DDay and Masaccio and Yves Smith have already covered Bank of America’s offer to pay 2 to 3 cents on the dollar to make good on its securitization misrepresentations. But I wanted to point out one issue of timing. In her coverage of it, Yves notes the following: So with all these considerations arguing for [...]

On Saturday, private security firm HBGary Federal bragged to the FT that it had discovered who key members of the hacking group Anonymous are. In response, Anonymous hacked HB Gary Federal and got 44,000 of their emails and made them publicly available. You believe that you can sell the information you’ve found to the FBI? [...]

A month ago, Brad Miller and a dozen other Congressmen — including House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank — wrote the Financial Stability Oversight Council to ask that they look into the systemic dangers of foreclosure fraud. The letter requested that three very specific things be included in upcoming stress tests and overall consideration [...]

Back in the early days of radio, there was a great amateur radio culture that in key ways resembled early internet culture: it was predominantly male, highly competent, espousing a belief that this new technology could democratize the world. And in spite of the amateur radio community’s offer to set up an alternative communication system [...]

The WaPo reports that an SEC Inspector General report shows that the SEC gave Bank of America lenient treatment when it fined BoA for its funny business surrounding the Merrill Lynch acquisition, but did not place limits on BoA’s ability to issue securities that would normally be placed on a firm that violates securities law. [...]

One of the things the Congressional Oversight Panel recommended the other day was new stress tests for banks, given the mounting evidence that botched securitization may make them insolvent (okay — that last bit is my shorthand). Today, the Fed ordered up those stress tests. The Fed, in guidance issued today, said all 19 banks [...]

About four hours ago, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller testified to the Senate Banking Committee  it would be months before the combined AG “investigation” came up with a settlement (he also suggested that there were new aspects that were just being added to the “investigation”). Dodd: How long AG investigation? Miller: Months, rather than year [...]

See Part One of this liveblog here. Shelby was actually pretty good, but then Johanns and Bennett went to some length to try to pretend the banksters weren’t doing what they were doing. Johnson: Does the law need to be change? Levitin: It’s not the law, it’s compliance w/the law. What was governing securitization was [...]

The TARP Congressional Oversight Panel just released a report dedicated to the foreclosure fraud problem and the securitization mess underlying it. They conclude that the problems may represent a significant problem for the housing market and the financial system more generally. Here’s a great summary of why: If documentation problems prove to be pervasive and, [...]

If only David Stern were being treated as badly as he treats homeowners, this would bring real schadenfreude. In a regulatory filing published today, Stern’s publicly traded company revealed that one of its subsidiaries failed to pay rent in November on its towering office building in Plantation, Florida, and had received a notice of default. [...]