Archive For April, 2012
TweetShareMy latest for FireDogLake Regardless of the recent bullish stories on the housing market (examples here, here, here and here), housing market fundamentals are lousy. Demand in the last decade was wildly distorted by banker abandonment of underwriting and appraisals. Now bankers are worsening the crash they created. As a result, prices will just keep [...]
TweetShareMy latest for FireDogLake. For even more confirmation that the Feds aren’t interested in bank accountability, regardless of the State half of the task force’s intentions, see Congressman Brad Miller on why he’s not the task force Executive Director and Richard Eskow on the obviousness of the problem. As people increasingly realize that the mortgage settlement [...]
TweetShareContinuing as one of @ddayen’s subs, this post ran earlier today on FireDogLake Let’s get something straight: we did not have a housing “bubble”, in the usual sense of the word. The mainstream narrative of crazed, greedy, irresponsible homeowner-wannabes driving prices unsustainably high, causing the still ongoing crash is wrong. Yes, we had a housing “bubble” [...]
TweetShareHi For the next couple of weeks, I’m one of the David Dayen subs at FireDogLake–no one person could fill his shoes–and this post ran there earlier today. This version is slightly updated but essentially the same. One way to see the double standard at the heart of the foreclosure fraud—one set of laws for [...]
TweetShareRemember that mortgage securitization task force that would supposedly satisfy the public’s deep yearning for some basic law enforcement by prosecuting the banks for securities fraud? Well, lately people have been pointing out that the task force isn’t showing many signs of life, and is showing every indication of being slow walked by the Feds. [...]
TweetShareOne of the reasons I’ve been blogging less of late has to do with tax havens and the $100 billion or so the tax dodgers using them cost this country each year. That is, I co-authored this report with U.S.PIRG to help people understand how much tax dodging by multinationals ($60 billion) and wealthy individuals ($40 billion) costs [...]
TweetShareUpdate: When reading about how “our” government sold us the servicing standards as the big prize in the deal (along with the $25 billion that isn’t) even as they agreed the standards wouldn’t be meaningfully implemented or enforced, remember that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be rulemaking on servicing during the settlement’s duration, with [...]
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