Over a 1,000 Felony Convictions By Reagan Administration For S&L Crisis. Zero For Obama For The Greatest Robbery, Con Job, And Destruction Of The World Economy.

CitiGroup Whistleblower: 'Brute Force' Used To Hide Bad Loans

By Susie Madrak

I find it hard to believe that after the serious consequences that CitiBank suffered (oh wait, they didn't, did they?) and all the regulations that were tightened up and carefully enforced (oh wait, they weren't, were they?), that this bank would dare to do such things. Boy, you just know something really, really bad will happen to them now. Right?

Four years after rotten mortgages helped trigger a global financial crisis, Sherry Hunt said her Citigroup Inc. quality-control team was still finding flaws in new loans that included altered tax forms, straw buyers and borrowers who listed fictitious employers.

Instead of reporting the defects to the Federal Housing Administration, the bank saddled the agency with losses by falsely declaring the loans fit for its federal insurance program, according to a complaint filed yesterday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Citigroup agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle the claims, and admitted that it certified loans for FHA backing that didn’t qualify.

A whole $158.3 million? There goes the annual hookers-and-blow budget!

Hunt, who filed a sealed lawsuit against New York-based Citigroup in August that the government joined, will collect $31 million of that sum -- before taxes and attorney’s fees -- as a whistle-blower, she said in an interview yesterday. The settlement, which encompassed misconduct spanning 2004 to the present, indicates Citigroup has lingering problems in its O’Fallon, Missouri-based CitiMortgage unit.

“Citigroup in particular received government funding, taxpayer dollars, because of its risky operations,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “It shows that they hadn’t really learned much of a lesson from the financial crisis.”

Well, sure they did! They learned that the people who are allegedly looking out for the public interest will accept just about any cover story for their bad behavior, however ludicrous it is.

The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development faulted Citigroup’s quality-control program during a 2008 audit, according to the complaint. Taxpayers rescued the bank with a $45 billion bailout that same year and guaranteed more than $300 billion of its risky assets after the lender’s stability was threatened by mounting costs on soured loans. The bank lost a total of $29.3 billion in 2008 and 2009.

Hunt’s co-workers, instead of checking for fraud or making reports about underwriting defects to the FHA as required, argued with her over the soundness of the loans, she said. Employees who acted as “gatekeepers” applied “what they describe as ‘brute force’ to pressure Citi’s quality control managers” into downplaying defects, according to the government’s complaint.

Some colleagues had pay incentives tied to reducing the number of reported problems, and they spent hours trying to get her to relax her warnings, including those about the most basic deficiencies, Hunt said.

I can't remember how long ago this happened, but they used to have these things call "jail sentences" that reduced such shenanigans. But hey, bygones!

Now We Can See Why Cal AG Harris And Obama Were Pushing For A Deal With Bank Immunity.

Audit Uncovers Extensive Flaws in Foreclosures

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Published: February 15, 2012

An audit by San Francisco county officials of about 400 recent foreclosures there determined that almost all involved either legal violations or suspicious documentation, according to a report released Wednesday.

Annie Tritt for The New York Times

Phil Ting, the San Francisco assessor-recorder, found widespread violations or irregularities in files of properties subject to foreclosure sales.

Anecdotal evidence indicating foreclosure abuse has been plentiful since the mortgage boom turned to bust in 2008. But the detailed and comprehensive nature of the San Francisco findings suggest how pervasive foreclosure irregularities may be across the nation.

The improprieties range from the basic — a failure to warn borrowers that they were in default on their loans as required by law — to the arcane. For example, transfers of many loans in the foreclosure files were made by entities that had no right to assign them and institutions took back properties in auctions even though they had not proved ownership.

Commissioned by Phil Ting, the San Francisco assessor-recorder, the report examined files of properties subject to foreclosure sales in the county from January 2009 to November 2011. About 84 percent of the files contained what appear to be clear violations of law, it said, and fully two-thirds had at least four violations or irregularities.

Kathleen Engel, a professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston said: “If there were any lingering doubts about whether the problems with loan documents in foreclosures were isolated, this study puts the question to rest.”

The report comes just days after the $26 billion settlement over foreclosure improprieties between five major banks and 49 state attorneys general, including California’s. Among other things, that settlement requires participating banks to reduce mortgage amounts outstanding on a wide array of loans and provide $1.5 billion in reparations for borrowers who were improperly removed from their homes.

But the precise terms of the states’ deal have not yet been disclosed. As the San Francisco analysis points out, “the settlement does not resolve most of the issues this report identifies nor immunizes lenders and servicers from a host of potential liabilities.” For example, it is a felony to knowingly file false documents with any public office in California.

In an interview late Tuesday, Mr. Ting said he would forward his findings and foreclosure files to the attorney general’s office and to local law enforcement officials. Kamala D. Harris, the California attorney general, announced a joint investigation into foreclosure abuses last December with the Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto. The joint investigation spans both civil and criminal matters.

The depth of the problem raises questions about whether at least some foreclosures should be considered void, Mr. Ting said. “We’re not saying that every consumer should not have been foreclosed on or every lender is a bad actor, but there are significant and troubling issues,” he said.

California has been among the states hurt the most by the mortgage crisis. Because its laws, like those of 29 other states, do not require a judge to oversee foreclosures, the conduct of banks in the process is rarely scrutinized. Mr. Ting said his report was the first rigorous analysis of foreclosure improprieties in California and that it cast doubt on the validity of almost every foreclosure it examined.

“Clearly, we need to set up a process where lenders are following every part of the law,” Mr. Ting said in the interview. “It is very apparent that the system is broken from many different vantage points.” 

Read More: Here

I Hope None Of You Are Heavily Invested In Greek Debt.

The First Dominoes: Greece, Reality, and Cascading Default 

Charles Hugh Smith

 
I asked frequent contributor Zeus Yiamouyiannis to comment on the coming Greek default. Here is his insightful response.

Greece is the epicenter of a drama that threatens to unwind with all the intrigue and subterfuge of ancient Greek myths and tragedies. As with the legend of Icarus, big, and now bigger, transnational banks provoked the gods with their wax-and-feather financial fabrications to create the appearance of soaring wealth. Now that they have flown too close to the sun and their wings have melted, these banks are being brought to earth by the obligations and consequences imposed by their fabrications.

Rather than take responsibility, these banks seek to appease the gods by sacrificing taxpayers. In fact, if one looks closely, these banks aspire to be gods themselves. They clothe themselves in their indispensability and shield themselves from accountability with tales about how many innocent citizens will be hurt if they don’t get their next bailout. It is as if they say, “We are above the law… We are the law.” Mathematics, legal enforcement, restraint, humility all must fall under the sword of their hubris.

In the end, just as with a Greek tragedy or a Yeats poem, this center cannot hold and things fall apart. When one abuses the laws and principles of mathematics and capitalism, claiming to be a faithful servant, consequence and accountability eventually catch up. The breaking point inexorably nears. Citizens are beginning to think, voice, and act: “We can do without the false idols that call themselves banks. In fact, we need them to be dissolved for us to survive and thrive.”

Reality is the revenge of the gods.

Read More: Here

Thanks To Cognitive Dissonance Conservative 99%'ers Will Still Vote Against Their Own Best Interest, and Transfer The Money They Paid For Their Retirement To Romney's .01% Cronies.

Mitt Romney Tells CPAC He'll Cut Social Security Benefits, Begin Privatizing Medicare

By Kenneth Quinnell

Echoing what he told a Koch Brothers audience in November, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would cut Social Security benefits and that he would make changes to Medicare that would effectively begin the privatization of the program. While Romney was a little more vague about privatizing Medicare, he made no mistake about his proposal to cut Social Security:

"We're going to have to recognize that Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable, not for the current group of retirees, but for coming generations," Romney told the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference. "And we can't afford to avoid these entitlement challenges any longer."

Romney said: "We are going to slowly and gradually raise the retirement age for Social Security" from the current 66 for full benefits. "And we'll slow the growth rate in benefits for higher-income retirees."

As for Medicare, "tomorrow's seniors should have the freedom to choose between Medicare and a range of private plans," Romney said to applause. "And if these future seniors want a more expensive plan, then they will have to pay the additional cost."

Romney's proposed "solutions" are, of course, designed to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Both programs are sustainable for generations to come and the proposals that Romney and other Republicans are making for the programs would be more likely to create the problem they say they are trying to save.

GOP Willing To Spend Your Money To Punish The The Poor For Being Poor.

New Study: Health Care Costs Fall When Poor Get Health Care Coverage

By Susie Madrak

I know so many people who need medical care right this minute and aren't getting it that I literally can't keep track anymore. Let's put it this way: By the time a TV network is holding a sweepstakes where the grand prize is a trip to New York for ... a colonoscopy, , you know paying for tests and treatment is on everyone's minds. That's why it's just so crazy that the GOP and their mindless minions are so fixated on ripping away the Affordable Health Care Act. It's not only needed, it will save a lot of money:

The concept of support for universal health care is taboo among Republicans who scrutinize the Affordable Care Act -- dubbing it the "Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" -- and call for its repeal. But a new UC Irvine study challenges the GOP argument that the health care law is too costly, with data illustrating that health care costs on the whole fall when poorer, uninsured patients are provided with insurance.

"In a case study involving low-income people enrolled in a community-based health insurance program, we found that use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and -- over time -- total health care costs declined," David Neumark, a co-author of the study, said in a release accompanying the findings.

The study -- which focused on uninsured people in Richmond, Virginia who fell 200 percent below the poverty line -- found that over three years, health care costs fell by almost 50 percent per participant, from $8,899 in the first year to $4,569 in the third after they received insurance. Participants who enrolled in health coverage made fewer trips to the emergency room, which are notorious for running up patient bills. Instead, insured participants went for more primary care visits.

"A lot of the debate about health care reform surrounds the issue of whether we're setting up something that's going to cost us more by increasing use of medical services or something that will cut costs through more appropriate and timely use of medical services," Neumark said in the release. "[O]ver time, costs can be reduced through increased use of primary care and reductions in emergency-department visits and hospital admissions, but it may take several years of coverage for substantive savings to occur."
Health care spending in the U.S. has been on the rise for years. Americans spent more than three times on health care in 2008 than they spent in the 18 years before, according to a Kaiser report.

Low-income, uninsured individuals tend to rack up exorbitant health-care bills because they often rely on emergency room visits instead of primary care. In the long run, these bills are paid by taxpayers. The Affordable Care Act "is set to extend Medicaid benefits to about 16 million uninsured, low-income adults and children by the end of 2014," according to the study.

Banks Commit Fraud, Steal Trillions, Destroy Economy. Penalty? A Few Billion In Restitution, And They Get A Immunity As A Bonus. Must Be Great To Own The Government.

The Foreclosure Fraud Settlement, By The Numbers

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 9, 2012 at 9:20 am

Federal and state officials today will finally announce that they’ve reached a settlement with the nation’s biggest banks over the banks’ various foreclosure fraud abuses, such as “robo-signing” foreclosure documents and submitting falsely notarized documents to courts. The settlement has been in the works for several months, as a few key states — most notably California and New York — were holding out for tougher terms against the banks.
 Here are some of the key numbers in the settlement, which is being officially announced at 10 a.m.:

49: States that have reportedly signed onto the settlement. The lone holdout is Oklahoma, as Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) feels that the terms are too hard on the banks. Attorneys General Eric Schneidermann (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Beau Biden (D-DE) have thrown their support to the agreement, after opposing earlier versions for being too easy on the banks.

5: Banks covered by the settlement: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial.

$26 billion: The amount of the settlement. About $5 billion will be direct cash penalties, $1.5 billion of which will go directly to homeowners foreclosed upon between September 2008 and December 2011.

$17 billion: The amount of settlement money going toward reducing loan principal (the amount homeowners have outstanding on their mortgages) and mortgage modifications. Banks will not get dollar-for-dollar credit for every principal reduction, so HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan believes the deal will ultimately result in $30-$40 billion in real principal reduction.

$1,800 to $2,000: The amount going to homeowners who qualify for direct cash payments.

1 to 2 million: Homeowners expected to be aided by the settlement money, with one million receiving reduced loan balances or loan modifications and 750,000 receiving direct payments.

4 million: Americans who have been foreclosed upon since 2007.

The deal protects banks from state and federal lawsuits pertaining to some foreclosure fraud abuses, including robo-signing. However, Schneidermann’s lawsuit against three big banks for allegedly fraudulent use of a mortgage database will go forward. In addition, “individual homeowners retain private rights of action to sue over foreclosure fraud and other abuses.”

One Reason Conservatives Hate Science.

Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism

The Huffington Post   Rebecca Searles  02/ 1/2012 

Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study's lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature "structure and order" that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice," he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.
"Reality is complicated and messy," he told The Huffington Post in an email. "Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."