Orleans

As we have discussed earlier, lawyers who have successfully litigated with these outfits have called this nothing but grant larceny.  I had the discussion with my banker at Capital One who could only rationalize that it was being considered because “they had to raise money somewhere.” We all know that the defense that “you needed the money” is both the truest and least effective response any criminal can make.

The Times did a sad service with a front page article on the shrewd calculations that Bank of America and its colleagues have made by pushing direct and automatic payments for customers to their regular vendors from utilities to credit card companies to home mortgages and back again.  The story was an easy reminder for readers both how easy it is to sign up for such payments and how hard it is to unravel them to the degree you become welded to your bank regardless of the outrageous charges and abuse.   We are near the point where we are going to need to demand an easier “exit” policy from our banks, just as we had to achieve with our cell phone companies around keeping our phone numbers in recent years.  The little things can kill you!

Even though Occupy has not been successful in seeing any traction on the urgent “Geithner Must Go!” campaign to hold him responsible for some much of the Wall Street pandering and pampering he led first as the critically important head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the storm may finally be coming on the horizon.  Amazingly a story in today’s Times documents the giveaway with AIG where banks were paid in full from the federal coffers and were not asked to take any haircut, but in face were even required to shave.  Even banks that offered to take less that they were owed were informed by Geithner’s Fed, since he was head at the time, that they would be paid in full.

At least Geithner, now at Treasuery, with Ben Bernacke at the Federal Reserve are having to line up to finally provide some regulation for non-bank banks in recent hearings in the wake of Occupy.  Of course it is not enough, but even bringing 30 financial institutions like Mass Mutual, Zurich, some hedge funds and outfits like Blackrock and others under regulation because they control over $50 Billion in assets is something.  The Financial Stability Oversight Council still has to wait for comments so the lobbyists will be feeding at the trough, but at least now they need to realize that they might have to reckon with real, immediate, and potentially powerful political outrage if the boys give yet another break to the bankers.

New Orleans

According to these reports, Bank of America, its lawyers and strategists have spent time and money making sure that they contained the Countrywide operation as a separate entity.  The Bloomberg report notes:

“Countrywide has $11 billion in assets that could be depleted through demands to repurchase defective mortgages,” Jonathan Glionna of Barclays Plc said in an Aug. 31 note. After that, Bank of America may not have any obligation to pay claims from Countrywide’s creditors, he said.

Typically, a corporation that acquires another firm’s assets isn’t liable for the seller’s debts, unless the transaction is considered a de facto merger or there was fraud in the takeover, Robert M. Daines, a Stanford Law School professor, wrote in a legal opinion prepared for BNY Mellon, trustee for the Countrywide mortgage bonds. Daines analyzed whether Bank of America would have to pay bond investors if Countrywide couldn’t.

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the insurer that sued Bank of America last month to recoup more than $10 billion in losses on Countrywide mortgage bonds, argued that the bank is a legal successor to the unit. New York-based AIG cited a series of transactions by Bank of America in 2008 that “were structured in such a way as to leave Countrywide unable to satisfy its massive contingent liabilities.””

Obviously one reason all of the big whoops suing Bank of America from Freddie to Fannie are making sure in any litigation or settlement that BofA is on the hook for Countrywide is their fear that the company will finally jettison this toxic nightmare.  But for poor, working homeowners the problem in getting modifications and preventing foreclosure is that Bank of America clearly has to continue to play pretend and pump up the fake value of Countrywide mortgages that are still on the books at the loan terms rather than the underwater value.

In Phoenix where values have been halved and Arizona Advocates and Actions has been mired in the modification process with Bank of America few if any modification offers make financial sense for homeowners because the bank continues to pretend that houses now worth little more than $100,000 are still holding the $250,000 loan value of the original mortgage.  Restating the mortgage to the actual value would save millions of homeowners.  Unfortunately, injecting reality might bring the whole house of cards down, not just the Countrywide unit, but all of the nation’s largest financial institution, Bank of America.

What a mess!

San Francisco

At least this year almost all of us can say that we have done our part, since even if we didn’t slip below the poverty line, most of us can see we did do our share to pull down family income averages by making way less money over the last year.  Next year of course will be worse.

More people also lost health coverage.  The only bright light there was that poor children were better covered.  Huh?  Well, the expansion of the SCHIPs program made a difference, and it shows up in the numbers.

Although this seems obvious, I can’t help pointing out that these citizen wealth investments are not like bank bailouts where after the handout, you get no change, a slapdown, and new reports of more trouble.  When the government invests in the citizen wealth of the poor, it actually makes a difference and people are better protected and less poor.

With about 40 million people below the poverty line in the USA and 45 million without health insurance, I would argue those are numbers worth doing something about.   If we can worry about Wall Street bankers and spend big money (rightly!) to prevent 9 million foreclosures, why can’t we spend money making sure that families are pushed back above the poverty line and get health care protection?

Yesterday, I talked about the money that is being lost in states from the bailout because of the problem some states are having making the 20% match.  In a disaster like Katrina, the government has the authority to waive the match to allow access to FEMA funds.  We have a poverty disaster now.  Why don’t we bailout the poor with a billion or so to allow citizens in all 50 states below the poverty line to get a hand up?

If not, let Health and Human Services simply reclassify the poor as casual employees of AIG, and they could share in the gazillions there enough to crawl back to a level of higher income security.