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Florida: Detroit with Palm Trees

West Palm Beach
The boosterish headline in the West Palm Beach paper was
curious and somewhat contradictory. They were trumpeting the fact that the “values” of houses
were “bargains” and should be swiftly picked up because the comparable available prices in this
normally high flying market had not existed for 15 years or more. Not many writers can spin [...]

Osama Down, Obama, How about Wall Street Criminals Now?

Baton Rouge Years into the Great Recession, after the Big Bailout, and one thing after another, there is still no relief on foreclosures, a steady attack on the still shaky, less than adequate Dodd-Frank act, lawsuits accusing most of the bailed out banks of Madoff mischief, big bank profits, and seemingly no one with [...]

Scared to Buy Homes

New Orleans The article in the local paper was breathless. How could it be that homes were going without buyers even though prices – and interest rates – were almost at a 40 year low point? Having drunk the Kool-Aid for so many years how was it possible that the number of American [...]

Hope for Frances Gomez and Other Foreclosure Victims

New Orleans I have often quoted a line by a former Republican OMB director that we should “never suffer from premature certainty,” and given the disaster that banks, the Treasury Department, the Bush and Obama Administrations, and the servicers have made of the housing crises and its millions of homeowner victims, I almost hesitate [...]

Bank’s Hustling AGs and Consumers on Second Mortgages

New Orleans Way back in the New York Times business section in sort of a snarky article by a ProPublica report (a nonprofit NYT outsourcer) a dangerous curtain was raised on the supposedly tough negotiations between the state attorneys general and the big banks about mortgage loan modifications.  Seems on an okey-doke, wink-and-a-nod, the [...]

Little Hope for Reform in Foreclosure Settlement Negotiations

New Orleans The industry spins the numbers differently each month.  Foreclosures are rising, but somehow housing markets are being revived by refinancing.  Little of it makes sense and often the information is contradictory, but the bottom line is that housing is still in dire straits across the country.  The home mortgage modification program has [...]

Wells Fargo Attacking Home Ownership

New Orleans In the depths of the Great Recession it is still shocking to see how oblivious and irresponsible Wells Fargo manages to be every time we turn our heads they seem to be competing with Bank of America for which bank has been most irresponsible in this mess.  Now we see that part of [...]

Widespread Fraud at Bank of America

Orange Beach, Alabama Better late than never, the Attorney Generals of Nevada and Arizona sued Bank of America for “widespread fraud” on the bait and switch of promising that a loan modification is in progress and then foreclosing and selling the house out from under the homeowner at the same time.  The Times and [...]

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