Quepos It was an extra present under the palm tree to read in the pre-dawn that Santa Barbara Bank & Trust was being pulled out of the business of factoring RALs, predatory refund anticipation loan for Jackson & Hewitt and other companies in the viciously competitive tax services market for lower income and working families. …
Tag: Chase
With Banks, Speak Softly and Carry No Stick
New Orleans On the front page of the papers today there is more drumbeating about the President having yet another meeting with the nation’s top bankers to jawbone them to finally start making loans to small businesses and homeowners. At this point it is hard to even call this jawboning. It’s more like gumming them. …
Foreclosure Mods Farce
New Orleans The scorecard is finally being written on the ballyhooed, though mostly baloney, loan modifications being done by big home mortgage loan servicers and trumpeted by the federal government (and largest shareholder in many of these outfits) as a real plan for foreclosure relief, and it stinks. Gretchen Morgenson in a searing Times column …