A banking lobbyist with a member of the Michigan Senate GOP Caucus

Booher And Richardville Introduce Bill To Gut Homeowners’ Rights After Pocketing A Combined $137,000 In Campaign Cash From Banking Lobbyists

Yesterday, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville and Freshman Senator Darwin Booher introduced Senate Bill 383 that would reduce Michigan’s post foreclosure redemption period from 6 months to 2 months.  It appears the GOP majority wants to fast track through the Michigan Senate because in less than 24 hours, the Senate Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions was already having a hearing on the bill written by the Michigan Bankers Association and lobbyists representing foreclosure mill operator David Trott. 

When I first heard about this Wednesday night from my contacts at National People’s Action, my first reaction to them was, “Well, drag a wad of cash along the floor of the Michigan Senate Chambers and you don’t know who’ll be willing to whore themselves.”

Sure enough when I read the bill I was right. The two Senators who introduced this bill are known for introducing legislation written by lobbyists with deep pockets.

Randy Richardville has taken $122,000 in campaign cash from banks and the Michigan Bankers Association since being elected to the Senate in 2006. Of this, $21,000 came directly from JPMorgan Chase, $50,100 from the Michigan Bankers Association and $24,000 came from other banks.

Except for a two year gap in 2005-2006, Richardville who has been a fixture at the state capitol since 1998 hasn’t met a lobbyist he doesn’t like. In 13 years on the government payroll, he has pocketed nearly $2 million dollars in campaign contributions from lobbyists.

Richardville’s partner in introducing this legislation is Freshman Senator Darwin Booher.  Booher seems pretty comfortable being Richardville’s sidekick in their expeditions into political whoring and the bankers were more than happy to pay him. After all, the bankers got a much better deal with Booher because he was willing to prostitute himself for $16,000 instead of the $122,000 it cost them with Richardville.

Michigan Senate Bill 383 by Steve Dibert

Teri Buhl, the Lois Lane of finance journalism

Banks looking to judge shop in RMBS putback cases filed in New York State court are going to get shut out of the process. Apparently there are so many cases to litigate against banks, like JP Morgan and Credit Suisse selling billions of garbage mortgage securities to investors, that administrative judge Sherry Heitler has decreed all RMBS cases as of March 2013 now go to one judge. Roberta McClinton, Heitler’s law clerk, confirmed this today giving the reason that similar cases need to go to one judge now because it’s for ‘judicial economy’.

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E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times

Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. say they have satisfied their obligations to help troubled borrowers under last year’s landmark mortgage settlement with state and federal officials.

Wells Fargo Bank and insurer QBE have agreed to pay an estimated $19.25 million to more than 24,000 Florida homeowners under a proposed settlement that plaintiff attorneys call “unprecedented.”

Without admitting wrongdoing, the firms would settle claims they inflated premiums — often to five or six times above normal rates — for “force-placed” insurance. Lenders may impose such insurance in cases where a homeowner falls behind on payments or lets coverage lapse, but attorneys for homeowners have argued such charges have often been abusive and loaded with kickbacks for banks.

The proposal filed in U.S. District Court in Miami May 13 is subject to a judge’s approval, which the parties are seeking within 60 days.

Plaintiffs attorney Adam Moskowitz of Coral Gables said the settlement’s cash and credit refunds of 25 percent of premiums represent the highest percentage of any case involving force-placed insurance, to his knowledge.

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A bill introduced by the Tea Party’s favorite misogynist, Michigan State Senator Rick Jones would make it easier for process servers to come on your property and be able to enter your home without your consent even after you tell them to leave.

Rick Jones

“This is what I wished for, just isn’t how I envisioned it” -Eminem

Yesterday’s ruling from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals from March and last month’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell from the Western District of Michigan saying that because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were chartered by congress and because they are now under government control due to their government bailout, they are exempt from all forms of state and local taxes.  So courts are saying is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are entities of the United States government and are entitled to any exemptions to any state and local taxes.

Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner

These exemptions were the heart of multiple lawsuits filed by multiple counties in Michigan including Oakland County.  Every mortgage assignment filed with Register of Deeds offices across the Michigan assigning mortgages to or from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac claims a tax exemption as a “government entity” under Michigan Statutes MCL 207.526(h)(i) and MCL 505 (h)(i).  The argument is that although chartered by congress and are now under the oversight of the U.S. Treasury since 2008 (FHFA answers to The U.S. Treasury), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were privatized by congress nearly a generation ago and are no different than Ally Financial, Citibank or General Motors who received TARP bailouts.  The courts disagreed saying that because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were chartered by congress and their respective charters say they are exempt from all state and local taxes and because of this are “government entities”.

Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner who was the plaintiff in the case has vowed to take this fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.  However, having the court agree to hear the case will depend if other states like Maryland, who lost a similar argument in the 4th District Court of Appeals decide to petition the Supreme Court as well.

Although the fight that Meisner and Ingham County Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel, Jr. took on may or may not end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, they had the brass cojones to stand up for the taxpayers of Michigan against the broken status quo of malaise and apathy that has poisoned American politics for the past twenty years.

 ”I love it when a plan comes together!” -Colonel “Hannibal” Smith

Colonel Hannibal Smith

As Ed DeMarco and the boys at FHFA are the toasting their victory over Michigan taxpayers by shucking oysters and drinking bottles of Grey Goose at the Old Ebbitt Grill for the next few days, they need to rethink what they are actually celebrating because their exuberance  may be premature.

No, I’m not talking about Andy Meisner’s vow to take the fight to U.S. Supreme Court, I am talking about the Pandora’s Box of a constitutional crisis that the federal courts have opened up on non-judicial and the utter chaos it will that will create for the courts in these states.

Attorneys for FHFA may be popping the bubbly because two federal Court of Appeals have upheld the fact that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in fact government entities and they can enjoy the privileges of such a tax-free status, but what they fail to realize is they have inadvertently barred Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from foreclosing on homeowners in Michigan and homeowners in other non-judicial states from foreclosing non-judicially because it denies them their due process rights under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This of course would create a nightmare scenario for FHFA on multiple levels.

First, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their servicers who they assign a temporary ownership to must foreclose judicially.  This means that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the servicer would have to sue the homeowner to take possession like they do in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.   A judicial foreclosure also makes it easier and less expensive for the homeowner to defend against the foreclosure because the cost and burden of proof is now shifted to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Second, this opens the door for homeowners in non-judicial foreclosure states who have been non-judicially foreclosed on by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to bring damage lawsuits against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for violating their civil rights.

Although local politicians are considering this a defeat for taxpayers on the local level, it’s hardly that.  It’s a big win for homeowners in non-judicial states and could very well be the catalyst that lights a fire under the chairs of Do-Nothing politicians in state legislatures cross the U.S. and in Congress to do something about reforming the broken financial industry in this country with Hertel and Meisner going down in history as the Hannibal Smiths of American politics.

“In rejecting plaintiff’s application, JPMorgan asserted that its superior moral position prevented it from loaning plaintiff money because one of plaintiff’s sources of income did not meet JPMorgan’s ‘morality standards’ and that the ‘reputational risk’ of loaning plaintiff money threatened JPMorgan’s public image. JPMorgan’s hypocrisy would be laughable except plaintiff was in fact illegally discriminated against and denied a loan by JPMorgan.” -Complaint in Greenberg v JPMorgan Chase

courtesy of William Banzai7

Marc L. Greenberg, the producer behind late-night Cinemax soft-core porn classics like “Co-Ed Confidential” and “The Best Sex Ever,”  and made for TV classics like “Deviant Co-Eds” is suing JPMorgan Chase in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming lending discrimination.

Greenberg who was a Chase securities customer and home loan customer with an annual income of more than $500,000 and a net worth of more than $10 million, naturally assumed that the process would go smoothly and relatively quickly when he went to apply for home loan on one of his properties in Marina Del Rey, California.

After four months of getting the run around from Chase, Greenberg contacted JPMorgan Securities Vice President Adam Gelcich and the complaint alleges what happened during that conversation,

“Adam Gelcich was evasive in his response to plaintiff’s application status requests and finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff’s loan application was refused due to ‘moral reasons,’ because of JPMorgan’s disapproval of plaintiff’s former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality. Plaintiff’s repeated attempts to obtain a written statement of the reasons for the denial of his loan application and a copy of JPMorgan’s ‘morals clause’ were ignored.”

Greenberg then alleges he sent Gelcich over an email describing what he perceived to be JPMorgan Chase’s discriminatory lending practice and threatened legal action and served the bank with an intent to sue notice.

This caught the attention of Deb Vincent, a VP in Chase’s legal fair lending department.  After several weeks of Greenberg’s attorneys hounding Vincent like a bill collector, she allegedly told Greenberg she could not find the file and that Gelcich no longer worked for Chase and she was “unable to locate someone who may have worked with or managed Adam Gelcich.“

But Greenberg’s  attorneys claim this isn’t entirely true and that Gelcich is still working at JPMorgan Chase because  discovered him at his office and sat down with him for a little chat.  It was then that the complaint alleges that Adam Gelcich mockingly told them, “JPMorgan can deny an application for reputational risk to our firm and that plaintiff was ‘making a big deal over nothing’ and ‘good luck’ in obtaining legal relief,”

In Greenberg’s complaint, he also says he finds JPMorgan Chase’s denial on grounds of morality is hypocritical and repugniant since JPMorgan has overlooked its own moral transgressions as it continues to mislead shareholders, mislead customers, manipulate markets and trade with enemies of the United States, but it is relentless in seeking to punish plaintiff for his former involvement in television programming involving human sexuality that JPMorgan purportedly finds to be shameful.

In his complaint, Greenberg also brings up several transgressions that JPMorgan is currently under investigation for by the FBI, FDIC, SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Office of Controller of the Currency and federal prosecutors in Manhattan for:

“A. Multibillion dollar trading losses that cost its shareholders between $5 billion and $15 billion; B. A criminal investigation of top JPMorgan executives by the FBI over lying to investors and federal regulators with respect to the multibillion dollar trading losses; C. Misstatements by JPMorgan regarding how the bank harmed more than 5,000 homeowners in foreclosure; D. Inadequate controls against money laundering that allow tainted money to move through the bank’s network; E. Violations of federal law in failing to report suspicious transactions of Bernie Madoff; F. Selling CDOs [collateralized debt obligations] to customers by concealing that the CDOs were comprised of failing home loans; G. Rigging bids to cities and counties; H. Overcharging and manipulating electrical power markets resulting in JPMorgan being barred from the electrical power market; I. Engaging in transactions involving Cuba, Iran and Sudan in violation of the U.S. embargoes.”

Greenberg v. JPMorgan Chase by Steve Dibert

Greenberg seeks an injunction and damages for violations of the federal Fair Employment and Housing Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act and California’s consumer protection and fair business laws.

Editor’s Note – You can also check out other artwork by Gonzo Banker Artist William Banzai 7 at his website -Steve

Unlike Detroit, which will run out of cash next month, Japan prints its own money, so bankruptcy in the Detroit sense is not in the cards. But they do have two things in common: depopulation and a ballooning stock of abandoned houses. For Japan, it’s an issue that even the most prodigious money-printing binge cannot resolve.

These decrepit buildings dot neighborhoods in surprising places. There was one just down the street from our apartment building near the South Korean embassy in Azabu-Juban, Tokyo. Not a cheap neighborhood. It was a diminutive wooden building, turned black with age and soot. In places there was rusted sheet-metal siding. The roof was made of rust-perforated corrugated iron. The tiny garden had morphed into a thicket of weeds.

I saw numerous such places. Sometimes they were incongruously wedged between groomed buildings. Other times, they were in rougher areas. Sometimes they were larger buildings. Further out, a neighborhood might be dotted with these pockmarks. Japan isn’t the only place with blight. But the sheer quantity of abandoned houses in Japan is stunning – and has been getting worse at an accelerating clip.

Now the government wants to do something about it. But unlike the stock market, which can be goosed by the intoxicating vapors of money-printing promises, the real economy is tougher to deal with, and housing stock, when the population is declining and shifting, is even tougher.

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