Bank of America

Foreclosure fraud is ruffling a lot of feathers on Wall Street, and while the full scope of losses remains unclear, even major banks are now acknowledging that this is a multi-billion-dollar disaster, not just a set of minor paperwork headaches. more »

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Jamie Dimon and the other mega-bankers who derailed the economy have a new PR campaign to sell you. They're saying that families who can't pay their mortgages must bear the blame - all the blame - for the foreclosure crisis. That means the public should just ignore banks' widespread lawbreaking in the registering and transfer of property titles. For the bankers who would appoint themselves the nation's moral arbiters, It's always somebody else's fault. more »

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Anybody looking for a primer explaining why the current foreclosure fraud issue is a major systemic risk for the financial system should check out Mike Konczal's new post for the Roosevelt Institute. more »

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I attended two big economic gatherings this week, one on financial reform organized by finance blogger Mike Konczal for The Roosevelt Institute, another on the economic outlook, presented by the more »

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UPDATE: President Obama vetoed the foreclosure fraud bailout this afternoon, but plenty of other battles are already raging. Rep. more »

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Just when you thought Wall Street couldn't defraud the economy any further, it went ahead and did it. After pushing millions of borrowers into foreclosure with fraudulent loans, big banks are now being implicated in a massive new fraud scandal involving the foreclosure process itself. more »

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Financial giants have figured out yet another way to profit from fraud. After devastating communities across the country with shady subprime loans, the mortgage industry has launched a new assault on America's neighborhoods. Big banks are now outsourcing their foreclosure processing to shady law firms with a history of breaking the law for a quick buck. more »

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What is the penalty for bankers who tell $40 billion lies? Somewhere between nothing and a rounding-error on your bonus. more »

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It can be hard to grasp all the details of Section 716, the Senate provision that would force big banks to spin off their swap desks, but the principle isn't that complicated: Banks that get access to discounted money from the Federal Reserve, or federally-guaranteed deposit insurance, shouldn't be able to gamble with them. And the four huge institutions that dominate the derivatives market shouldn't use the implicit guarantee of a taxpayer bailout as a license to act recklessly. Instead they should use that money, and that guarantee, to lend to the businesses that can get our economy moving again. more »

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It's looking like the SEC/Goldman Sachs lawsuit could open up a whole new can of worms, one that Tim Geithner and some bank executives aren't likely to be very happy about. The story's about AIG and I used to work there so, as much as I like to stay out of the story, a little personal background is in order. We'll do the story first and then get to the personal stuff. more »

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