rssPosts by Annie Lowrey
Lower- and Middle-Income Americans Tighten the Purse Strings
A new Gallup poll shows that lower- and middle-income Americans — those making less than $90,000 a year — have tightened their purse strings yet again, facing high rates of unemployment and stagnant wages. All in all, lower- and middle-income Americans cut daily spending last month $6 from August More…
How Foreclosure Fraud Might Impact Home Prices
Today, RealtyTrac reported foreclosure and home-sale information for September and the third quarter of the year, showing an extraordinarily weak housing market. Here are just a few data points:
- Banks repossessed a record 102,134 homes in September. That is the highest monthly count ever recorded, and the first
Where’s Your Note?
At the heart of the current foreclosure fraud scandal is an obscure piece of paper — dramatically titled the “note” — that proves how much a borrower owes a lender, and sometimes specifies what collateral the borrower has put up for the loan. In the case of housing, this note More…
Weekly Jobless Claims Remain High
This morning, the Department of Labor announced that initial unemployment insurance claims rose to 462,000, an increase of 13,000 from last week’s 449,000, itself revised up from 445,000. The four-week moving average, which smooths out the jumpy weekly data, rose to 459,000.
Too big to fail rears its head again
Yesterday, Wall Street giant J.P. Morgan Chase announced a $4.4 billion profit in the third quarter. Wall Street analysts should have cheered. Instead, they golf-clapped, while the bank’s chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, went on the defensive on an earnings call.
[Economy1] The reason: foreclosures, again threatening everything from More…
49 50 State Attorneys General Investigating Foreclosure Fraud
Update: A spokeswoman for Alabama’s attorney general just told me that Alabama is also signing on, and subsequently sent out a press release, reprinted at the bottom of this post.
Today, 49 all 50 state attorneys general — representing every state, save for Alabama – announced More…
Reporting Profits, J.P. Morgan Sets Aside $1.3 Billion for Foreclosure Fraud Legal Costs
Today, J.P. Morgan Chase revealed that it made a third-quarter profit of $4.4 billion, despite dwindling revenues. The bank set aside far less money — $6.6 billion, or 67 percent, less than it did at the same time last year — to cover losses on things like mortgages and More…
Who Should Have Been Regulating Mortgage Servicers?
The unfolding foreclosure fraud crisis centers on mortgage servicers, companies that collect and organize mortgage payments on behalf of banks. (Many are actually subsidiaries of big financial-service companies, like J.P. Morgan Chase.) When a homeowner misses payments, the servicers are meant to carefully review their financial statements and to notify More…
Florida AG Weighs In on Foreclosure Moratorium
Earlier today, the White House reiterated that it opposes a blanket moratorium on foreclosures, preferring to work with servicers and lenders to sort out the mortgage paperwork fiasco while letting the 50 state attorneys general file charges, if they see fit. (There is no federal regulator of mortgage More…
Wall Street Pay to Hit New High
Despite the stall-out in the recovery and the decline in median wages, Wall Street executives look set for record pay-outs this year. The Wall Street Journal reports:
About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms — which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms
