Yves Smith has a post laying out one of the most troublesome aspects of the response to the revelation of foreclosure fraud. As she explains, to conduct an “independent review” of its PR-servicing “review” of its own servicing practices, GMAC picked the lawfirm that has been in charge of its national counsel on servicing issues. [...]

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 [...]

Let me make a rare statement: I agree with just about everything Richard Shelby said in his call for an investigation of mortgage servicers. The Federal Banking Regulators should immediately review the mortgage servicing and foreclosure activities of Ally Financial, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. The regulators should determine exactly what occurred at [...]

Elizabeth Warren, presumably laying the foundation for an Administration deal with banks to not unwind the entire securitization paperwork problem in exchange for loan modifications, points to banks’ voluntary foreclosure moratoria as proof the banksters are trying to solve this problem (presumably meaning the foreclosure fraud, but not the larger problems). She additionally stated that [...]

When I asked yesterday about the relationship between the stress tests and the servicers’ foreclosure fraud, I had a hunch that the banksters might have been committing that fraud so as to be able to show financial viability so as to be able to repay TARP funds so as to escape the oversight of the [...]

The other day, I noted that Administration claims that they were helpless to affect what they now depict as loan servicers’ “sloppiness” but what really amounts to fraud ignores their decision to stop pushing for cramdown–and with it, leverage over the loan servicers. I think (though I’m less sure of this) they’re ignoring one other [...]

The Federal Housing Administration Commissioner, David Stevens, has joined David Axelrod in stating that the Administration sees no reason to halt all foreclosures. That’s not a surprise in itself–it was pretty clear that Axe’s statement reflected official Administration policy. But I’m particularly interested in how Stevens justified this position in an email sent to the [...]

I have long maintained that we will eventually learn that Citibank took over where BCCI and then Riggs Bank left off: serving as a money laundering vehicle used by drug cartels and other organized crime, terrorists, and spooks. But this article (h/t scribe) on the role of big banks in laundering Mexican drug money reports [...]

Timmeh has decided to let us know which banks are insolvent. But he’s only doing so because the banks are so unruly they won’t listen to him.

Tim Geithner is now instructing publicly traded companies to hide data about their financial health.