IndyMac Fighting For Survival…Bank Deposits Withdrawn

(From EarthTimes.org)
WASHINGTON, June 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As IndyMac Bancorp battles questions about its financial stability, a new report from the Center for Responsible Lending provides evidence that IndyMac put itself in a hole by engaging in unsound and abusive lending during the nation’s mortgage boom.
The report, “IndyMac: What Went Wrong?,” finds substantial evidence that IndyMac [...]

Countrywide Lawsuits Continue to Embarrass Bank of America

At the same time, the Senate is pushing ahead with sweeping legislation on housing while facing questions about why some of its members received below-market-rate mortgages from Countrywide.
As first reported by Daniel Golden on Portfolio.com, the primary author of the Senate bill, Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, as well as Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of [...]

Fannie and Freddie Slow To Enter Jumbo Conforming Market…Buying Own Securities Back and Lending 50% Of What Congress Hoped For

June 24 (Bloomberg) — Three months after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won the freedom to step up home-loan purchases, the government-chartered mortgage-finance companies are doing what critics in the Federal Reserve and Congress had predicted.
Instead of using powers granted by Congress to buy jumbo loans for the first time, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae [...]

Countrywide Scandal Being Revealed…

Senators Dodd and Conrad are among the government officials who scored V.I.P. loans from C.E.O. Angelo Mozilo.  An exclusive Portfolio investigation.
Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial  through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees, and company borrowing rules for prominent people.
Senators [...]

The Not So Good…The Bad…and The Ugly

BAD NEWS: The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which [...]

Subprime Hindsight…It Takes A Pillage

(From the Salt Lake Tribune)
Yes, the executives at Countrywide Financial Corp. planned a top-dollar shindig at a ski resort earlier this year, just after the bank’s multibillion dollar losses on subprime mortgages required a shotgun marriage to Bank of America. (A Wall Street Journal story forced them to cancel the party.) And sure, Bear Stearns [...]

National Licensing Standards On The Way

(Excerpts from a Reuters article…06/05/08)
But it doesn’t take a newcomer to see that the U.S. mortgage brokerage business is facing big changes as a regulatory backlash follows an historic housing market bust. Congress and the Bush administration are pursuing reform proposals on how brokers qualify to do business; how they get paid; and how much [...]