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"Look at them. They don't even know. We sold their mortgage months ago."

CURRICULUM RESOURCES FOR COLLEGE CLASSES AND GENERAL PUBLIC

Your donations and Damian Figueroa's heroic effort maintain this invaluable website for the latest news, research and court cases: STOPFORECLOSUREFRAUD.COM   

Learn from experts on the FORECLOURE HOUR RADIO--PAST BROADCASTS. Choose a topic and wait for the audio bar to appear below the topic title. Or choose "click here when on the air" as the show broadcasts from Hawaii every Sunday at 3:00pm local time (6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern), KHVH 830AM, with hosts Attorney Gary Victor Dubin and former Hawaii Governor John D. Waihee.

HOME DEFENDERS LEAGUE (covers all USA) will connect you to local agencies that assist homeowners facing foreclosure.

In California, Home Defenders organize through statewide chapters of ACCE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. Membership is only $10/month.  The main website for ACCE is www.CalOrganize.org.

ACCE released this well-researched report on WELLS FARGO'S FORECLOSURE PIPELINE, showing exactly how Wells Fargo Home Mortgage targeted low-income, minority areas of California for predatory loans that were designed for easy profit through foreclosure.

California's HOMEOWNER BILL OF RIGHTS took effect in January, 2013. This new set of laws is intended to provide protection for homeowners against illegal foreclosures.

For a detailed study of the financial crisis, watch this "MELTDOWN" DOCUMENTARY FILM (2 hours, 49 minutes, in 4 parts) linked here to YouTube. To quote the description in YouTube notes: Meltdown is a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that brought down the financial world. The show begins with the 2008 crash that pushed 30 million people into unemployment, brought countries to the edge of insolvency and turned the clock back to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong? Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place. Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced "light touch regulation" - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace. Meltdown moves on to examine the epidemic of fear that caused the world's banks to stop lending and how the people began their fight back. Finally, it asks how the world can prepare for the next crisis even as it recognises that this one is far from over."

CROMNIBUS passed in March, 2015, to become the US budget. "Too-big-to-fail" banks got bigger through the 2008 Meltdown & Bail-OUT. Now they plan for even worse scams, including this BAIL-IN SCHEME FOR BANKS.

How far from "over" is this banking crisis? Journalist ALAN PYKE summarizes the continuing problems in his article of October 21, 2014. "Fed Official To Big Banks: Change Company Culture Or Risk Being Broken Up". To quote the first two paragraphs: Bankers must fix a business culture that encourages bad behavior, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) head William Dudley told Wall Street executives in a speech on Monday. Without sweeping changes such as making managers pay regulatory fines out of their own pockets, he said, banks will force regulators to break the biggest firms up into smaller companies.
Citing “ongoing occurrences of serious professional misbehavior, ethical lapses, and compliance failures at financial institutions,” Dudley accused the bankers of repaying taxpayer bailouts and political deference to the financial sector with self-enriching malfeasance. “The pattern of bad behavior did not end with the financial crisis, but continued despite the considerable public sector intervention that was necessary to stabilize the financial system,” the regulator said.

Keep up with current developments with more articles by ALAN PYKE and other online journalists at THINKPROGRESS.

Read about these FDIC LAWSUITS from August, 2012. This online article has links to the court documents, including a detailed, readable explanation of structured finance. Get a quick explanation of the stunning lawsuits filed August 17, 2012, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) against Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, and other large banks for the sale of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS), most with default rates around 50%-77% , thus defrauding the much smaller Texas-based Guarantee Bank; the paragraph also includes links to similar lawsuits filed by the FDIC in California, New York, and Alabama on behalf of Colonial-Bank.    Eve recommends these original documents for their clear descriptions of how, exactly, mortgages were bundled and sold to investors, and the percentages of defaults in each fund.  See for example: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver for Guaranty Bank v. Ally Securities LLC, et al., case number D1GN12-002522 (44-page .pdf).

AUGUST, 2013   Although major banks have been successful in avoiding principal reduction at the national level, they have less control over the laws that state and local governments enact. LOCAL PRINCIPAL REDUCTION might work if cities use their power of "eminent domain" to prevent foreclosures of "underwater" homes.   Essentially, the city says, "If the bank will not modify this loan to a reasonable level, the city will take control of the property as if we were building a freeway across this land, and the city will have a different lender write a better loan to prevent default and save that homeowner." On July 31, 2013, Gayle McLaughlin, mayor of Richmond, California (San Francisco Bay Area) became the first mayor to threaten the banks with this policy.   On August 7, her city was hit with LAWSUITS from groups of Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) investors at Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, and later by Bank of New York Mellon. [Click WF & DB vs RICHMOND, CA to see the 48-page .pdf of the complaint filed with the Northern California District court, starting with several pages of MBS Trusts presumably holding mortgages on those 626 underwater Richmond homes.] On August 15, when she came to speak with Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, WELLS FARGO LOCKED THEIR HEADQUARTERS in San Francisco. HOME DEFENDERS LEAGUE quickly gathered thousands of signatures asking the public to STAND WITH RICHMOND, CA by signing a petition.

June, 2013, with September, 2013, follow-up:  In court documents of June 7, 2013, employees describe how banks illegally refused to process loan modifications that were offered through the government's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP . See SIMONE GORDON DECLRATION and BURT SHEEKS DECLARATION, and a March 15, 2012 article on WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM BANKS. All these and more are linked to thisJUNE 14, 2013 ARTICLE published by Pro Publica, describing how employees of banks, including Bank of America, were forced to give false information to homeowners, and were rewarded with money and gift cards if they foreclosed on more homes. Reading all the links in that article will give you a good idea of why homeowners were so frustrated, some to the point of physical illness and life-threatening depression. Repeatedly, diligent home owners were told that their documents were not received, that their entire application packet needed to be sent again, or that their files were being "processed" for loan modifications, when noneof this was true. However, a JUDGE DENIED THE CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT on September 4, 2013, saying that the individual cases were too different from each other, so the various homeowners who suffered could not combine to bring a class-action lawsuit against the bank.

Curriculum Update on The New EEKONOMY:  strange mortgage-meltdown EEKONOMICS that make us say EEK. For a step-by-step lesson in crazy financial incentives, click EEKONOMY. You'll follow the struggle, eviction, and home-reoccupation of one dedicated homeowner fighting a senseless foreclosure, including the video for Jeremy Griffin, July update and the news article for August update.

Follow the trends in recent foreclosure activity with monthly reports produced by Lender Processing Services: LPS Mortgage Monitor.

Hundreds of banks have gone bankrupt, and the trouble continues! Check the FDIC Failed Bank List.

Read a clear explanation of the proper procedure for transferring legal title to a property buyer , and the proper procedure (the reverse, to un-do the purchase) for a proper, legal foreclosure if the buyer fails to pay the mortgage. Despite some small typographical errors, this explanation is a good resource for a lesson on what's wrong with "robo-signing" -- the recent practice of signing too quickly for proper inspection of all documents. PROPER PROCEDURES in archive, or try reading  ORIGINAL POSTING Oct 12, 2010 in Political Forum, along with other readable explanations of related topics (e.g., "Too Big To Fail"). 

Help Make It Happen! We have plenty of red ink to explain this Mortgage Meltdown. What more do we need? YOU!

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