Texas Foreclosure Fraud

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Bank of America, JPMorgan Get Texas Subpoenas on Foreclosures

Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and seven other banks or loan servicers were subpoenaed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for information about their foreclosure practices, a spokesman said.

“The state is subpoenaing information and documents,” Jerry Strickland, the spokesman, said yesterday in an interview. He didn’t elaborate. The state also subpoenaed Ally Financial Inc., CitiMortgage Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Abbott began investigating foreclosure practices in Texas following the disclosure of a December deposition in which an employee of Ally’s GMAC Mortgage unit testified that his team signed about 10,000 documents a month without verifying their accuracy. On Oct. 13, all 50 state attorneys general announced a joint investigation of foreclosures.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/jpmorgan-bank-of-america-subpoenaed-by-texas-attorney-general.html

Interest Rates Continue Lower

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Plunging Rates for Refinancing Aid the Thrifty

For those sober souls who were thrifty long before it became fashionable, the last few years have been intensely aggravating

They did nothing to cause therecession, but they absorbed the pain. Their stock portfolios languished. The values of their homes skidded. Their savings still do not earn enough interest each month to buy a pack of gum.

Now, at last, the frugal are celebrating. With a leg up on their less creditworthy neighbors, they are qualifying for refinanced home mortgages at interest rates that in any other recent era would have been considered stealing. And unlike in late 2008, when rates started their plunge to historic lows, many lenders say they are rushing to accommodate the influx in applications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/business/23refinance.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Pension Crises Growing

Pension across the country are coming under pressure with their investment portfolios still counting on rates of return that seem less than likely to materialize over the next decade. Public pension, including state and local governments are especially stressed. With interest rates at record lows where are these pension funds going to gett a return without chasing ris, moving forward?

"California, which has the largest U.S. public-pension fund, faces liabilities that may exceed its annual state-tax revenue fivefold within two years unless lawmakers rein in benefits, according to a study.  To keep their promises to retirees, the California Public Employees Retirement System, the biggest plan, the California State Teachers Retirement System, the second-largest, and the University of California Retirement System may have combined liabilities of more than 5.5 times the state’s annual tax revenue by fiscal 2012, according to the study released today by the Milken Institute. Levies are forecast to reach about $89 billion in the year that began July 1."

There is more here for the inquiring mind.  If you have has income reduces and it has impacted your credit profile give the folks at Credit Repair Texas a call for a free evaluation.

Middle Class Crises

27 Signs That The Standard Of Living For America’s Middle Class Is Dropping Like A Rock

Household spending for the middle fifth of all U.S. income earners was down 3.5% in 2009, the steepest decline on record

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/standard-of-living-middle-class-2010-10#household-spending-for-the-middle-fifth-of-all-us-income-earners-was-down-35-in-2009-the-steepest-decline-on-record-1#ixzz12gJnf66h

Credit repair Houston works with people having difficulty budgeting within a smaller income as a result of the recent global downturn.

Peak Housing

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The Mortgage Fraud Scandal Biggest in Human History

L. Randall Wray, Benzinga

We have long known that lender fraud was rampant during the real estate boom. The FBI began warning of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. We know that mortgage originators invented “low doc” and “no doc” loans, encouraged borrowers to take out “liar loans”, and promoted “NINJA loans” (no income, no job, no assets, no problem!). All of these schemes were fraudulent from the get-go

Read more:http://www.businessinsider.com/mortgage-fraud-scandal-2010-10

Credit lines continue to decline

Consumer credit falls $3.34 billion in August

(Reuters) - Total consumer credit outstanding declined for the seventh straight month in August as credit card debt continued to fall.

The Federal Reserve said on Thursday total outstanding credit, which covers everything from car loans to credit cards, fell by $3.34 billion after dropping $4.09 billion in July.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast consumer credit contracting $3 billion in August.

So-called revolving, or credit-card credit, fell $4.99 billion in August after a $4.98 billion fall the prior month. That marked the 24th consecutive month credit-card debt decreased.

Non-revolving credit, which includes closed-end loans for big-ticket items like cars, boats, college education and vacations, increased $1.65 billion after increasing $888.59 million in July. It was the fourth straight month of gains

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6964N420101007

Wall Street Loots Main Street

Let's take a look: more at the link

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Attorneys general in about 40 states may announce a joint investigation into foreclosures at the largest banks and mortgage firms, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

State attorneys general led by Iowa’s Tom Miller are in talks that may lead to the announcement of a coordinated probe as soon as Oct. 12, said the person, who declined to be identified because a final agreement hasn’t been reached. The number of states may change because several are still deciding whether to join the investigation, the person said. New Mexico Attorney General Gary King said today in a statement that his state will join a multi-state effort.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/attorneys-general-in-40-states-said-to-join-on-foreclosures.html

If you feel you have been taken advantage of by Wall Street. Call an affordable professional at Consumer Credit Capital. They won’t take a dime unless they can prove their ability to help you raise your credit score.

Improving Your Credit report will improve your credit rating, including your FICO score, with the major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. Repairing bad credit, including late payments, chargeoffs, collection accounts will improve your credit score.

Bank Fraud at the Heart of the Foreclosure Crises

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In foreclosure controversy, problems run deeper than flawed paperwork

By Brady Dennis and Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writers

SNIP

For struggling homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure, it could mean an opportunity to challenge the banks they argue have been unhelpful at best and deceptive at worst. But it also threatens to leave them in prolonged limbo, stuck in homes they still can't afford and waiting for the foreclosure process to begin anew.

For big banks, "there's a possible nightmare scenario here that no foreclosure is valid," said Nancy Bush, a banking analyst from NAB Research. If millions of foreclosures past and present were invalidated because of the way the hurried securitization process muddied the chain of ownership, banks could face lawsuits from homeowners and from investors who bought stakes in the mortgage securities - an expensive and potentially crippling proposition.

SNIP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607227_pf.html

Foreclosure Crises Steepens With Resets 2011

more at the link

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The Second Wave of Mortgage Defaults

By Jim Nelson

12/21/09 Baltimore, Maryland – Our economy is about to relapse into the disease that sent us into the Great Depression: Part Deux. Subprime loans caused the initial illness. Option-ARMs will cause the relapse.

In the first half of the past decade, subprime loans were king. They were cheap and easy to get approved. Along with the subprime boom came subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which were equally easy to afford…for a while.

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-second-wave-of-mortgage-defaults/

Credit score is key to refinancing your home. Repairing your credit is more than credit dipute and dispute letters; rather improving your bad credit score requires rebuilding your credit report with good credit accounts, payment history, mix of credit and utilization.

Call an affordable professional at Consumer Credit Capital. They won’t take a dime unless they can prove their ability to help you raise your credit score.

Foreclosure Fraud by Wall Street Banks

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Attorneys general in about 40 states may announce a joint investigation into foreclosures at the largest banks and mortgage firms, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

State attorneys general led by Iowa’s Tom Miller are in talks that may lead to the announcement of a coordinated probe as soon as Oct. 12, said the person, who declined to be identified because a final agreement hasn’t been reached. The number of states may change because several are still deciding whether to join the investigation, the person said. New Mexico Attorney General Gary King said today in a statement that his state will join a multi-state effort.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-08/attorneys-general-in-40-states-said-to-join-on-foreclosures.html

Call Credit Repair. Consumer Credit Capital won’t take a dime unless they can prove their ability to help you raise your credit score.

Stop Paying 2nd Mortgage?

let's take a look / more at the link

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By Kenneth R. Harney

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Are you delinquent on your first mortgage but still making monthly payments on your home-equity credit line or second mortgage?

If so, a finance and real estate professor from DePaul University has some controversial advice for you: Stop paying on your second immediately.

Rebel Cole believes you are simply throwing good money after bad. If you are seriously delinquent on the first mortgage, you're likely headed for foreclosure unless both of your lenders agree on a modification or principal-reduction plan. But because you continue to make payments on the second, the bank that holds that revenue-producing note might have minimal motivation to participate in a workout, he thinks. Cole estimates that between 1 million and 3 million homeowners are in this position nationwide -- making it a big problem.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092400126.html

Banks Commit Mortgage Fraud

let's take a look. / more a the link

snip

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Comptroller John Dugan, the lawmakers said recent reports that Bank of America,J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial may have improperly approved thousands of foreclosures "amplify our concerns that systemic problems exist."

Banks "have repeatedly misled and obstructed homeowners from receiving the help Congress and the Administration have sought to provide," they wrote. "The excuses we have heard from financial institutions are simply not credible three years into the crisis."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/05/AR2010100503969.html?hpid=topnews

FED's Sue Credit Card Companies over $35 billion in fees

let's take a look: more at the link

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(AP) The Justice Department on Monday sued the three largest U.S. credit card companies for anticompetitive practices and reached a proposed settlement with two of them, MasterCard and Visa.

“We want to put more money in consumers' pockets, and by eliminating credit card companies' anticompetitive rule, we will accomplish exactly that,” Attorney General Eric Holder told an afternoon news conference. “The companies put merchants and their customers in a no-win situation” and “consumers are being held hostage.”

In papers filed in federal court in Brooklyn, the department and various state attorneys general sued all three companies, saying they were attempting to insulate themselves from competition.

At the same time, the Justice Department filed a proposed settlement with Visa and MasterCard.

Under the proposed settlement, Visa and MasterCard agree not to prohibit merchants from offering customers discounts or rebates for using a particular kind of card.

The lawsuit says the card companies are impeding merchants from promoting the use of competing credit or charge cards with lower acceptance fees.

Each time consumers use a credit card to make a purchase, the merchant must pay a fee. Such fees brought in $35 billion last year to the three credit card companies and their affiliated banks.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/04/business/main6926403.shtml

Supreme Court Denies Credit Report Case

Supreme Court Denies BofA Unit Appeal In Credit Report Case

By Maya Jackson Randall, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Bank of America Corp. (BAC) unit's appeal of a ruling that allowed a California consumer to sue the company for allegedly reporting inaccurate information to credit bureaus.................................

.....................The case grew out of a consumer's 2002 quarrel over a television purchase. John Gorman bought a satellite TV using a Visa credit card issued by MBNA, the Bank of America subsidiary now known as FIA. But the TV was defective, according to Gorman. He disputed the charges, which amounted to several hundred dollars and, according to court documents, vowed to never pay the disputed charge. In 2004, MBNA reported his delinquencies to the credit bureaus. Later that year, Gorman sued MBNA, alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. By not alerting the credit bureaus that the debt was part of an ongoing dispute, the information MBNA provided was inaccurate, Gorman argued.................

........... because the bank still did not point out the dispute even after Gorman challenged the information and the bank conducted its own investigation, Gorman could proceed with a lawsuit, the court said. The Supreme Court let that ruling stand without comment. Read more here at the link: And Here

Credit repair Texas deals with these issues every day. For more on credit repair texas visit them at their website. And for more on the Fair Credit Reporting Act here at the link: FCRA

Verizon Caught Gouging Customers for $90 million

Verizon agrees to pay up close $90 million dollars for wrongly taking money by unauthorized charges.  More and more companies are using phone bills to automatically charge consumers for questionable charges.  Check your phone bill for charges!

"Verizon Wireless to Pay Millions in Refunds
By EDWARD WYATT
WASHINGTON — Verizon Wireless said on Sunday that it would pay up to $90 million in refunds to 15 million cellphone customers who were wrongly charged for data sessions or Internet use, one of the largest customer refunds by a telecommunications company.
The announcement came in a statement from Verizon Wireless as the company held talks with the Federal Communications Commission about complaints of unauthorized charges and in response to questions about a possible settlement of an F.C.C. investigation into the issue."

There is more here at the link.  If you have a collection account as a result of a contract with Verizon give the folks at credit repair Houston a call to review the account.

Mortgage Fraud by Originators

4ClosureFraud Posts Lender Processing Services Mortgage Document Fabrication Price Sheet

We’ve said for some time that document fabrication is widespread in foreclosures. The reason is that the note, which is the borrower IOU, is the critical instrument to establishing the right to foreclose in 45 states (in those states, the mortgage, which is the lien on the property, is a mere “accessory” to the note)..................

................Evidence is mounting that for cost reasons, starting in the 2004-2005 time frame, originators like Countrywide simply quit conveying the note. We are told this practice was widespread, probably endemic. The notes are apparently are still in originator warehouses. That means the trust does not have them (the legalese is it is not the real party of interest), therefore it is not in a position to foreclose on behalf of the RMBS investors. So various ruses have been used to finesse this rather large problem.

If you have been caught up in the housing mess give credit repair houston a call for a free evaluation.

foreclosures just keep coming

let's take a look

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APNewsBreak: BofA delays foreclosures in 23 states

By ALAN ZIBEL (AP) – 31 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Bank of America says it is delaying foreclosures in 23 states as it examines whether it rushed the foreclosure process for thousands of homeowners without reading the documents.

Bank of America is not yet able to estimate how many homeowners cases will be affected, a spokesman for the nation's largest bank says.

A bank official acknowledged in a legal proceeding in February that she signed up to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and typically didn't read them. The Associated Press obtained the document Friday.

The executive's admission adds the nation's largest bank to a growing list of mortgage companies whose employees signed documents in foreclosure cases without verifying the information in them.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jKkgz2hAAZZAeRlJNBmM31MPUnhgD9IJ4SP00?docId=D9IJ4SP00

2011 The year of the Re-finance

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snip

After helping corporations issue over $1 trillion of debt a record-low yields, the Fed is now turning its attention to consumers' balance sheets, says John Lekas, senior portfolio manager at Leader Capital where he runs theLeader Short-Term Bond Fund.

"They're going to continue to buy" Treasuries until the yield on the 30-year bond hits 2.75%, Lekas predicts. That, in turn, will drive 30-year fixed rate mortgages to around 3.75%, which "reloads the consumer with a 30-year stream of income," he says, estimating savings of about $400 per month for the average U.S. household.

snip

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/2011-outlook-deflation-and-dow-4200-followed-by-%22wave-of-refinancings%22-535470.html;_ylt=Alsw3.Ta2MT8fZ3L2VFX6JVk7ot4;_ylu=X3oDMTB2ZDUzYTg0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYXJ0aWNsZUxpc3QEc2xrA2hlcmU-?tickers=^DJI,TLT,XHB,UUP,UDN,^VIX,DBC