Occupy LA protesters descend on Pasadena home of BofA executive

Lauren Gold, Pasadena Star-News

About 100 Occupy protesters seeking to reverse an eviction gathered Tuesday outside the Pasadena house of a Bank of America executive in the San Rafael neighborhood.

The protest began at 4 p.m. at the house of bank executive Raul Anaya, and specifically focused on the plight of homeowner Dirma Rodriguez.

“Every crook in history has victimized her and it’s shocking,” said Lydia Breen, 64, of Altadena, a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who relocated to Southern California.

No one was arrested during Tuesday’s protest, which was one of many across the nation surrounding the annual Bank of America Shareholder’s meeting today in Charlotte, North Carolina. No Pasadena police personnel were present at the scene.

Rodriguez’s home was foreclosed after she allegedly fell behind on loan payments on a second for her house in the West Adams district of Los Angeles.

Rodriguez was evicted March 26, but allowed back into her home that night after Occupy protesters rallied in her support, said Occupy member Cheryl Aichele.

Rodriguez, a widow, said the process has been difficult, full of frustration and tears.

“I want my home legally returned to me and I want fair payments and an end to this horrific situation that me and my family have had to go through,” Rodriguez said in Spanish translated by Occupy member Julie Levine. “I felt terrible, I couldn’t sleep worrying that I was going to lose my home and what would happen to my daughter.”

Rodriguez’s 27-year-old daughter, Ingrid Ortiz, has toxoplasmosis cerebral palsy. Rodriguez said she was granted a loan modification and began making payments but then the bank sent her checks back and sold her home at a foreclosure auction in September.

Levine said Rodriguez was following the bank’s instructions to make loan payments into a special account when they “sold the house out from under her.”

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Occupy Detroit Stages “Foreclosure Monoply” Protest At BofA Branch

Occupy Detroit staged a pretty creative protest at a Bank of America branch in downtown Detroit modeled after the board game, “Monopoly”.  They even had a guy dressed up like Rich Uncle Moneybags.

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Like Crooked Circus Carnies, BofA Teases 200,000 Homeowners With Principal Writedowns

They Only Get Them If They Jump Through Hoops And Qualify

Diana Olick, CNBC

A select group of struggling mortgage borrowers are about to get an offer that sounds too good to be true. Executives at Bank of America say they will begin mailing 200,000 letters offering certain customers mortgage principal reduction.

If people get these things and toss them, they won’t be eligible,” says Ron Sturzenegger, the Bank of America executive charged with providing solutions to borrowers in need of mortgage assistance.

But the offer is real, and eligible borrowers could get as much as $150,000 knocked off the balance of their mortgages. It is all part of the $25 billion settlement reached this year between federal and state agencies and the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers over fraudulent foreclosure document processing (so-called “robo-signing”).

Bank of America [BAC  7.79    -0.17  (-2.14%)   ], in a deal with state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Justice, committed $11 billion to mortgage principal reduction, but executives say they will go beyond that if enough borrowers respond to their offer. Five thousand borrowers have already received a collective $700 million in principal reduction through a pilot program for those already in a modification negotiation. The 200,000 borrowers being targeted now may have already exhausted modification options or may have yet to contact the lender.

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Lehman Docs Show Wall Street Arrogance Led To Financial Collapse

William D. Cohan, Bloomberg

If one wants to understand the full complicity of Wall Street in the Great Recession, look no further than the voluminous package of pre-collapseLehman Brothers documents that have been made available by the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, which has acted as the coroner in the Lehman post-mortem.

Most important, the cache dispels the myth that Dick Fuld, chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and his close associates were unaware of the risks their business faced in 2007 and 2008. That would be bad enough, but the more devastating reality is that Fuld and his sycophants were warned repeatedly but were blinded by their hubris.

The records confirm, yet again, that the “forces-out-of- our-control” argument we hear from Wall Street leaders is bunk. It is the ill-advised behavior of one banker after another, day in and day out, that leads to the sort of devastating financial crisis we are only now emerging from.

For instance, at a Lehman board meeting in September 2007, according to a copy of the presentation in the data cache, Lehman executives presented a clear summary of the brewing crisis. “The initial tremors were felt at the end of 2006,” the board was told, “when the poor loan performance of sub- prime borrowers began to be a cause for concern in the marketplace. This was evidenced by a gradual spread widening in the asset backed index.” The presentation continued: “The market continued to widen as it became apparent that the performance problems in mortgage loans was not going to abate and was no longer limited to the sub-prime market but also affecting the Alt-A product.”

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