From NYT: After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It…
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From The Nation: According to the State of Working America, in the forty-year period that preceded the civil rights reforms of the mid-1960s, the bottom 90 percent of Americans shared 73 percent of the income growth in the United States. Black Americans, who were suffering severe legal discrimination and a…
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From NYT: Mr. Gingrich has faced many questions recently about the more than $1.6 million in consulting fees he got from Freddie Mac since leaving Congress in 1999. But part of the relationship started years earlier, as records and interviews show that Mr. Gingrich, as House leader in the 1990s,…
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From the NYAG Office: Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest banks charging that the creation and use of a private national mortgage electronic registry system known as MERS has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in…
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From DSNews: Obama’s proposal calls for early intervention by servicers to contact every homeowner who has demonstrated hardship or fallen behind on their payments, and provide them with a comprehensive set of options to avoid foreclosure. The president’s directive states that every distressed homeowner must be given “a reasonable time”…
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From The Nation: President Obama detailed his administration’s new housing plan in Virginia today, a little over a week after announcing it in his State of the Union address. The crux of the plan is providing help to underwater homeowners—which, in turn, could also boost the economy. The plan works…
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From Chicago Tribune: The Obama administration on Friday announced it would significantly broaden the pool of consumers eligible for mortgage modifications by opening its program to owners of rental properties and homeowners burdened by medical and credit card bills and second mortgages. Under an expansion of the Home Affordable Modification…
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From ABC News: A new federal and state task force was created [yesterday] to investigate mortgage fraud that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, and the panel immediately subpoenaed 11 financial institutions. Attorney General Eric Holder said the new unit would consist of 55 Justice Department lawyers and analysts and…
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