Last year, the U.S. government bailed out auto giant GM at a cost of around $50 billion, gaining 61 percent of the company in the process and expecting around $20 billion in eventual losses. The government also bailed out its lending arm, GMAC, at an upfront cost of More…
This time in Memphis. In fact, city officials are so fired up that they’ve filed a lawsuit charging the mortgage-loan giant with discrimination. The New York Times reports:
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tennessee, marshaled a raft of statistics to argue that Wells Fargo offered one
Just in time for your holiday listening pleasure, here are two songs making their way around the blogosphere to celebrate the season and mark another year of falling home prices and an expanding commercial real estate bust.
First, via Mortgage Insider, here’s “The Twelve Months of Default,” which More…
It looks like the problem of banks walking away from distressed properties is finally getting some serious attention. Federal Reserve Board Governor Elizabeth Duke tackled the subject in a recent speech, Housing Wire reports. She detailed a disturbing trend TWI has been following since January 2008: More…
On the heels of our report detailing short-sale flipping and other kinds of mortgage fraud that are on the rise, the Federal Housing Administration plans to announce it will tighten lending standards to try to stem rising defaults.
The Washington Post reports Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun More…
As we noted on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee is in the midst of tackling financial regulatory reform, which has brought out the lobbyists in full force. Here’s just a small taste of the action so far: American Banker is reporting that the committee is close to More…
When is this ever going to end? Conservative lawmakers are seizing on ACORN’s troubles to once again go after the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining law that somehow became a scapegoat for the housing crisis last year, the AP reports.
The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act was intended to end
A new study out today from the University of North Carolina Center for Community Capital provides more evidence that deregulatory zealots have a lot to answer for when it comes to the mortgage crisis: State anti-predatory laws actually worked, slowing down foreclosures.
But, alas, the state protections were overruled More…
This shouldn’t go by unnoticed: The former head of Enron’s failed Internet division was just sentenced to 16 months in prison, The Washington Post reports. Joseph Hirko, the former broadband unit CEO also agreed to pay $8.7 million in restitution. Prosecutors contend Hirko falsely promoted Enron’s broadband division to More…
As TWI has reported, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with talk show host and commentator Tavis Smiley for “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods beginning in 2005. A suit by the Illinois attorney general contends Wells used the seminars to market high-cost and risky subprime loans to More…
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