosure settlement between five major banks and federal and state government agencies is beginning to show signs of coming apart, with two high-profile state attorneys general balking at the offering and the head of one of the major banks predicting that a new White House proposal will kill the deal.
According to media reports, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have rejected the proposed settlement. Shum Preston, a spokesperson for Harris, said the proposal was “inadequate for California” and that it lacked “transparency, relief going to the most distressed homeowners, and meaningful enforcement that ensures accountability.” Biden’s office did not offer a public statement on his decision, stating it was too early to explain the specifics of his rejection.

On the other side of the negotiating table, CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the five banks involved in the settlement, warned that the settlement will fail if the White House pursues a new program to launch new investigations of mortgage lenders and securitizers. President Obama proposed the new investigations during Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.

“It has a pretty good chance of derailing it,” Dimon said in a televised interview with CNBC. “I think it would be better for America if that settlement took place. If this thing derails that, so be it.”

The White House has yet to formally announce the launch of the new investigative unit. However, the New York Times is reporting that New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has been tapped to lead the new probe. Last August, Schneiderman was ejected from the executive committee responsible for guiding negotiations between attorneys general and the nation’s largest banks. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who spearheaded the settlement negotiations, accused Schneiderman of actively undermining the talks.

Neither the White House nor Schneiderman’s office has confirmed the Times’ report.

Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America have done a lot to help struggling homeowners in this devastating foreclosure crisis. However, it appears that this group led by their fearless leader, Bruce Marks is forgetting one key component in operating a foreclosure prevention business, treating your past clients well as you treat your new clients.

If you don’t Mr. Marks, people loose their homes on your watch.

Now, it looks like this is the new nightmare trend for homeowners who are not getting help from their mortgage servicers. Trying to do the right thing, struggling homeowners are now entangled in a never ending web of  non-profit disservice. The NACA media machine that is 100% more focused on today’s numbers is failing to assist past homeowner clients who seem to be up loan modification creek without a paddle.

My question to NACA and Bruce Marks is , “Is this about numbers and bringing in the money or saving homes?”

[expand title="Read more..." swaptitle="Collapse.."] That’s a simple question dude and you better pay attention. The complaints I have received about NACA and these conventions where I have personally seen thousands and thousands of homeowners NOT get help at these events proves the latter. I know this for a fact and have held my blogging tongue far too long.

You see Bruce Marks is or was a friend of mine. (probably the latter after this blog post)  It seems like when I started asking Mr. Marks and Darren Duarte his marketing man about helping these past clients and making legitimate complaints as caused him to consider me a foe. That is simply not true. I am here on this earth to do what is right and to tell the truth before honoring false friendships.

What do I mean by this?

Well, NACA has embarked on what I call a foreclosure rock tour promoting their brand of home saving techniques as the Holy Grail of loan modifications. Bruce Marks, the self anointed Moses of mortgage restructuring for homeowners has been quoted several times in media publications claiming that his organization has an 80% success rate.

Well, I have news for Main Street and NACA may not like it. I have actually been invited to two of these Save the Dream conventions by Bruce Marks personally. In early 2008 to Washington DC and later in Hartford Connecticut to stay in hotels, protest and march in Washington DC.

I can say with 110% accuracy that this is 110% false, a lie and I have many homeowners witnesses to prove this fact.

Yes, this is a marketing lie and there in no way in loan modification hell that they are attaining these numbers. I saw thousands of homeowners leave these events discouraged and not helped daily. Now, the NACA complaints I receive daily in my forum have increased 10 fold. Some homeowner have been with the organization for 1-2 years with very little help and terrible service.

I’m confused NACA and Bruce. Is a homeowner who needs help from the past different from a homeowner that goes to these conventions? Why are you discarding these thousands and thousands of homeowners in your database that can’t get help or answers.

Many of their mortgage servicers will not work with these people because they have been told that since they work with NACA, they have to work with NACA. To put it quite simply, these homeowners seen F’d by NACA and left all alone to die a slow, painful foreclosure death while you do rock tours and media interviews.

My question to the Federal Trade Commission is, “Don’t non-profits have to abide by the same laws that regular corporations or business operate under?”

NACA has a huge database of over 300-500,000 homeowner clients from the past that have not been helped are simply getting neglected. All the while NACA and Bruce Marks hold conventions with these employees who should be helping these past clients.

This is not how these Federal funds for foreclosure prevention are supposed to be used Mr. Marks and you know this. Consider this your official warning that you will be watched and reported on for failing to do what is right many times in running NACA. Maybe an investigation by legal authorities will curb this abuse of tax payer dollars and make NACA help past clients?

Don’t become the next Acorn Mr. Marks.

Change your ways now or I will make sure they are brought to public light and these homeowner stories told. Below are some of the true homeowner stories told in my LoanSafe.org/forum and on this blog in regards to their experiences with NACA.

Don’t believe me? These homeowner commenter’s left their real names and maybe NACA should look in that 500,000 homeowner database and locate them. That’s if you can.

Karen Long July 17, 2009 at 8:58 am

I read the article that you wrote in reference to NACA helping people with their mortgages. I attended the “Save the Dream” tour in Columbia, SC this past March. I was one of the thousands that sat in the coliseum for 16 hours & all I have received is lip service. There are 15 people in my church that NACA is supposedly working with, and none of us has received any assistance. NACA doesn’t respond to faxes, emails or phone messages. 4 months later and I have not received any help and NACA will not return my phone calls. I have only received 1 telephone call from NACA in 4 months.
In the article it stated that people can “walk out the same day with a new mortgage”. This is simple not true, irregardless of what Bruce Marks of NACA is saying.

I am most concerned because NACA is taking the “Save the Dream” tour to eight more states starting this week. They haven’t completed the backlog from Columbia, SC. Why would they take on more clients? A representative from NACA told me that each NACA negotiator has 5000 clients. This has become a hopeless and frustrating experience.

It appears that while NACA has helped a few people, they are giving false hope to many others.

Do you think this is worth investigating? Please email me if you need additional information.

Thanking you for your consideration

Michael Ormandy August 5, 2009 at 1:03 pm

Ok, how about his story being worth “investigating”. Let’s talk about NACA. I went to their offices 2 1/2 months ago WITH ALL REQUIRED DOCUMENTATION and gave them every single thing they required, first day. We were told it takes 6-8 weeks to get the new loan closed and not to cal NACA, only to email.

They would call us, we were told. After 1 1/2 months and not a PEEP from them or the lender we called many times and finally got someone on the phone who said call back in two weeks. We called back at the two month mark, and were told by a message they no longer had people to answer the phones, to leave a message. Weeks later, no call back. No responses to emails. Two missed mortgage payments, a threatening lender, and nobody to communicate with. The bank acts like they know nothing about it, though NACA said the one time we talked to them that they submitted everything to the bank.

Bottom line: DO NOT USE NACA.

They have horrible / non-existent communications, so you don’t know what is going on, and I have yet to talk to one human being in person who was actually helped by them. All I see is a well orchestrated PR campaign via the internet, and a bunch of “success stories” on internet web pages. Spend the money, hire an attorney, which is who I will be meeting with tomorrow.

Deborah October 11, 2009 at 11:58 pm

NACA is taking on too much and the result is people are getting bad assistance/no assistance. After we went through the entire application with them in April we never heard from them again. In fact, I think the Minneapolis office must have closed. No one else around the country will return our calls. We finally had to re-submit everything again with Wells Fargo. They put us off until we finally had our state attorney general contact them and then they just simply refused to help us. Thanks for nothing NACA! Why do they continue to carry out these campaigns and get more people asking for their assistance if they can’t deal with what they have going on right now.

Source: http://loanworkout.org

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Eric Holder and Head of DOJ’s Criminal Division Were Partners for a Firm Which Used to Represent the Big Banks, Fannie, Freddie and MERS

Obama’s Department of Justice isn’t prosecuting any big fish.
Indeed, the Obama administration is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

This is true even though the big banks – such as Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo – committed some fraud, but their entire business model is fraudulent. See this, this, this, this and this.

The same is true of Fannie, Freddie. And even more so with Mers, where its entire purpose – from day one – was fraudulent. Here, here, here, here and here.

So why haven’t the fraudsters running these chop shops been prosecuted by Attorney General Eric Holder, and the head of the DOJ’s criminal division Lanny Breuer?
Reuters helps explain why today:
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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division [watch this to get a sense of Breuer], were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks’ offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

***

While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm’s clients included the four largest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co – as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

***

Covington represented Freddie Mac …. [and] MERS Corp …. Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and several other large banks.

***

Covington in 2004 also wrote a crucial opinion letter commissioned by MERS, providing legal justification for its electronic registry. MERS spokeswoman Karmela Lejarde declined to comment on Covington legal work done for MERS.

This isn’t as bad as Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo’s letter justifying torture by the Bush Administration, but it’s arguably somewhat analogous, as it is a legal opinion trying to justify blatant illegality.

No wonder top financial crime expert Bill Black says that we have to fire Eric “Place” Holder  and all other government officials who are blocking prosecution of the criminals who caused the economic crisis.

Indeed, it makes one wonder whether the Department of Justice still dispenses justice … or has turned into a “protection racket” for the rich and powerful.

Of course, most of the rest of boys in D.C. are not much better.
From: http://www.washingtonsblog.com
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Of the 55-million families with mortgages, 10.4-million of them “are sliding toward failure and foreclosure”—a tragedy that will depress the U.S. housing market for years to come, a result of too many houses for sale and too few buyers.

That’s the blunt conclusion of distinguished economics journalist William Greider, to be published in an article in the November 14th issue of The Nation magazine.

America’s “Economic recovery will have to wait until that surplus (excess houses) is gone, because the housing sector has always led the way out of recession,” Greider says. “The more housing supply exceeds demand, the more prices fall. The more prices fall, the more families get sucked into the deep muddy. The vicious cycle is known in the industry as the death spiral. So far, there’s no end in sight.”
[expand title="Read more..." swaptitle="Collapse.."]Greider says the solution is to forgive the debtors: “Write down the principal they owe on their mortgage to match the current market value of their home, so they will no longer be underwater. Refinance the loan with a reduced interest rate, so the monthly payment is at a level that the struggling homeowner can handle.”

Forgiving the debtors is the right thing to do, Greider continues, “because the bankers have already been forgiven. The largest banks were in effect relieved of any guilt for their crimes of systemic fraud or for causing the financial breakdown—when the government bailed them out, no questions asked.”

Far from a show of gratitude, Greider notes the response of the banks has been ugly. “Right now, these trillion-dollar institutions are methodically harvesting the last possible pound of flesh from millions of homeowners before kicking these failing debtors out of their homes—the story known as the ‘foreclosure crisis.’”

The largest and most powerful banks are standing in the way of the solution and the Obama administration “is standing with them,” Greider adds, “because bankers and other creditors would have to take a big hit if they were forced to write down the debt owed by borrowers. The banks would have to report reduced capital and their revenue would decline if homeowners were allowed to make smaller monthly payments.”

President Obama, he says, “seems to be playing a sly double game—protecting banks from sharing the pain while proclaiming sympathy for embattled homeowners.” Greider adds, “The government, in effect, has been sheltering banks from facing the hard truth about their condition.” Banks may be valuing mortgages or mortgage bonds at 85 cents on the dollar when their true market value is closer to 30 cents. “That strengthens the case for a general and orderly write-down now: if many of these loans aren’t ever going to be rapid, then the assets now claimed by the banks are imaginary.”

Greider quotes Stephen Roach, a Morgan Stanley economist and lecturer at the Yale University School of Manaagement, who says, “Some form of debt forgiveness would be a clear positive. Debt forgivness is a big deal when so many Americans are underwater and unable to keep up with their payments… With debt reduction, people would feel less reluctant to spend money on new things. If you can do that, then companies will feel more confident about future demand, less reluctant about hiring more workers.”

Roach believes the government can instruct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which hold some $1.5 trillion in housing loans or mortgage-backed securities, to take a write-down on their outstanding loans. “Then the government can put pressure on the banks to do the same thing. The banks will resist, but they have to go along if the government is forceful enough,” Roach says.

However, housing-finance expert Laurie Goodman, said the government is making it harder for homeowners to get new mortgages despite the sagging housing market. “Almost every single proposed government action has been aimed at further tightening credit availability,” she told the Senate Banking Committee last September.

With 25 million workers unemployed or underemployed, the President enjoys great popular support for pushing through a massive jobs bill, raising the minimum wage and shoveling money into the pockets of hard-pressed homeowners to help them pay their mortgages. Instead, as Greider says, Obama has been siding with the banks. Worse, he keeps squandering tax dollars on foreign wars opposed by the most Americans. There’s not much left over to stimulate the economy when the Pentagon has sucked up $800 billion in direct costs to wage war in Iraq with indirect costs, estimated by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, at a staggering $4 trillion.

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant “for good causes” who writes on political and military topics. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com
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PHOTO – Brian Moynihan attempts a smile.

Foreclosure Fightclub attorney George Babcock strikes again.  The devil is starting to shiver.

Hat tip to Foreclosure Hamlet for their coverage.

Check the 3 documents below:
1st Document:
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http://ikeepmyhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/def.pdf
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2nd Document:
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http://ikeepmyhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/bogus.pdf
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3rd Document:
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http://ikeepmyhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/letter.pdf
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As government, federal regulators and big-money private investors try to figure out a plan for bulk sales of foreclosed properties, big banks are already making deals, but they are few and far between.
The trouble is, they are looking at even bigger write-downs than forecast if they sell these distressed properties in bulk.
“One of the things that might be holding these bulk sales back is that the assets might not have been fully written down by the banks,” says Rick Sharga of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, a private equity firm.
[expand title="Read More..." swaptitle="Collapse.."]“The problem for the banks is that in that scenario, when they sell off these assets in bulk, they have to recognize pretty significant losses all at once, rather than spread those losses out over a longer period of time.”
Sharga’s firm is in the midst of a half billion dollar deal with a major U.S. bank to buy foreclosed properties.
No details on the deal until it closes, but those deals are still rare, despite investor appetite, because the banks would have to take bigger write-downs on the value of those properties than originally thought.
Bank officials will tell you that the write-downs are taken when the properties are taken back as REO (real estate owned), that is, when they are officially repossessed by the lender. That value is based on the current market value of those properties. In some markets, the bank will be able to sell REOs at pretty close to the market value. But if they sell the properties in bulk to investors, they will have to offer deep bulk discounts, and that means additional write-downs.

The same could be true of any bulk program with the government, involving current and future REOs at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA.

Sources say there was a big meeting this week in Washington, DC about just that.
The players included Treasury and HUD officials, representatives of Fannie and Freddie and their conservator, the FHFA, along with private equity investors and housing non-profits.[/expand]

Since the market downturn several years ago lawmakers in Washington have been talking about reforming the secondary mortgage market but nothing has come out of Congress yet. This year, though, a lot of progress is expected to be made toward reform, so it will be especially important for real estate brokers and sales associates to stay engaged in what’s happening, particularly this spring.

For over a year now, state attorneys general have been negotiating some kind of settlement deal with the nations four largest lenders, as well as several smaller ones.
The settlement pertains to faulty foreclosure processing, first uncovered in October of 2010 and now commonly referred to as “Robo-signing.”
Rather than dozens of lawsuits, the states initially were looking to assess one great punishment on the lenders and thereby appease borrowers who felt they were wronged. The banks were looking for wider immunity from securitization issues, and that is largely what has held up the negotiations for so long.

[expand title="Read More..." swaptitle="Collapse.."]Now, suddenly, after umpteen “we’re close to a deal”s, apparently we’re now really close to a deal, largely because the State of the Union address is next Tuesday, and this is an election year. So at a meeting of Mayors Wednesday, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, mentioned that a settlement would include principal reduction for about a million borrowers.

“With few other tools to help housing, the administration sees the deal as a way to take credit for helping underwater borrowers without exposing taxpayers to loss,” says Jaret Seiberg at Guggenheim partners, noting that the deal may not fully be in place by Tuesday, but a “framework” could be announced. “If this deal does score enough political points, then it will dampen calls for the administration to roll out more housing help such as a mass refinancing. As we remain dubious about the real impact of a deal, our view is that the administration will face pressure this spring to do more. That means more refinancings of GSE loans will still be on the table,” he adds.

Of course we already know the basic framework of the deal, which would involve up to $25 billion from the banks, though only a small portion of that would be a cash settlement. The bulk of the money would be used to do principal write downs, short sales, and more aggressive loan modifications. Unfortunately, several key states, including Massachusetts, California, New York, Delaware and Nevada have expressed serious concerns about the deal currently on the table, and some bank sources are telling us that without California and New York, it’s hard to see how there would be a deal.

If there is a deal, beyond the politics, it could have a larger effect on the state of the housing market and its recovery. Remember, this deal is about foreclosure processing, which has been nearly stalled in many states. “To that end, it will give banks some increased certainty about their ability to foreclose in those states that sign on to the agreement. As a result, we may see foreclosures ramp up fairly quickly in those states,” says Josh Rosner of Graham-Fisher.
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