OK, you get a lot today, in part because I am in catch up mode. The Karmic Truth Steve Waldman (hat tip Richard Smith) On how the leopard got its spots BBC All Your Stonehenge Photos Are Belong To England Slashdot Does Male Performance Advantage in Competitive Environments Explain the Pay Gap? Mark Thoma 18 […]
Read more...It take a fair degree of skill to pen a journalistic story that hews to the appearance of objectivity yet is out to sell a point of view. The lead article in the Journal tonight, “Niche Lawyers Spawned Housing Fracas” telegraphs its bias in its headline: the foreclosure crisis is merely the creation of two […]
Read more...Our public spending cuts, in the pipeline since July, have been announced. Here’s some background on the structure of public finance in the UK. Salient points: Public spending is divided into two: current spending on running costs of government, such as salaries and equipment; and capital spending on new roads, railways, bridges and schools. In […]
Read more...By Yiping Huang, Professor of Economics at the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University. Cross-posted from VoxEU. On 19 October, the People’s Bank of China announced a series of rate hikes. This column argues that the moves were aimed at combating domestic inflation and avoiding the mistakes of Japan in the 1980s. On 19 […]
Read more...By Viral Acharya, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University, Thomas F. Cooley Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business and Faculty of Arts and Science, New York University, Matthew Richardson, Professor of Applied Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University, Richard Sylla, Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New […]
Read more...By Jim Quinn, who writes at The Burning Platform As I listen to pundits, politicians and populists expound on the jobs situation in our country day after day, as if they knew what they were talking about, I’m reminded of the Seinfeld episode where George quits his job as a real estate agent. He sits […]
Read more...From Bloomberg: New York state courts will require lawyers in residential foreclosure actions to certify they have taken “reasonable” steps to verify the accuracy of documents submitted to the court. The new rule, released in a statement by the New York state Unified Court System, is effective immediately. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman introduced the requirement […]
Read more...Sorry for thin links, I did a lot of posts yesterday, plus a little day job work. China Halts Shipments to U.S. of Tech-Crucial Minerals Live Science. Ohh, predictable but still not good. This has high odds of leading to real escalation. This may be short lived just to prove a point, but I fear […]
Read more...Most readers were not happy when I didn’t buy into the mainstream presentation of a the widespread news reports that a letter sent on behalf of a group of investors constituting approximately $16.5 billion (per the Wall Street Journal) of $47 billion (presumably face amount) of bonds was a Really Big Deal in terms of […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. Even prior to the financial crisis of 2007, economists and policymakers actively debated whether central banks should use interest […]
Read more...Hat tip reader Darby Shaw, via Detroit News: GMAC Mortgage resumed foreclosures in 23 states Tuesday after it had halted practices earlier this month following an employee’s admission of approving thousands of foreclosure notices without reading the paperwork. “As we review the affected files in the 23 judicial states and take any needed remediation, the […]
Read more...Lawyers who defend homeowners against foreclosures, even when their client has a good case, like servicing errors, often run into bank-friendly judges. The plaintiff’s argument typically boils down to, “We’re a bank, they are a deadbeat.” It looks as if banks are increasingly hoist on their own petard. There has been so much coverage of […]
Read more...Wow, this is getting wild. Admittedly, the Cook County sheriff has taken a firm stand in the past on foreclosure evictions, but this is a more sweeping action in the past. Telling the banks that admitted they used improper affidavits but now insist that everything is fine isn’t good enough is a bold more. At […]
Read more...At least some legislators are taking the foreclosure crisis seriously. Representative John Conyers, Marcy Kaptur, Raúl Grijalva, and Alan Grayson wrote to Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to ask that he investigate foreclosure fraud and conduct an audit of GMAC, Fannie, and Freddie. SIGTARP is a full fledged prosecutor, […]
Read more...New fronts are opening in the foreclosure mess. A lot of people have wondered why no one has gone to jail over what by commonsense standards is fraudulent activity. The possibility that the violations were indeed criminal is finally being investigated. From the Washington Post: Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in […]
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