A recent article in the online MReport Daily (“Underwriting Standards Ease as Banks Vie for Business”) repeats the same information I’ve been reading on
many other financial sites over the past few months: QM and ATR is not spelling gloom and doom for the residential financing industry. According to the report: Continue reading “Residential Underwriting: Are Standards Easing?”
OK, the numbers are in for calendar year 2013. In 3Q 2012, for the first time in five years, housing prices actually began to improve, month over month. The trend continued for much of 2013, although slowed during 4Q, which we might expect, given the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays [Memo to PC Police: Sorry for using such anachronistic and sappy terms, but I insist on preserving some semblance of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage. So sue me!] Sorry, I got sidetracked, where was I? Continue reading “The 2013-2014 Portland-Metro Residential Marketplace – How Are We Doing?”
This story is just too funny to ignore. The PR department of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), one of the Big Banks in perennial trouble with the Justice Department [eight current investigations – but who‘s counting?], came up with what they believed to be a whiz-bang idea to shine their tarnished image: Set up a Twitter account that permits followers to ask questions of a senior executive. The hashtag was #AskJPM. According to the article, one observer dubbed it “Snarkpocalypse.” Read the comments here. Continue reading “Death By A Thousand Tweets: J.P. Morgan’s Excellent Adventure In Social Media”
In Part One of my latest rant blog post, I took a look at the Big Banks and their sordid activities during the securitization heydays of 2005 – 2007/8. But I was just getting warmed up. Part Two discusses how the banks have come to the aid of the prosecutors and courts in presenting themselves as “victims” that suffered “actual losses.” This is patently untrue; the record must be set straight. Part Two is my effort to do so. ~PCQ Continue reading “Big Banks, Loan Fraud, and Moral Equivalence – Part Two”
Introduction. As the Big Bank scandals appear to be diminishing, I’ll admit that it’s probably time to get over the RATs (Rapers of the American Taxpayers), and move on to other more uplifting topics for this blog site. Perhaps I will…. Continue reading “Big Banks, Loan Fraud, and Moral Equivalence – Part One”
In one of the most insightful articles I’ve read about Big Banks from the Great Depression to the present, authors Frank Partnoy and Jesse Eisinger, writing in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of The Atlantic, discuss why America’s big lending institutions are no safer today, than the months leading up to the 2008 collapse of the financial markets. [See,“What’s Inside America’s Banks?”] Continue reading “What’s In Your Bank?”
OK, we’ve made it through the first half of 2013. We now have six months’ of foreclosure statistics. I posted the first quarter stats for the year here. Now, armed with the second quarter, I’m prepared to prognosticate – for what it’s worth. [Actually, Q3 and Q4 will be the most interesting, as we move forward into a post-Niday foreclosure world, and SB 558, the mandatory resolution law, goes into effect. I predicted here, that the Niday and Brandrup decisions would have little impact on the Big Bank judicial foreclosures; the stats going into the end of 2013 will give us a peek of things to come.] Here is the link to the 2Q stats. What follows is a “back of the napkin” analysis – i.e. scribbled notes and scrambled thoughts. I could be all wrong. Time will tell. Continue reading “Q2 Portland-Metro Foreclosure Stats – What Are They Telling Us?”
Background. As mentioned in an earlier post here, the Niday case, which I have previously commented on here and here as it was winding its way up the appellate process, and its companion case, Brandrup, were recently decided by the Oregon Supreme Court.
- Brandrup presented to the Court four “certified questions” for the judges, sitting as a full panel “en banc”, regarding MERS and its role as henchman for the Big Banks in the Oregon trust deed foreclosure process. The Brandrup opinion is found here.
- Niday, was decided based of the Court’s answers to the certified questions in Brandrup. The Niday opinion is found here. Continue reading “Will The Niday & Brandrup Rulings Change How Foreclosures Are Conducted In Oregon? Not Likely!”
One of the most notable bi-products of the foreclosure disaster, was another disaster – the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act; a 2300 page tome bearing the names of two of the primary beneficiaries of the Lender Lobby, Chris Dodd, charter member of the “Friends of Angelo” [as in Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide] who gave sweetheart loans to his political cronies, and the irascible Barney Frank, whose distinction lies in the fact that while heading the Financial Services Committee in 2006, he patently ignored the credit and housing bubbles, while taking campaign money from one of his two largest contributors, the American Bankers Association. And both men – in what can best be described as “biting the hand that fed them” – co-authored the uber-regulatory bill that bears their names, then promptly retired from the Senate, leaving the bureaucrats to write the 400 rules interpreting this wildly aspirational set of laws.[1] Continue reading “CFPB – A Bad Case of Mission Creep”
Introduction. After a false start in 2012, the 2013 Oregon Legislature has just passed its “new, improved” version of what was generally known as the Mandatory Mediation Law. Besides tweaking various provisions in the prior law, SB 558 closed a loophole big enough that the Big Banks were able to drive their Foreclosure Bus through it. Until July, 2012, virtually all lenders, except Wells Fargo, were conducting their foreclosures non-judicially, i.e. outside the court room. With limited exceptions, the process, which is found in ORS 86.705 – 86.795, had been the sole method used for residential foreclosures in Oregon for the past fifty years. While lenders have always had the option to judicially foreclose Oregon homeowners who defaulted on their loans, it was rarely used. In fact, in 1959, when the trust deed law was enacted, it was the lenders that lobbied long and hard for it; they knew it was far faster and cheaper than going to court to foreclose. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: SB 558 – Oregon’s New Mandatory Resolution Conference Law for Borrowers Facing Foreclosure (2013)”
