November 16th, 2010, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon  A congressional panel tasked to oversee President Barack Obama’s Wall Street bailout fears the ongoing mortgage and foreclosures scandal could mean serious new troubles for the housing market, a Reuters report said. A study prepared by the Congressional Oversight Panel outlined a range of best-case and worst-case scenarios that could emerge from the foreclosures crisis. In a best-case outcome, the concerns about the scandal are “overblown,” the report said. However, a worst-case scenario could mean the banks face billions of dollars in losses, the study said. → Read More November 10th, 2010, Michael Danielson  Review: In Part 1 and Part 2, we discussed the truth behind the Great Recession, the wealthy’s fight against the Tier 5 unemployment extension, and a nasty financial fantasy called a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO. We followed the CDO and the synthetic CDO through recent financial history right up to the moment of the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007. Now, it’s time to talk about how CDOs turned that bursting bubble into an economic disaster the likes of which most of us are too young to have seen before. (In large part, the information in this article is derived from the book The Looting of America by Les Leopold.) → Read More November 1st, 2010, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon  The Federal Reserve is expected to announce its plan to implement quantitative easing this week. Some economists have expressed concern that the move, dubbed as QE2, won’t work. According to a CNNMoney report, the Fed is likely to announce within the week their move to pump more money into the economy. The → Read More October 26th, 2010, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced on Monday that the preliminary results of an in-depth review of the mortgage and foreclosures practices of a number of large financial institutions will be released next month. Speaking before a housing-finance conference in Arlington, Va., Bernanke said federal banking regulators are “looking intensively” at the → Read More October 14th, 2010, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon  They are called “Burger King Kids” – workers with high school educations and with little or no experience in handling mortgages and foreclosures. In the latest twist in the ongoing foreclosure fraud scandal, these “robo-signers” have allegedly been signing foreclosure affidavits since 2007. According to reports from the New York Times and → Read More October 6th, 2010, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and dozens of other Democrats are calling for the federal government to step in and investigate the country’s leading mortgage companies over allegations of fraudulent filings. Pelosi’s appeal coincides with mounting calls among states for a foreclosure freeze. Last Sunday, we reported on the thousands of homeowners who → Read More June 30th, 2010, Anup Nair  A last minute alternative plan attempting to save the Wall Street reform bill was agreed to by the lawmakers after disagreements about taxing large banks and hedge funds could have almost certainly threatened the passage of the bill in the House when it comes up for voting later this week before the → Read More |
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