t’s really hard to convey a sense of how utterly grotesque the looting that Promontory Financial Group conducted on the misnamed Independent Foreclosure Reviews.
Read more...As regular readers know, your humble blogger, along with a lot of investors, was taken by surprise when the typically dovish Bernanke not only started using the taper word a month ago, but then made the demise of Fed heroics sound even more imminent by talking about higher unemployment “thresholds,” namely 7%, than had been voiced previously. And the reading of Fedwatchers like Tim Duy and (even before the FOMC statement) James Aitken is that the central bank wants out of the QE business sooner rather than later.
The impact on mortgage rates already looks very likely to throw a big bowl of cold water on the housing party.
Read more...It sometimes feels like a Sisyphean task to keep discussing how Americans were thrown under the bus in the various mortgage settlements reached in 2011 and 2012. Needless to say, whistleblowers continue to come forward and describe widespread abuse even though the officialdom would have you believe otherwise.
Read more...Yves here. I have to say I’m still gobsmacked by the Fed’s belief that the labor markets are showing meaningful improvement, and the further “clarification” that this means the central bank thinks it’s on track to start easing up on bond buying this year.
Read more...Yves here. Steve Keen sent this note along with his post:
The journalist David Hirst was both one of the few to warn of the crisis, and someone who became a good friend. He died last week, as a long term consequence of internal injuries sustained about ten years ago in the USA, when he tried to stop a woman being bashed.
His spouse asked me to see if I could get the attached published on NC, which was one of his favourite sites.
If you know David’s writing, you’ll understand what a loss this is. And if you missed his prescient and incisive commentary before and during the crisis, I hope you’ll sample his work below and get a sense of what a talent he was. Either way, I trust you’ll join me in sending condolences to David’s widow and his family, as well as to Steve.
Read more...Yves here. While most investors and analysts were busy fixating on the Fed’s taper and the unemployment report and the Abenomics roller coaster, some important housing market news slipped under the radar.
Read more...Bloomberg reports that that staple of mortgage funding, the 30 year fixed rate mortgage, has seen its interest rate increase from 3.48% a month ago to 4.16% as of yesterday. By contrast, the highest rate the 30 year mortgage reached in the previous year as of mid-March had been 3.85%.
One analyst, Mark Hanson, sees evidence that the dropoff in refinancings has been impressive
Read more...Warning: mortgage modifications can be yet another exercise in bank predation.
Read more...The head of Carrington, which is known as an established distressed debt investor and more recently, an early entrant in the single family home rental business, said this week it was no longer buying houses for lease because dumb money had ruined the market.
Read more...You thought corporate personhood was a bad thing? Think twice. You should be so lucky as to be a corporate person. They don’t just get treated like you and me, they are increasingly being treated better than you and me.
Read more...We’ve been skeptical of the private equity land rush to snap up single family homes for rentals. They’ve been a big enough force in the housing market nationwide to lead some commentators to question how solid the housing “recovery” is. Yet the combination of rising enthusiasm for housing and a richly-valued stock market is leading a raft of PE firms to ready IPOs as a way to take profits and establish valuations for their profit participations.
Read more...Good progressives like MoveOn, New Bottom Line, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, AFR, Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO have all fallen in line with Obama’s nomination of Mel Watt, Representative from Bank of America North Carolina.
It might help if they looked harder at Watt. If they were honest about it, there’s not much to like.
Read more...Jon Stewart piled on to the widespread criticism of the Independent Foreclosure Review fiasco.
Read more...Here’s what you helped us to do. Hoisted from comments:
Read more...Rust Consulting, which handled the borrower mailings during the Independent Foreclosure Review and is now acting as paying agent, continues to screw up in every way imaginable.
Read more...